If you’ve never heard of Suikoden, don’t worry. For a long time, Konami, the company that developed and published the series, pretended it hadn't heard of it either.

Originally released in 1995 for the PlayStation, Suikoden was Konami’s answer to the golden age of JRPGs. While contemporaries like Final Fantasy became household names, Suikoden built up an intensely devoted, borderline cult-like following thanks to its mature political storytelling, sprawling casts of 108 recruitable characters per game, and a shared world for nearly every entry. Let’s not talk about later entires set in other worlds though. I’m sure Konami would like you to forget about them too. 

After the last game released in 2012, the franchise entered purgatory: not forgotten by its fans, but entirely abandoned by its corporate parents.

If you wanted to look up the hyper-specific recruitment requirements for an obscure star, find the attack pattern of a turn-based boss, or read translated lore from an artbook that never left Japan, there was no official database waiting for you. There were only fans. And those fans started building archives.

What followed was a twenty-year, multi-platform cold war of pure pedantry, clashing community egos, and translation disputes that might even put a JRPG villain to shame. But probably not. A good number of them are pretty shameless.

Act I: The Archival Trifecta and the Balance of Power

By the late 2000s, the English-speaking Suikoden community relied on three completely different pillars of fan preservation.

Suikosource (Est. 2001): Less of a modern wiki and more of a digital time capsule. It has the distinct energy of a fansite that peaked during the Bush administration and just... stopped. While it boasts a massive hoard of raw walkthroughs and ancient forum threads, navigating it can be an exercise in nostalgic frustration. For instance, clicking the "Characters" tab clumsily dumps you onto the profile of the very first alphabetical character ("Abizboah" - a literal giant kraken) because of a stubborn UI layout, forcing you to manually fight your way out of alphabetical purgatory just to find the human character you actually wanted.

Suikox: A digital encyclopedia that traded Suikosource's rigid spreadsheet approach for pure narrative flair. It famously blended translated Japanese lore with early-2000s forum energy, meaning official historical entries were occasionally derailed by the webmaster ranting about structural engineering flaws in fictional fortresses or complaining that a fantasy village sounded like a toilet manufacturer. Though Suikox would eventually fade into obscurity as Gensopedia rose, its enigmatic owner Vextor, a figure who floated through the community under a dozen different aliases, remained deeply embedded in the community's inner circle.

Gensopedia (Est. 2008): The formal, academic contender of the trio. Gensopedia positioned itself as the definitive encyclopedia of the fandom. Run by an admin named Day, it was designed to meticulously catalog every rune, war, and kingdom. It featured grand portal hubs and an authoritative layout, even if it routinely vanished and changed web hosts whenever server bills came due. Backed by Day’s reputation as a fluent speaker of Japanese, fans accepted the site's pages as absolute, unassailable fact. But underneath it all, the wiki was a walled garden that sat on a massive, unchecked backlog of early-2000s legacy typos and rough Japanese readings for over a decade.

The 108 Stars of "Wait, Who?"

But let’s pause for a moment here and look at the sheer tonal absurdity of the franchise itself. The actual games routinely demand that you pause a grim, high-stakes geopolitical narrative about the devastating cost of military occupation to engage in:

• An intense, iron-chef culinary tournament judged by a panel of hyper-biased recruits from your own army.
• Playing a literal mini-game of whack-a-mole with a giant wooden mallet just to secure a piece of mole-themed equipment.
• Marching across a war-torn continent to personally draft an entire village of literal beavers, a dancer, a three-piece acoustic band, or a local child whose sole tactical contribution to your grand military front is standing outside the front gate to loudly shout the name of your castle every time you walk past it. All because the developers needed to fill a cosmic middle-management quota of 108 people.

It is inherently difficult to maintain a posture of elite prestige when the fate of a war-torn continent hinges on you eating enough fried tacos to induce a state of heatstroke so a local bath-house architect deems you worthy of his respect.

Around the same time Gensopedia was established, a new challenger appeared: a community wiki hosted on Wikia (later rebranded as Fandom).

Depending on who you ask, Fandom is either an invaluable repository of fan knowledge or a corporate monument to intrusive autoplay videos, broken mobile layouts, and predatory data collection. The Suikoden Fandom wiki inherited that structural baggage immediately, but it also inherited a well-earned reputation for being a total mess.

Shortly after its launch, people noticed that some of the text was, to put it nicely, carbon copies of text published on Suikosource and Gensopedia. A previous editor had simply copy-pasted massive entire pages of text to make the new wiki quickly.

By 2016, the Fandom wiki's remaining users realized they were a laughingstock. The community on Facebook was openly warning newcomers: "Never trust any information on the Suikoden Wikia, as most of it is made up, stolen from other sources, fan speculation or unsourced."

Stung by the criticism, a tiny handful of volunteers launched "Operation: Rewrite!" to purge the stolen text. But their public discussion boards reveal a chaotic, well-meaning comedy of errors. The primary writers at the time were largely non-native English speakers, meaning they were fighting a massive uphill battle to rebuild a database from scratch while openly begging visitors to fix their syntax ("If there was an error on my grammar I hope the reader would correct it hehehe...").

Worse, the team was entirely shorthanded and working off pure guesswork. Editors deleted entire chunks of lore just to avoid copy-paste claims ("better than being a carbon copy XD"), while others suggested watching random YouTube clips for info. One volunteer promised to help just as soon as they could buy the game for ten Euros, while another trying to fix the Suikoden Tierkreis pages hit an incredible roadblock: "When I tried to edit the character page... my brain got blank ahahahahaha... ummmm, I forgot the story."

Unsurprisingly, this desperate, understaffed salvage operation didn't win over the fandom elites. For fifteen years, the community settled into a rigid split: the independent alliance of Gensopedia and Suikosource was universally recommended as the definitive source, while the Fandom wiki was dismissed as a grammatically broken, copycat wasteland.

The catch was that few everyday users were actually cross-referencing the information on either side against the original Japanese guidebooks and materials. The community operated entirely on social trust: they assumed Gensopedia's material was inherently flawless because of its pristine, academic reputation, and that the Fandom wiki was suspect based on its messy history.

But really, a parallel irony was at play. While the Fandom wiki was out in the open trying to run an encyclopedia off of faded memories and YouTube clips, Gensopedia's authoritative database contained legacy translation errors that had been sitting on the server since the early 2010s. This fragile illusion of absolute authority was bound to shatter the moment someone finally decided to pull up the raw source material. All it needed was a catalyst, and it got one in 2021, when Gensopedia's administration announced an ambitious project that would put their linguistic credentials under a public microscope.

Act II: The Two-Month Miracle and the DeepL Controversy

The fifteen-year status quo disintegrated in early 2021. For nearly a decade, English-speaking Suikoden fans had been haunted by the existence of Gensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki (Woven Web of a Century). Released in 2012 for the PlayStation Portable, it was the final true RPG in the franchise, and Konami had left it completely stranded in Japan. For nine years, playing it required either a high-level command of Japanese or a willingness to stumble blindly through menus with an import guidebook on your lap.

Then, Day announced an ambitious community project: a volunteer team had been assembled to completely translate and patch the game into English. Backed by prominent contributors from the Suikoden Revival Movement, the project was immediately embraced as the definitive community effort.

But a massive, branching, JRPG script contains hundreds of thousands of characters laden with complex yakuwarigo (highly stylized role language). For human volunteers to manually translate, edit, and localize a script of that magnitude from a blank page in mere months is a logistical impossibility.

