Here is some basic information about Kizuna Ai.(if you're not interested, please don’t miss the last part)
Kizuna Ai is known as a virtual YouTuber under Upd8 (Japanese: アップデート).The company was founded on May 31, 2018 and its parent company is Activ8, which supports multiple virtual YouTuber business projects.
There are a total of five Kizuna AI avatar, including the Original Ai, Black Ai, #2, #3 and the Chinese Ai.
The Original Ai and Black Ai share the same voice actress (AKA,VA), while the others do not.
In short:Now we are in a situation that the voice of Original Ai may be rarely heard in the future, or even disappears.
Due to the company's interests, Original Ai may slowly replaced by #2 and #3 in her channels.
Company executives would like Kizuna Ai to be independent from its VA to expand the IP of Kizuna AI and to reduce future risk. The risk is that once VA decide to quit or falls ill that can not work, the project will be heavily damaged.
Here no longer avoid the topic that Kizuna Ai’s VA is Japanese actress Kasuga Nozomi of Clear Voice.
The following information are quoted from authors of BiliBili, Baidu and Moegirlpedia, if there is any infringement please contact me
On May 25 2019, in <キズナアイが4人いるって言ったら信じますか？ #1> , Kizuna Ai started to propose the conception of what could happen if there are 4 copies of herself？
In following videos, Kizuna Ai explored topics like "possibilities of various Kizuna AI", "different voice of Kizuna AI", “what is Kizuna AI" and so on, causing a wide discussion in fans.
On June 9th, 2019, <【検証】2人のキズナアイはクイズで同じ回答が出来るのか？> was uploaded on the main channel(A.I.Channel). For the first time, a clone AI(#2) was put on the show beside the Original one. Later in <キズナアイ VS キズナアイ 【マリオカート8 DX】> same thing happened. Since then, the Original Ai appears less and less in videos before she finally vanished.
Meanwhile 3# had taking more part of Kizuna Ai’s activities. Her first solo video on A.I.Games channel was loaded on July 11.First advertisement on July 25th.
First advertisement(3#)
On June 25, 2019, the Bilibili removal group announced the officialization and renamed "AIChannel Official"
This article was quoted from Moegirlpedia (https://zh.moegirl.org/), which is the default use of the Agreement【Knowledge Sharing Signature - Non-Commercial Use - Sharing 3.0】.
On June 30, 2019, the day of the birthday party, the operation only let the 4th Ai (Chinese Ai) one person to meet with Chinese fans, and the First Ai did not appear, let the 3rd love in the name of Ai live without an official reminder in late July ... a series of events, thus the operation caused a great controversy among fans.
There is one kind of opinion says that the whole clone plan is mean to share the works of Original Ai, to let her rest for a while. And in the June 30’s birthday party, Original Ai also admitted that she personally approve the plan, even with a crying tone.
Until July 26, things seems working alright. But in the night of 26, somebody find a tweet belongs to Kasuga Nozomi(believed to be the cast of OG Ai ) that seems to complained about working situation.
Kasuga Nozomi's twitter made the whole plan confusing that the clone plan may not have been real intention of Original Ai.
There's so much! This is going to be difficult!
I don't want to lose and be swept aside by idiots or nasty grownups. Nor do I want to stoop to their level. Trust in what you see and what you feel. You won't always do the right thing, but as long as you tried, trust in the ties between people. I'm going to do my best to hold onto myself and my content. I can do it! Yeah!
These tweet were deleted soon
The tweed caused fans to worry that the whole clone plan may not as smple as it met the eye.
Some people questioned the second one and could verify it by themselves. It was surely released by nozomi
https://search.yahoo.co.jp/realtime/search?p=嫌な大人や
It turned out that July 26 was the day the clone Ai #3 made her first live with first adevertisement. It is suspicious enough for fans to worry that OG Ai may be forced to agree the plan.
But I have no empirical evidence, I dare not assert.
The First Independent of 3# (Super Mario Creator 2)
It brings people’s mind back into April. There was another crisis that shocked the entire VTB industry, known as the game department issue.