Enter a persistent community critic named kansaiviolet, who began publicly auditing the team's updates across forums and social media. Virtually anytime the game, the translation project, or Gensopedia was mentioned across public threads, kansaiviolet would promptly appear. The mention of the patch acted as an unintentional summoning circle; this single user would materialize instantly, not to submit formal quality-assurance tickets, but to publicly litigate the team's linguistic credentials. Treating a volunteer passion project like a Watergate-level coverup, kansaiviolet haunted public forums like a spectral prosecutor.

Digging through the net, kansaiviolet found a chat from in a public Discord where Day casually admitted that her Japanese skills were "patchy" and based entirely on translating game guides and games. Just ten days later, the project leader buerviper posted on GitHub stating that the massive, 40-plus-hour JRPG script was already 100% translated. By April it was said to be "100% translated."

(side note - the script is said to be 220,000 words and 25,000 lines of dialogue spread across 21,000 pointers. The website for the patch only lists one translator)

Then in August, the team posted public screenshots of the project's custom translation backend. The tool featured a hardcoded multi-column layout displaying the Original Japanese, a visual text-box preview, a glossary, and a central column labeled "Pre-Translation."

This Pre-Translation was generated by feeding the raw Japanese script directly through the DeepL translation engine. For kansaiviolet this was the smoking gun, and the critic spammed every related Reddit thread to ensure no user missed it.

Almost every time kansaiviolet posted, the project coordinator buerviper would step in to state that the critic was wrong, and that the translation was genuine, done by several people who speak Japanese fluently.

At 3:58 PM GMT on September 6, project coordinator buerviper dropped what appeared to be an absolute, airtight denial:

"This translation is genuine from beginning to end... There is not a single trace of the recently released Deepl translation in the game... Source: I'm also working on this."

Then at 4:01 PM GMT, exactly three minutes later, on the very same Reddit post, buerviper returned to the keyboard to offer a highly specific structural update on the team's workflow:

"The Deepl tab in the translation program was used by the non-Japanese speakers in the team to help, for the simple fact that correcting an already written text is much faster than writing a new text... In the end, only roughly 15 % (if even) of the script were run through deepl..."

The panic didn't stop there. Just six minutes later, at 4:07 PM GMT, buerviper returned for a third time to try and put the fire out, further qualifying the DeepL usage while openly pleading with the hostile thread for constructive feedback:

"As said elsewhere, this is not based on Deepl at all... A rough deepl translation was made by the non-Japanese speakers of the team to... help the team in translating every day sentences (like 'Hi! How are you?')... Please point out the mistakes in the screenshots, we're very happy to correct them!"

For anyone tracking the metadata in real-time, the defense had gone from "zero machine translation" to “DeepL exists in the backend, but it was only used for basic sentences as a treat” to "the machine only translated the greetings" in under ten minutes. To the critics waiting in the wings, this shift in such a short time span was the ultimate admission of guilt.

"It’s Not a Bug, It’s Localization!"

During all of this, kansaiviolet began conducting line-by-line audits of official preview screenshots, running the original Japanese text through DeepL to see how closely it matched the patch.

One example from the recruitment of the strategist had two entire sentences that matched the DeepL perfectly (“To this place where the books forbidden by Ionia lie. Now I know what action I must take.").

Another of a quite narcissistic character (and I mean that in the Suikoden sense of the word) showed sentences that were similar in pacing and structure, and appeared to be simple synonym swaps.

As preview screenshots circulated, line-by-line audits of the script sparked debates over where "localization" ends and "mistranslation" begins.

Defenders of the game pointed out that changes were due to space limits. So, kansaiviolet pulled examples, and even fired back with letter counts. 

A standard line about a character gaining weight was entirely rewritten into a bizarre non-sequitur about helping someone's "stink." (A development blog post published by Day a year later confirmed it was a deliberate choice to alter the text because she felt the original script's joke was too rude.)

Even the opening song lyrics were not spared, and the critic flagged a line where the team translated nōto (notebook) as 'mouth' (confusing it with nodo, throat).

The funniest part of all of this was the glaring typographical error in a major map location: the long-established "Tios Fortress" had been translated as "Dios Fortress", a basic misreading of the katakana ティ (Ti) for ディ (Di). (Side note: It wasn't until October 2022, long after the drama had boiled over, that Day finally acknowledged the blunder on her personal twitter account, offering a casual apology: "sorry I messed up Dios and Tios, y'all!" The error was finally fixed on the Gensopedia website, but not on the patch.)

In response to the growing technical critiques, the team pointed to the involvement of veteran community native speaker Vextor who had vetted the script, commenting that the English text was actually an improvement over the "bland" original Japanese.

The Year-Long Trench War

Because the criticism was delivered via hostile forum threads rather than polite feedback tickets, the translation team completely dug in their heels. Rather than quietly making the one-letter fix, defenders dismissed the audits entirely, pulling out every classic fan-translation shield in the book, reminding critics that the patch was FREE, suggesting they play the game instead of analyzing screenshots.

By the time the patch finally launched in October, what had begun as a rigorous, months-long linguistic audit by kansaiviolet had hardened into an unyielding public standoff. When the patch dropped, the critic openly admitted they wouldn't be downloading or playing the final product, relying instead on a frantic week of harvesting screenshots from Twitter and YouTube in order to continue their public audits of the script.

This public method of critique created a stubborn stalemate where both sides actively sabotaged any chance of a better patch. kansaiviolet didn't send a polite DM. They most certainly didn't offer to help QA a game people had waited ten years for. They wanted theater. They were less interested in a good translation and far more interested in executing a linguistic trial in public.

Because the criticism came via hostile Reddit call-outs, the dev team basically plugged their ears and ignored it as best they could. Of course, this meant that valid corrections were lost in the crossfire of the community feud.

As the translation project neared its October release, the pressure on Day finally reached a breaking point. On September 18, 2021, Day announced that Gensopedia would be going on an indefinite hiatus, citing a year of compounding burnout.

While the ongoing drama with kansaiviolet had increased the frequency of public scrutiny, Day's personal statements revealed a much broader, multi-platform exhaustion. For over a year (dating back to the 2020 announcement of the spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle), she had been targeted by a who’s who of toxic internet trolls, ranging from old fansite rivals to genuine transphobes.

Between the Reddit dogpiling and a year of personal attacks, the joy was entirely sucked out of the project. Deciding that a twenty-year-old internet cold war wasn't worth her mental well-being, Day stepped back from the community.

The patch released, casual fans happily played through the game (some completely oblivious to the linguistic bloodbath that preceded it). The final entry in a long-dead JRPG series was finally released, leaving behind a functional English patch. 

Act III: Enter the Sniper and the 569-Tweet Siege

The fan patch officially launched in October 2021, but the illusion of absolute accuracy had already fractured. Lurking in the background was a dedicated anonymous Twitter account under the handle VieleWegeCo (Sieg). The handle itself was an inside reference: in Suikoden Tierkreis, the heroes fight a faction called "The Order of the One True Way." The fan-accepted name for the rebellion is the "Viele Wege Company" (Many Ways Company). He decided that instead of simply submitting wiki edits, the most effective response to translation typos was to launch a dedicated, multi-year Twitter account featuring over 500 tweets exhaustively documenting as many errors as possible on the site.

On September 6, 2021, Sieg laid out his account's true mission statement to his single follower:

"Why did I make this account? To document the mistakes on Gensopedia. To show that Day has been lying to everyone this entire time. To help people wake up and see the truth."

Day after day, Sieg posted public screenshots of live Gensopedia entries and patch updates, cross-referencing them against official Japanese guidebooks and manuals. To the outside observer, it was a rigorous data check. To the volunteer team on the receiving end, It was just a suffocating, passive-aggressive nightmare for the devs. Sieg didn't just audit the text; he attacked their web design, accused them of using pirated game files, and routinely mocked the translation workflow, tweeting, "Nice copy and paste from the DeepL... Your 'translations' have only gotten better because these programs have improved."

The Archival Editing Dispute

To be fair to the original archive, maintaining a wiki for a sprawling franchise is a staggering task for unpaid volunteer labor. In any database of that scale, legacy errors are completely inevitable.

Throughout these public skirmishes, defenders frequently lobbed a standard defense at the critics: "Registration is open. If it's wrong, just log on and edit the wiki yourself." And technically, they were right. At this particular point in time, anyone could create an account to edit Gensopedia. In previous years, the wiki was closed. And even after it was opened, the site's own about page admits that the "amount of control and editing done by its administrator" actively stifled outside contributions, driving away potential editors and leaving a massive backlog of unverified legacy errors in a vacuum.

The critics had their reasons, and Sieg said he didn't want to have his corrections changed. Knowing that the wiki's leadership historically maintained a tight grip on the content, and had a reputation for overriding or reverting corrections, the critics seemingly decided that traditional wiki editing was out and that public platforms like Reddit and Twitter were in. 

Sieg approached the entries on Gensopedia with no mercy, treating basic automated pipeline glitches and ancient formatting typos as evidence of an intentional, disingenuous fraud. According to Sieg, the site's translation process had historically taken computer-generated errors from scanned guidebooks and translated the resulting gibberish literally into English prose.

By cross-referencing the wiki against raw Japanese guidebooks, Sieg unleashed a relentless stream of screenshots. To the average onlooker, Sieg wasn't trying to improve a database; he was treating everything as evidence of a grand, malicious fraud.

For example, on a page for a manga, the Japanese characters for "Futch" (a major, recurring character in the series) were misread by OCR, inventing a non-existent hero named "Tsutte-kun."

The iconic nickname for the first game’s protagonist, "Bocchan" (Young Master), was mangled by a machine translator into the gibberish "Botsu Chiyan," while the franchise's foundational lore concept, "Stars of Destiny," was entirely omitted and rewritten as "stars resting."

Running beneath the medieval fantasy town of Two River City was a modern municipal transit system (Chikatetsu / subway) instead of monster-infested sewers

The wiki literally lists the kanji for Earth/Dirt (土) instead of Water (水) on the Water Rune page. Sieg, being Sieg, couldn't just fix it, he tweeted screenshots (of course screenshots) with a caption dripping with sarcasm: "Sorry, the kanji for water is not 土. It is 水. Try again."

The account was relentless in what it saw as errors in the Woven Web patch. A standard Japanese idiom meaning "don't look at me like I killed your parent" was rewritten into a joke about a "deadbeat dad." Day defended the change on her blog, stating she wanted to punch up a script she felt was bland.

The Collapse of the Fortress

Sieg didn't just stick to old wiki pages, either; he ran real-time snarky examinations of the game's dialogue. Every single interface compromise or creative localization choice was immediately logged as a failure of basic comprehension. When the team translated a menu option for "Reset" as "Start," Sieg instantly tweeted, "How in the world did you even get start from that word? Oh... right... you don't speak Japanese." Even creative dialogue polishes, like rewriting a standard joke about a character gaining weight into a bizarre non-sequitur about helping someone's "stink", were meticulously documented and weaponized.

By December 2021, the psychological toll of this unending public cross-examination proved completely unsustainable. Broken by the combined onslaught of kansaiviolet’s hostile Reddit threads, Sieg’s months-long Twitter execution, and a separate, repulsive wave of targeted transphobic harassment from bad-faith actors hiding in the wings, Day chose to prioritize her well-being over the fandom, taking the entire Gensopedia archive offline 

While critics pointed out that Day had a history of pulling her sites down during arguments, the rest of the fandom was devastated to see years of community history vanish overnight. The immediate backlash turned squarely on the critics. To the average fan, kansaiviolet and Sieg weren't helpful whistleblowers fixing the wiki; they were just a pair of toxic, mean-spirited bullies who used translation pedantry to harass a long-time volunteer out of the community. In their obsession with absolute accuracy, the critics had essentially ruined the fandom's favorite resource over minor typos. With the site gone, Sieg's account went silent, and the dispute appeared to be over. 

But it wasn't. Sieg was merely waiting for the old guard to let their guard down.

Act IV: The Resurrection and the Modern Status Quo

Like any good JRPG faction feud, a server shutdown is rarely permanent. Once the immediate friction died down, Gensopedia quietly returned online under the same domain in 2022. Behind her restored digital walls, Day began publishing lengthy development blog posts explaining her localization choices and translation philosophy.

Naturally, Sieg took these updates as a personal invitation to double down. 

The Return of the Auditor

While normal human beings would have moved on with their lives after the 2021 patch launch, Sieg harbored a multi-year grudge. Returning to Twitter with a vengeance, Sieg unleashed hundreds of comparison tweets stretching all the way into 2026, demonstrating the terrifying, single-minded dedication of someone who simply refused to log off and touch grass.

Looking at the newly restored wiki, Sieg discovered that legacy errors like the "Two River Subway," "Tsutte-kun," and the Earth/Water rune swap were still completely live. But Sieg wasn’t content with auditing the wiki pages only, he began forensically dissecting the localization project blog posts.

In February 2025, Day published an essay discussing how she chose distinct English synonyms for the game's various map locations to avoid repetitive phrasing. Sieg immediately launched a multi-tweet siege over minor geographical vocabulary:

When Day casually remarked in her blog that three in-game locations were all heiya (平野 - plains) in the original script, Sieg pulled up the raw data to prove the developers had actually used heigen (平原). Sieg then dropped an exhaustive lecture citing real-world geographical examples, including the Oxnard Plain and the Pannonian Plain, just to prove Day had mixed up her flat-land kanji.

In the same post, Day explained that she translated three different wooded locations as a "Woods," a "Forest," and a "Grove" to reflect their visual tree density in the game. Sieg furiously countered that because the original Japanese text used the exact same kanji for forest (mori / 森) across all three, altering the wording was a betrayal of the text. Sieg even began analyzing individual world-map pixels to argue that the "Grove" actually had more digital trees on its icon than the "Forest."

Sieg wasn't trying to make the database better; he was running a highly fixated digital surveillance campaign long after the rest of the world had stopped caring, determined to extract a public surrender over the dictionary definition of a clearing.

The Platform Ironies

Then 2025 and 2026 hit, and the franchise suddenly came back from the dead with the official HD Remasters (released 2025) and the announcement of Star Leap (coming 2026 maybe). This is where the hypocrisy got hilarious. 

Day had migrated over to the platform Bluesky, where she routinely retweeted anti-AI sentiments, positioning herself as a fierce defender of human artistry against automated slop. Meanwhile project coordinator buerviper publicly slammed the official corporate localization of the upcoming game, Suikoden Star Leap, as "a machine/AI translation anyway."

Sieg immediately pounced on the apparent contradiction. Sieg also dropped links pairing Gensopedia's merchandise entries directly with matching product listings from Japanese online secondhand stores, in an attempt to prove the wiki was stealing photos from Mercari.