Four VA of game department characters uncovered their dire working situation through twitter which shows that the company pressed and bullied them.
https://unlimited-ent.co.jp/56/
Another clue was found in the lyrics of Kizuna Ai’s new song <Sky High> it sings like:
pay attention to the lyrics
The bilibili aichannel official removed Sky High’s subtitles very soon.
Fans who love Original Ai started to take actions, and they expressed their concerns on Bilibili, twitter, and youtube.
As fans begin to worry, Kasuga Nozomi sent two tweets, which are believed to be comforting fans.She seems to have her own approach, which temporarily eased the restlessness of fans.
Everybody looks upset, Kasuga as working, I’m working hard like always.
Then Nozomi released a second message.
I will still be active for many years, wait for me!
There are some fans ask me how do you know the VA of Original Ai is Kasuga Nozomi?
I would make a explaination here. First of all, the sound lines are consistent, sound pattern is basically the same, her birthday is June 30 th same as Ai.
It just do not reveal the truth.
First material comes from Kizuna Ai’s video.
Source of the second video
It can be inferred to come from the same person through energy distribution of different frequencies.In order to make it more convincing i chose two parts of natural laughing which is more unchangeable in a person.
The second segment is very noisy, but it can be inferred to come from the same person through energy distribution of different frequencies.
ps:Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Kasuga Nozomi tweeted again on July 27. This time she was with friends to celebrate her birthday(Her birthday is on 6 30 but she was unavailable that day so they finally did the celebration on 7 29). The tweet is with picture and the image under mosaics looks like Kizuna Ai.
Fans retweeted to support Nozomi, so she sent another tweet to express her gratitude. It contains “thank you” written in 5 languages. Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean and Philippine, those were the fans who supported Kizuna Ai in her early career
As we konwn that a newcomer shouldn't have international fans What kind of status does this thank she push to send? I guess you have known.
On July 28, people found a Facebook post by Yuichi Soejima, who is the executive director of Active8, and suspected to be the mastermind behind clone plan. The Facebook immediately caused outrage among fans.
At that time, its responsibility to remind people of Ai, which was considered to refer to Ai. However, the retweeted author explained that Facebook content had nothing to do with Ai. It warned everyone be rational.
Whether he was the mastermind behind it was also to be tested, don't take a light conclusion. See more about it.
But something is certain that many staff of upd8 had quited after he assumed office.
The view of responsibility in dealing with things is so different that we can't say one thing at a time. Although the other party is working very hard in the scope of their own responsibilities, but do not want to work overtime weekends and do not want to pay more than ordinary people want authority, but too high requirements are easy to be dissatisfied with the determination of return, do not want to take risks, but also said that they will take responsibility, so they want to be in charge. This is not the way to blame people. This kind of person has a high appraisal of himself. He always feels very smart. There are too many examples. Although it's a headache to ignore, the person in charge is at risk. If you want a salary of the same level, it's better for the working class.
His working experience（副岛雄一）(Maybe it's too often to switch the job)
Yesterday, Komichiava's Facebook about Vice-Ishima Xiongyi on the Internet triggered a big uproar. I don't discuss whether Vice-Ishima is garbage. Last night, I also said that I had a little hope, although I was very excited, I also left a message in the comments section - part of what I knew was not in line with the uncertainty. I don't want you to be misled again. This clarifies that the content of Vice-Shimajima's Facebook has nothing to do with Aisai. Please help forward
It turned out not to be aimed at Kizuna Ai.
It warned everyone be rational. Whether he was the mastermind behind it was also to be tested, don't take a light conclusion. See more about it.
Then there's the big event happened recently. On July 26th, #3 held a live for the first time. At this time, there was someone directly abuse her.
In fact, even before Nozomi’s tweet, on the July 26 live(by Ai #3),somebody already got angry and insulted the liver badly, accused her for “occupied OG Ai’s channel” since she had been solo on the channel for 2 weeks.
Both videos on Aichannel are 2 + 3
Ai #2 and Ai #3 had adopted new 3D model in some videos, while in those with OG Ai, they did not. (Here i have not more information about new modle)
This brings the idea that maybe all the videos with OG Ai after 3# had her first solo were records. It means the OG Ai may have not anticipated in any video shot since July 11.
What worse? The famous ending song that had been played for over a year did not show up in video on July 30.