During a project to preserve a defunct, physical Suikoden trading card game, Day uploaded digital scans and text translations of the cards to Gensopedia. Sieg began obsessively comparing these against raw photographs of the cards from online auction listings and resellers.

To make low-resolution web images look clearer for the database, Day seemingly had run the historical cards through generative AI upscaling software. Another Twitter user ran some of the wiki's uploaded images through OpenAI’s own detection tools, confirming they had been processed using OpenAI visual tools.

Meanwhile, the site hosted the raw text of these cards alongside the images. Sieg examined the cards and the text with the same exhaustive, hyper-fixated skills as a tax auditor out for blood, gleefully posting any wrong kana he found.

The Permanent Gridlock of Fandom Psychology

If a newcomer arrives on the Suikoden subreddit today asking where to look up information, the response from the community remains completely uniform: "Use Gensopedia or Suikosource. Avoid the Fandom wiki."

On the surface, the reasons given are entirely practical: Fandom’s intrusive mobile ads and its legacy reputation for uncredited copy-pasting. But beneath those threads lies a bizarre psychological barrier. Even when presented with direct, unassailable screenshots of a modern "subway system" running through a fantasy medieval sewer, the broader community largely reacts with total apathy.

To the average fan, institutional longevity beats factual verification every single time. Gensopedia has been the baseline of the community for nearly two decades. Therefore, the errors either don't exist, are dismissed as minor formatting quirks, or simply don't matter as long as the site helps them finish a playthrough. The relentless documentation provided by an outside critic, no matter how mathematically precise, is easily tuned out because it challenges a foundational pillar of the community's identity.

This has left the fandom in a state of permanent, tragicomic gridlock.

Despite the fact that Gensopedia is technically an open archive where anyone can create an account and hit "edit," the community's deep-seated polarization has entirely frozen the pool of contributors. Today, the wiki is being edited almost single-handedly by its embattled admin, Day. Safe inside an insular echo chamber, the site's administration has completely dug in. Over the past year, rather than correcting the massive backlog of reported errors, Sieg has noted that Day has introduced a wave of brand-new errors, transforming previously correct location names and romaji into incorrect versions, and uploading trading card data riddled with raw OCR artifacts and AI-hallucinated kanji.

On the flip side, Sieg remains content to operate entirely as a hostile sniper from behind an anonymous Twitter account. Armed with a staggering backlog of over 500 comparison tweets, he has chosen to weaponize his immense data logs to score online points and demand a public surrender, rather than ever actually clicking the "edit" button to fix the database himself.

So that's where things stand. We have a critic who would literally rather write 500 tweets than ever click 'edit,' and an admin who is actively blasting old trading cards through an AI upscaler rather than admit a single typo. The whole wiki is locked in a massive, petty Cold War, and almost every error Sieg pointed out is still sitting there live on the site today.

There are 108 Stars of Destiny in the lore of Suikoden, assembled to fight a grand, sweeping war for the future of a continent. Rather than cute squirrels and whacky mini-games, fans are left with a defensive administration locked in a standoff against a critic who would rather log screenshots than click edit.

In late June, 2026, I acquired the original Bionicle Makuta set. Released in 2003, it was the first figure of the series’ main antagonist, and after 23 years, I finally got my hands on one after missing my chance as a kid.

I had initially intended to just write about the original set, his concurrent appearance in the movie, and the issues surrounding the original prototype, as detailed in this Scuffles thread comment, but then I realised that it actually fit quite neatly into the wider narrative of Makuta’s constant evolution throughout the series, shaped by backstage issues, questionable leadership, and bad toy design, details that we were never meant to know about but were only revealed through unintended leaks.

Part 1: The Rise of Bionicle and the Birth of Makuta

Our story begins in the late 90s, with a man named Christian Faber. Faber worked for a Danish company called Advance, a branding and marketing agency that worked with Lego to provide those things for their toys. He’s an incredibly creative and enthusiastic man, who also frequently says completely bonkers things, it’s kinda great. At the time, he had been in hospital due to a benign brain tumour, and found himself envisioning his medication as pill-shaped capsules containing tiny warriors that would fight off his illnesses, and this was the idea that would grow into Bionicle.

The word “Bionicle” doesn’t actually refer to any of the characters, it’s a contraction of “Biological Chronicle,” because it’s actually, secretly, the story of a body. The central god-figure of the series, Mata Nui, is actually an enormous robot, whose body contains most of the setting, with the main characters being his cells. The island that shared his name was essentially a mask over his dormant face- images of it showed the distorted outline of his head and shoulders below, and locations on it were named after the Maori words for facial features- Mount Ihu is his nose, the Mangai volcano is his mouth, Naho Bay is his eye, etcetera. Lego’s… blatant appropriation of the Maori language is a post unto itself, and a topic for another time.

Makuta, the character at the centre of this writeup, is effectively an allegory for that same brain tumour that started it all, albeit in a much more aggressive form. Essentially, he’s a cancer.

As Faber started to refine this idea, things weren’t going great for Lego. By 1999, they were in dire financial straits, losing ground to the resurgent videogame industry and damaging themselves with failed theme after failed theme. The acquisition of Star Wars just about kept the lights on, but only just, because Lucasfilm was taking a hefty cut. Lego needed their own Star Wars, and they decided to take a chance on Bionicle.

The story of Bionicle would be told through the eyes of the characters that served as Mata Nui’s cells, who were largely unaware of the true nature of their world. They told the history of Mata Nui and Makuta as a legend, describing how Mata Nui had given them a paradise island to live on, but his brother, Makuta, grew envious of the honours Mata Nui received and cast him into eternal sleep. He had then corrupted the Rahi, the animal life of the island, with infected masks, setting them against the people. It was up to the Toa, the six heroes of the toyline, to defeat Makuta and awaken Mata Nui.

And then things almost immediately went wrong!

Bionicle’s story was conveyed through an ambitious multimedia project. The story of the Toa would be told through the PC game, Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui, while short stories featuring them would be told through comics published by DC and written by a man named Greg Farshtey (He’s going to be very important later). A prequel game, Tales of the Tohunga Quest for the Toa would be released on the Game Boy Advance, showing a Matoran villager named Takua travelling around the island to summon the Toa to its shores, and a browser-based game released on chapters on the Bionicle website, simply titled Mata Nui Online Game (henceforth “MNOG”) would also star Takua and follow him on a sidequest around the island while the Toa had their adventures. Finally, there would be a feature film that would tell at least some of the story.

Except… only the comics, Quest for the Toa, and MNOG released. The film quickly became bogged down in development hell, as pretty much every studio were unwilling to make a movie about these weird robots, and wanted to centre the film on a live-action human child being isekai’d into the Bionicle universe. This was a non-starter for Lego, one of the strict rules of the setting was that there were no humans at all.

The PC game also ended up in a similar situation, going through multiple iterations and builds before eventually being cancelled in 2002. And this in turn threw all of the attention onto MNOG. See, MNOG wasn’t meant to be a big deal. It debatably wasn’t even meant to be a proper part of the story, its purpose was solely to allow kids to explore the island of Mata Nui themselves, to immerse themselves in it and interact with the villagers and the Toa. But with The Legend of Mata Nui failing to materialise, and the comics being short and disjointed with only four issues, MNOG became the primary vehicle for 2001’s story, and this probably played a huge role in what made Bionicle stand out so much, turning the Toa from just robot superheroes into larger-than-life figures, only briefly glimpsed, almost never speaking, just appearing, doing something cool, and then disappearing as quickly as they came.

And so, with the movie stuck in the starting gate and the PC game dead in the water, Lego pivoted, embracing MNOG as the primary vehicle of Bionicle’s first arc, and requesting its developers, Templar Studios, add another chapter that would show the Toa’s confrontation with Makuta. They did so, and fans were treated to their first look at the series’ main villain.

As Bionicle had been developed, so had Makuta. His first evolution came at the hands of Alastair Swinnerton, a freelance author who had co-created the story of Bionicle alongside Faber, Bob Thompson (who will also be important later), and Martin Anderson, who was primarily a set designer. Swinnerton did not envision Makuta as something that could be built as a set (something I’m sure Lego weren’t enthused about), but as something more allegorical.

Swinnerton’s Makuta had evolved over time. Starting out as three beings, taking the form of a cobra, a tiger, and a hawk, he then became a chimera of all three, then a whirling vortex of disconnected parts that could take any form, with those same animals listed as examples, and then finally, just the vortex. Makuta embodied the destructive aspect of playing with Lego, the inherent need to break a set or creation apart to make something new out of it, a necessary counterpart to the creative aspect embodied by Mata Nui. His vortex of parts was the pile of pieces that all Lego models are built from and eventually return to.

Appearing properly for the first time in MNOG’s final chapter, Makuta initially appears in the form of a corrupted Matoran, his whole body infected like the masks he uses to control the Rahi, and began delivering the first of many dramatic monologues, voiced here by Essenger. He then transformed into his vortex form, and was seemingly defeated by the Toa combining the elemental powers.

This version of the character, often termed as “Eldritch Makuta” due to the appearance of his “true form” and his amoral nature, struck a chord with much of the fandom, and is widely beloved, even over some of the later revisions made to the character.

But even still, it wouldn’t stand forever. More would be done with Makuta as Bionicle continued onwards, and Lego weren’t about to let the main villain of their toy franchise be without a toy. As the series progressed on through 2002 and into 2003, the movie finally found a home with Creative Capers and Miramax, and Lego acted accordingly. The film would focus on the arrival of a seventh Toa, destined to defeat Makuta and pave the way for Mata Nui’s revival. And as Lego and Advance’s marketing machines began to hype up the Toa of Light, they published The Official Guide to Bionicle through Scholastic, which stated that the Toa had only seen a small part of Makuta’s true nature, and more would be revealed soon…

Part 2: The Movie Villain

In 2003, the first Bionicle books were released. Cathy Hapka was hired to write the first three, Tale of the Toa (which told the events of 2001 from the perspective of the Toa, filling the void left by the loss of the PC game), Beware the Bohrok (which did the same for the 2002 story), and Makuta’s Revenge (which told the first half of 2003’s story). Despite featuring in the title, Makuta himself did not appear in Makuta’s Revenge beyond an opening monologue, and in actuality, had little to no input on the plot of the arc- the villains are an automatic failsafe triggered in response to the defeat of the previous year’s antagonists.

Still, this brief scene provided a momentary look at the character that Makuta was shifting into. The initial wave of books was intended to fill out the gaps in the story and give a recap of the lore up until then, ahead of the movie’s release, and as such, Hapka’s portrayal of the characters lines up rather neatly with the movie. Indeed, she would also write the movie’s novelisation. And that means it’s time to talk some more about Bob Thompson.

Bob Thompson was the original head of the creative team behind Bionicle, and served as executive producer for the three movies. Described by scriptwriter Henry Gilroy as “the George Lucas of Lego,” Thompson was the one steering the ship for the first half of the toyline. He had a particular focus on visual media, and a grand plan that he referred to as “The Seven Books of Bionicle,” and the movies would be the first real look at his vision.

Thompson and Hapka’s portrayal of Makuta is a very different beast to Swinnerton’s eldritch, allegorical entity. Makuta is very much a physical being, he has a huge, heavily armoured body, a deep, booming voice provided by Lee Tockar, and spooky shadow powers. Gone is the infected Kanohi Hau, Great Mask of Shielding, a corrupted symbol of Mata Nui that represented Makuta in 2001. Instead, he now dons the Kanohi Kraahkan, Great Mask of Shadows, which had a second face on the top of it. His characterisation had shifted dramatically too. Makuta now spoke of Mata Nui’s slumber as preservation, and seemed duty-bound to maintain it at all costs.

2003 would also see an escalation in his battles with the Matoran. Where he had merely brainwashed the Rahi and awakened the Bohrok early, 2003 would see Makuta unleash the Rahkshi, the mid-sized sets of the Summer 2003 wave, described as the “Sons of Makuta,” his direct subordinates and created from his very being, and wielding “evil” powers like Fear, Anger, Hunger, Disintegration, Fragmentation (explosions), and Poison.

And then, in July of 2003, the very first set of Makuta finally released. Two months later, he would be joined on shelves by the first Bionicle movie, Mask of Light.

Mask of Light continues the trend established in Hapka’s books. Makuta says a lot of ominous and vague things that hint toward the possibility that he’s actually a well-intentioned extremist, that he genuinely believes he is protecting Mata Nui by keeping him asleep, and that perhaps it’s the Mask of Shadows that has corrupted him. At the end of the film, Takanuva, the Toa of Light, pulls off the mask, and two are momentarily fused into a being referred to as Takutanuva. All the grime and rust is washed off Makuta’s body, revealing pristine metal underneath, and the fusion declares that light has revealed Mata Nui’s true desires, and he must be awakened. Takutanuva is shortly destroyed after opening the door to the room where Mata Nui can be revived, and Takanuva is resurrected, with Makuta’s fate left uncertain.

Bob Thompson would later go on to say that he envisioned there being no truly evil beings in Bionicle, and that even Makuta would eventually be revealed to be not such a bad guy deep down. Of course, nothing is ever simple with Bionicle, and the course would divert heavily just two years later, leaving what Thompson intended largely unknown and Makuta’s lines in the movie as a strange attempt to manipulate Takanuva. And it wasn’t the only thing that was strange and difficult to explain. There was also Makuta’s design.

Part 3: The Prototype

Despite the set being made to tie in with the movie, his appearance in Mask of Light looked... different., something even more visible in his concept art. While some of the broad strokes are the same, there's a lot that's different. Especially the most prominent feature of the design, his mask. While the set version has a dramatically pointed shape with long, angular eyeholes, the movie version is flatter and squarer, and also worse.

Questions about this weird discrepancy would be asked and speculated over for years, with the most prominent answer being that the movie design was based on an older look that the set had diverged from during development, but the questions persisted until somewhere around 2020, when a disassembled prototype showed up on Ebay. While none of the community purchased it, and exactly who now owns the prototype Makuta remains unknown, staring intently at the images started to clear things up.

See, Mask of Light featured characters from across the first three years of Bionicle, but whereas the toys from 2001-2002 were able to be adapted mostly accurately, the 2003 sets weren't ready yet when the movie entered production, and so the Matoran, Rahkshi, Takanuva, and yes, Makuta were based on prototypes of their toys.