Aigames is basically assumed by No. 3, and the orignal ai occasionally plays guest roles.
Recently, there are Original Ai appeared in the video were also inventories. Original Ai did not appeared recently, which was also related to Kasuga Nozomi （She's on vacation）. Most of the official videos on Bilibili are old videos that have been published in the past half a month or a month in youtube, when Original Ai was still there. At present, Bilibili official has not released a video completely without Original Ai.(They finally did)
Even though, Ai #3 made her second live on July 31. This time a number of fans attacked her with real time comment, calling her “faked”, most of attackers are from China.
Some of them supported the official operation, some people supported Original Ai, some people scolded AI chan#3, some people scolded the operation, some people thought that AI chan#2 ,AI chan#3 were innocent, some people think that AI chan#2, AI chan#3 "want to wear and hang around, will bear its weight."
It may have some effect, since Ai #3 said something about the OG Ai during the live, quotes:
Some people are worrying about my origin, like “will she never come back?”. No that won’t happen, please calm down.
I have been listening to everyone, they want me to change color or something, sorry but I can’t do that since we all like pink.
Everybody's voice I listen to well, for example, they hope that I can change the color.
Some worry about the lyrics like what does “the prototype will fall asleep” means, and may be upset.
Don’t worry, I won’t let her fall asleep.
And I won't disappear neither, so I hope you all can love me too.
Well, it's hard to accept change. It must be scary.
Sure enough, it will be hard to accept that something you are familiar with is slowly changing.
Closing date
This is basically the outline of the whole incident, I will continue to follow. If any part of this article against the fact, please point it out, Also any new clues are welcome. Thanks for reading.
I hope that there are fans who know the inside story can let me know the real situation of this matter.You may edit and spread this article freely. While doing so, please make sure that any material you use is base on the fact. If you are familiar with Japanese, please do the translation.
The following part is about my personal opinion on this event.
First of all, I hope more people know this matter.Because the people who are looking at it for the most part now are Chinese.
Secondly, I do not make comments about the behavior of many fans directly swearing. Personally, I don't like to see or hear swear words. However, I can understand their emotions as a fan of Ai.
In fact, I am afraid that I can't hear the voice of OG Ai one day, can't see OG Ai's video, because I love is this whole part(Kasuga Nozomi + Ai) = Original Ai.
What makes me more vulnerabled is that AI #2 and AI #3 look exactly the same as Original Ai, but they can never not do some of the details as OG Ai. Watching their video, I always hold an unacceptable emotion. I am very supportive of the idea that change the model.
You see Chinese Ai is also a replica, but it changed the model.So it's more acceptable,and feel less discomfortable.
From the company's point of view, weaken the Original Ai is indeed what they should do. In case something happens on voice actor the company really can not afford, and Original Ai will one day also fade out of our sight. What I want to see is that people know Original Ai rather than others in its brilliant time.
From my personal point of view, I started to focus on her at first because of her stupid action.I gradually like OG Ai who eats cute grow up.
Sometimes, she also have a small temper, afraid, happy, vomit slot. She has always been positive and very likeable. I slowly can't live without her video, as her language, movement, voice, small expression can always heal me. It seems inevitable that this will happen,because the IP should grows more bigger.
As for the recent videos that don't appear Original Ai, I think a lot of the reason is that Kasuga Nozomi is on vacation, which she deserves it. She's really tired, she needs to sing, dance and play games.
However, the key to this matter is whether Original Ai has been excluded, forced to do their own unwilling things. If she's going to work as hard as she used to make Ai, but the company doesn't allow, that's the last thing we are unwilling to see.
Finally, I would like to say that no matter whether you are angry or bad, hate or hate, optimistic, sad. All of this are all from our love, love for Ai. I hope you can remember in the heart for this starting point.
Don't forget that we do it all because of ai.
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The recent information,this twitter is from nozomi's friend
Said to nozomi “How about giving up if you feel so bad?”
More and more people realize that something is wrong, so please make your voice for your beloved ai. Maybe we are small, but as long as we work together, we can always change something. No matter where you come from China, the United States, Japan, the Philippines or anywhere, please join us and let your beloved AI hear your voice.