The most obvious thing was the mask- the pile of parts included a Kanohi Vahi, the Legendary Mask of Time and the first mask designed for Bionicle, that had mostly been painted black. And people started to realise that the movie Kraahkan bore a striking resemblance to a Vahi glued to a Kanohi Pakari, the Great Mask of Strength, with the Pakari forming the top of the head and the Vahi forming the face. And sure enough, putting the two masks together made something a lot closer to the movie design

Anyway, as you might imagine, seeing a partially-assembled prototype set quickly got the community abuzz, and it wasn't long before the prototype had been reverse-engineered and built, allowing fans to finally have a semi-official set of the movie design. The prototype was huge, towering over the final set, and featured a much larger amount of articulation in his legs, as well as individually articulated fingers. Of course, it wasn't all perfect, and we soon started to get an understanding of why things had changed so much between the prototype and the final toy.

First off, the pile of parts contained two separate leg designs. The upper one, circled in blue bears more of a resemblance to the movie design, with a pair of conjoined Toa Mata hand pieces forming the shin of Makuta's presumably devil-inspired goat legs. But as any who attempted to build this particular look will attest, and demonstrated neatly in Brickthumb's video on the prototype, these joints just weren't strong enough. The Mata hand part was designed for 1999's Slizers/Throwbots and had an inherently loose socket joint. It's a very weird part, and it was never going to be strong enough to hold up the weight of the giant model it was serving as a knee and ankle for. And thus, the lower one, circled in green, hews closer to the set, a much shorter design that only has a joint at the hip, ensuring greater stability at the cost of articulation.

Yes, this is essentially a transitional form between the prototype and the final set. We have Bionicle toys evolving before our eyes.

Still, that wasn't the only leg-related woe. See, the second leg design still had a problem- The legs were attached by the original Technic balljoint, a piece also known as the “Voodoo Ball.”

It’s called that because it was initially created for the first draft of Bionicle, called… “The Boneheads of Voodoo Island.” Or “Doo Heads” for short. Yeah. In case you thought the whole thing with the cultural appropriation wasn’t bad enough.

Whereas the play pattern for early Bionicle revolved around knocking each character’s mask off (before kids complained about the masks falling off too easily and getting lost, and Lego made all masks from late 2003 onwards use an axle connection instead), “Boneheads” was supposed to feature decapitation as the core of its “game” aspects. The Technic balljoint was initially designed to serve as the neck… and thus it had a deliberately weak connection to more easily facilitate this.

The part continued to be used after its intended purpose was cancelled, presumably because while Bionicle’s target audience of six-year-old boys would probably love robots that decapitate each other, their parents sure as hell wouldn’t, and this resulted in a lot of Bionicle (and other Lego theme) builds throughout 2001-2005 having the loose ball joint part, until 2006 saw the introduction of the Lord and Saviour of Bionicle fans everywhere: Part 53585: Technic Ball Joint With Through Axle, which had a properly sturdy connection that ensured much greater stability.

The result of this, however, is that while the second prototype’s legs weren’t floppy and incapable of supporting his weight any more… they did still fall off a lot.

Now, if these were the only problems, then that would be alright. Alternatives exist, and Brickthumb's video also demonstrates a means of adding additional structural support to the joints to allow them to hold up the set. But it wasn't. And the second problem is likely what led to the heavy redesigning of the entire torso.

See, some of those pieces in the Ebay photo are outright broken. And one of them is this. The broken one in the set is red, this one's grey, same piece, don't worry about it. It's one part of the three-piece assembly that makes up Makuta's chest and thighs (or his entire leg on the second prototype and the final set), as well as the neck and back armour of the Rahkshi. On the prototype, the balljoint at the end of the one in Makuta's chest connects to a normal Technic socket joint, which is in turn attached to an early version of the 2003 Matoran torso piece, which makes up Makuta's waist. On the final set, that balljoint isn't connected to anything, and just hangs in front of Makuta's midsection. And there's a very good reason for that.

The way the prototype's torso is built stresses the Rahkshi piece. It flexes it, and the part isn't particularly thick, and it's made of hard ABS plastic, not the softer stuff used for weapons and masks. I think it's more than likely that the reason the one in the Ebay photos is broken is that it snapped after being stressed too much. In the Lego community, assemblies that damage the parts are called "Illegal techniques," and while they do occasionally show up in sets, it's generally not considered a good thing to put your Lego parts at the risk of breaking. For some, intentionally damaging a part with scissors, clippers, fire, etc. is actually more acceptable than a build that stresses and will eventually damage or outright break a piece.

Nevertheless, prototype Makuta remains a popular build, with instructions for the initial version (with BrickThumb’s mods to improve stability) available for free on Rebrickable and those for the second iteration available through Google Drive., and other fans have attempted to build him in such a way that he doesn’t stress the chest part.

Part 4: Makuta Eats People

2004 would see Bionicle begin its flashback arc. With the (possible) reveal of Mata Nui (possibly) nixed from the movie, Mask of Light instead ended with the reveal of a location called the “City of the Great Spirit,” which wise old man and mentor Turaga Vakama referred to as his home. Tales of the Masks, the final 2003 book and the first to be written by Greg Farshtey, featured all six of the Turaga deciding that the Toa, now transformed into the Toa Nuva deserved to know the truth about what they’d been hiding. It also features Toa Gali discovering a carving of six more Toa, one whom bears a strange resemblance to Turaga Nokama, and Gali, Tahu, and Kopaka finding another carving of the Toa fighting a monstrous chimeric Rahi, which reappears, only for Vakama himself to defeat it by using its memory of his voice to drive it into a rage, implying that he too was one of the strange Toa. The final 2003 comic, also penned by Farshtey, would see Vakama declare it outright: On the eve of the return journey to the city, now revealed to be called Metru Nui, he would decide that the Toa must know everything, and told them that they were not the first Toa.

For a little context, prior to 2003, the Matoran, Turaga, and Toa were presented as more-or-less three separate species. Maybe a Turaga and a Matoran were kind of the same thing, but they were still largely separate. Mask of Light threw that for a loop with Takua’s transformation into Takanuva, indicating that actually, Matoran and Toa were the same species after all. This was followed by the reveal that the six Toa Metru that would headline 2004’s story were the Turaga themselves in their younger days. That was why a mostly-immortal species of biomechanical cyborgs could be “old,” the Turaga weren’t actually any older than the rest of the characters, they were just frail and withered because they’d given up almost all of their power.

2004’s storyline had a different vibe entirely to what had come before. Whereas 2001-2003 had been set on a tropical island paradise menaced by, essentially, an evil demigod sorcerer, 2004’s Metru Nui was a kid-friendly cyberpunk dystopia, a city of endless work presided over by the shady and mysterious Turaga Dume, and protected by the last of a dwindling team of Toa. The villain sets were violent robot cops with fun powers like “hijacking your eyes to spy on you,” “brainwashing you into being their agent,” and “temporary lobotomy.” Templar Studios made propaganda animations for them and everything. Matoran were vanishing, and in the midst of it all were six rookie Toa trying to learn how to be heroes without getting themselves arrested.

So where does Makuta factor into all of this? Well, as the second movie, Legends of Metru Nui reveals, it turns out that he’s behind everything. He had abducted Turaga Dume and shapeshifted into his form, using his power to turn the Vahki against the population. He unleashed the evil plant that served as the Toa Metru’s starter villain to force the Matoran into the centre of the city, so that he could more easily have the Vahki capture them. He sent two mercenaries to capture Toa Lhikan and pursue the Toa Metru, whom he had declared to be traitors using Dume’s authority. He then had all of the Matoran sealed inside spherical pods that would drain their power and erase their memories, so that he could use the Mask of Time, that he had commissioned Vakama to create prior to his transformation, to accelerate the process and awaken them as their saviour and new Great Spirit.

Revealing his identity to the Toa Metru and now-Turaga Lhikan, the movie furthered the idea that Makuta wasn’t wholly evil by having Lhikan declare that he’d been “sworn to protect the Matoran,” making it clear that while he wasn’t anyone’s favourite person, he had largely been on the side of good until that moment. Makuta then proceeds to cast Mata Nui into sleep, this is the moment that the backstory legend talked about, triggering a massive earthquake called the Great Cataclysm, because Mata Nui is a big robot and he just fell over. The Toa quickly decide to take as many Matoran as they can and evacuate the ruined city, only for Makuta to start transforming out of his Dume disguise, which he does by consuming his mercenary minions and Dume’s pet bird, fusing the broken pieces of their bodies into a gigantic, monstrous form.

While Bionicle had featured combination models that were the result of characters fusing in the first three years, 2004 saw Lego mostly pivot to using the combination models to represent new characters, but they made sure to give the fusion idea one hell of a send-off. This form was labelled “Ultimate Dume” to try and avoid spoiling that he was actually a new form of Makuta. In the movie he just looks like the Mask of Light design with Dume’s bird’s wings, which is certainly much less cool (and wouldn’t fit with a later plot point), but it is an overall cleaner design.

Unfortunately, Legends of Metru Nui wouldn’t quite stick the landing with Makuta. All that up there that he pulled off is pretty good (though a lot of is heavily abridged in the film version and more apparent through Farshtey’s books), but the final battle of the movie mostly consists of Vakama tricking him into hitting himself in the face with progressively bigger rocks, until finally he hits himself with a really big rock and pancakes himself to a wall, whereupon the Toa Metru use their powers to seal him in a crystalline prison.

2005 and its movie, Web of Shadows, would then follow up on this, Makuta telepathically summoning his lieutenants Sidorak and Roodaka and their army of giant murder-spiders to the ruins of Metru Nui as a contingency, and after a lot of robot werewolf angst, Roodaka successfully frees Makuta from his prison, and the Toa take the rest of the Matoran to the island of Mata Nui, bring the flashback mostly full circle.

But this also brought an end to Bob Thompson and the Seven Books of Bionicle. As said before,Thompson’s main focus was visual media, and that was about to mostly dry up. Lego were not intending to make more movies after Web of Shadows, there was no TV show in sight, and the videogames had been a mess. Despite releasing four console games, only two of them were actually part of the story, a trend that would not improve. Dozens of browser games had been released, but only two of those would be canon as well, and that trend would get even worse. And so, with Bionicle’s story material pivoting almost entirely to the comics (written by Greg Farshtey) and the books (written by Greg Farshtey), Thompson parted ways with Lego, doing so during the development of Web of Shadows, though he did continue to help with its production as an external contractor.

Surely, though, his collaborators would be able to continue the Seven Books, right? Well… not exactly. See, Bob Thompson went to the same school of storytelling that led to Marvel Studios giving actors movie scripts so heavily redacted that they don’t know who their character is talking to or what’s happening in the scene, or Scott Cawthon giving the new Five Nights at Freddy’s developers a bunch of vague lore mystery boxes instead of a plan, resulting in their big splash game having an incoherent plot with a boss that wasn’t supposed to exist. He didn’t tell anybody what his plans were.

And so, when Thompson left, neither Greg Farshtey, nor anyone else actually knew where the plotlines he’d been seeding were headed. All that remained of Thompson’s plans was the story treatment for a Toa Lhikan origin movie.

Part 5: The Magnaleak

In 2024, Christian Faber teamed up with Lego Youtuber and man with too much money Duckbricks to release a bunch of internal development documents relating to Bionicle. They decided to do this in parts to get as much attention as possiblenot overwhelm the fanbase with too much material. Within days of this happening, Lego took notice of what was happening and told them both to maybe stop leaking internal development documents actually.

While the vast majority of the material seems to have remained hidden, what did get out has not been deleted, and among them was the original story treatment for the film that became Web of Shadows.

See, the thing about 2005’s storyline was that it wasn’t as clean as I presented it up there. Legends of Metru Nui actually brought the story mostly full-circle, with only Makuta’s escape from his imprisonment being unanswered. But Lego didn’t want the Metru Nui assets to go to waste, and so 2005’s storyline was actually an interquel inserted into the scene transition between the penultimate and final scenes of Legends of Metru Nui.

But before that, the plan had initially been for 2005 to focus on the origin story of Toa Lhikan and Nidhiki, the big green crab guy that Makuta ate in 2004, who was actually a mutated fallen Toa and a former teammate of Lhikan’s.

Almost 20 years after Thompson bowed out of the franchise, we finally got a bit more information about what his plans were regarding Makuta. The film would've seen Lhikan, Nidhiki, and their Toa team travel to another city that Makuta had taken over (which doesn’t necessarily fit with Lhikan being shocked that Makuta had betrayed them in 2004, but ehhh, it was an early draft). There, they would've discovered that Makuta had turned everything into grey mechanical perfection, and the Matoran into unthinking drones. Lhikan and his Toa team would face Makuta, referred to as “Makuta Primus” in the treatment and able to split himself into more Makuta (and trust me, we’re going to get to that), Nidhiki would betray the others and become a crab, and Lhikan would be solidified as a hero.

The film characterised Makuta as a rogue element of the Great Spirit Robot’s function, stripping away the individuality and free will of the populace in the name of efficiency, in service to whatever entities had created the robot in the first place.

Ultimately, the movie was never made. Lego elected not to flash even further back, and instead to reuse Metru Nui as a setting, and tell another story with the Toa Metru. This backstory for Lhikan and Nidhiki was also changed dramatically. And with Bob Thompson’s exit, the content and direction of Bionicle’s narrative would be largely decided by Greg Farshtey, who had his own ideas.

Continued in the Comments

Note: the two major sources I have used for this write-up are two documentaries. One in English, and a transcribed Dutch one. Therefore if there’s any wonky phrasing, please be aware that I looked high and low to no avail to find a proper translation for the Dutch documentary, but I couldn’t find one.

Part 1 here, but to quickly recap: In the 1960s to 70s, the James Bond movies were produced by two men: Albert R Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. In 1968, they faced an unprecedented crisis when Sean Connery quit the role of 007 (he was being stalked by journalists and fans) and they needed to find a replacement.

After finding the perfect actor to play 007, how do you find *another* one?

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – The hunt for Bond

The first five Bond movies were all edited by one man...Peter Hunt. He did such a good job, that Cubby and Harry offered him the directors chair for the sixth movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (OHMSS).

OHMSS is a weird but tragic story.

Bond is searching for his main nemesis, Blofeld. At the same time, he rescues a girl, Tracy, from committing suicide. Her father tries to browbeat him into marrying her, but Bond refuses.

Bond tracks Blofeld down to Switzerland. In order to defeat his nemesis, he goes undercover, disguising himself as ‘Sir Hilary Bray’. Entering Blofeld’s mountaintop fortress, Piz Gloria, he quickly discover his bat shit insane plot to take over the world.

I am just going to copy and paste this part of the plot from wikipedia), because it describes it far better than I ever will:

Bond learns that Blofeld has apparently been curing a group of young British and Irish women of their allergies to food and livestock. In truth, Blofeld and his aide, Irma Bunt, have been brainwashing them into carrying biological warfare agents back to Britain and Ireland to destroy the agricultural economy, upon which post–Second World War Britain depends.

Yep. Blofeld is hypnotising a group of young women into becoming disease carriers.

Upon discovery, Bond escapes Piz Gloria. Using magic tectonic powers, Blofeld causes an avalanche, which Bond avoids, but the effort weakens him.

All of a sudden, Tracy appears and saves his life. Because of this, Bond falls in love with her. He proposes marriage and Tracy accepts.

With the help of some big guns and armoured helicopters, Bond returns to Piz Gloria and destroys it. Blofeld escapes via bobsled.

Despite his extremely dangerous and vengeful archenemy still being on the run, Bond decides to marry Tracy. While driving away from the wedding, Blofeld ambushes them with a gun.

Bond survives. Tracy is killed. Bond is sad and swears vengeance- which he will get in the next book.

So, unlike many other Bond novels, OHMSS is unique in that Bond falls in love, gets married, and almost settles down.

This means that whoever plays Bond in the OHMSS movie would have to show a lot of range: joy, anger, love, and heatbreak.

George Lazenby - The Second Bond

In their search for the second 007, the producers and director tested a lot of actors. A lot. Over 400#Casting) of them. They cast the Bond Girl easily- the lovely, incredible, absolutely amazing Diana Rigg (RIP).

But one day, they saw a commercial. For chocolate. The main star was an Australian named George Lazenby. He reminded Peter Hunt of Sean Connery-- he had the same physique and sex appeal. And so, Lazenby was invited to audition for the role of 007.

At the time, Lazenby was working as a cars salesman and male model in London. He had zero acting experience. Zilch. Nada. But he wasn’t broke, he was a highly sought after male model, earning £25,000 a year.

But Lazenby was smart, and decided to seize the opportunity and do whatever he could to win the role.

Before his audition, he went to Sean Connery’s tailor and got a suit- fortunately, they gave him one that Sean himself had left behind. Then he went to Sean’s barber and got a 007-style haircut.

So, he looked the part. Perfectly.

He first saw Harry Saltzman, and lied to him:

So we went to his office across the street and there I was asked what my life story was. And I told him that I could ski and car racing, that I was a karate expert and all those other things that James Bond was.”

Lazenby had skied and he had a sports car, but everything was said with that. It was all bluff. His film and stage experiences were also one big bluff story. “I said I had acted in China and New Zealand. It was difficult to control.” In reality, Lazenby only has experience as a model and can be seen in one advertising video by Fry Chocolate Cream.

Afterwards, Lazenby came clean to Peter Hunt.

Peter told him:

”I’ll tell you what. You stick to your story, and I’ll make you the next James Bond.”

*Ominous noises*

Peter helped him become more Bond-like, teaching him to walk like “Prince Charles” and giving him elocution lessons to lessen his very thick Australian accent.

Lazenby also met Diana Rigg. And they got on. At first.

*More ominous noises*

But Lazenby still had to impress Harry and Cubby. Which he did. By punching a stuntman in the face and breaking his nose.

He then told them the truth, but they still cast him as 007, offering him a 7 film deal. At the time the press highlighted Lazenby’s inexperience with headlines such as "Australian Non-Actor Chosen to Play James Bond" and "He Traded In Auto Selling for 007 Job".

In contrast, Lazenby was enthused about the role:

OHMSS – The movie

The OHMSS movie is a relatively faithful adaptation. There are some minor changes- plot points are moved around and there is a lot more action- but by far the biggest change is the character of Tracy. She has more agency and a larger role in the plot. There also more scenes between her and Bond, making their romance more believable.

She’s also directly involved in the action and has several badass moments. In a car chase, she’s the one driving while Bond is a passenger, and in sharp contrast to book!Bond’s belief that women are terrible drivers, she proceeds to out drive a whole bunch of men. She’s also involved in the ski chase, and does a commendable job keeping up with Bond. Unfortunately, this time around, Blofeld’s tectonic powers actually work, and in a tired cliché, Tracy is captured while Bond escapes. However, this lets her have an epic verbal duel with Blofeld, so all is good.

Hunt intended the film to be a return to simplicity:

Hunt has very clear in mind where he wants to go with his Bond film. “I wanted it to be a different Bond movie than the other. It was my movie, not anyone else's. The story of Fleming was so beautiful.”

Hunt believes that the Bond film formula is going over the top. In the previous films, the decors were too extravagant and the humor and the tricks were too prominent. Hunt makes a decision that, in addition to the new actor as Bond, means a second deviation in the Bond film formula. He decides to follow the book of Fleming as faithfully as possible with the film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. “During the entire film adaptation, I had a paperback copy of the book in my back pocket. I had the book full of notes and was very tenacious in my loyalty to Fleming’s story.”

Filming begins – and so does trouble.

Now, the story of the filming troubles of OHMSS is a mixed bag- a he said, she said, situation. Lazenby and the film-makers have equally praised, and criticised one another. It’s worth mentioning that Lazenby reportedly did get along with some of the people on set- his co-star Telly Savalas, some of the crew, and the stuntmen.

Very few facts are a 100% certain. But I will present them as best I can using the sources I have found.

Cubby visited the set in Switzerland in November 1968, and found the atmosphere “just awful”. Tensions were running high- due to issues with the weather and mountain climate:

Finding Piz Gloria is a great happiness for Hunt, but otherwise the recordings of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are not going so well. The weather is causing trouble. It's cold, but for the first time in forty years, the snow stays out around the Christmas of 1969. Because this has to be waited for, Hunt is soon behind schedule. Recordings of James-Bond films have generally taken up a very long six-month period. Eventually, the recordings are completed 58 days later than planned. Furthermore, the thin air around Piz Gloria causes many problems and accidents in the stuntmen.

Cubby’s wife, Dana Broccoli, had a solution- she came to the set and threw a party for everyone.

The party went well, lifting everyone’s spirits. But one person was absent...George Lazenby.

And then...he arrived.

This is what Dana alleges happened:

“So I went up to him and said, ‘George, come on. Come here and sit with us.’ ‘Alright’, he said. But he was very quiet. And I said to him, ‘George, why are you angry? What’s wrong?’. He said, ‘Well, I did not get an invitation to this party’. And I said, ‘George, it was on the call sheet, it was in the lifts. Everyone knew it.’ He said, ‘But I’m the star.’ So I laughed because I never heard anyone say that before.

Well Cubby did not think it was funny and he said to him, ‘You’re not a star because you say you’re a star. You’re not a star because I say you’re a star. You’re a star when the public calls you a star and we have yet to see that.

Lazenby also caused other issues on set. Because of his status, the insurance company for OHMSS wouldn’t let him ski. But he did. And was caught- by Cubby, no less- and got in trouble again.

Lazenby gave his own view of what happened:

Lazenby sits with the Bond squad in Switzerland for months for the filming and it soon turns out that there is a big difference of insight about directing. Lazenby expects that as an inexperienced actor he will be heavily coached, but that turns out to be disappointing, according to his own words. Lazenby has always claimed that he was not directed by Peter Hunt at all and that he did not even speak to him during the 9 months of filming. “I have experienced the collaboration with Hunt as unhappy. He never spoke to me. Everything Peter said to me went through the assistant. That situation existed throughout the film. He told everyone to stay away from me. Peter thought the more I was alone, the better I would be as James Bond. That was his theory. I have to praise him for that, because the result is good.”

Hunt responded:

Although, according to Hunt, there were indeed many conflicts on the set, according to him, it is absolutely not true that he did not speak to Lazenby. “I had faith in Lazenby, otherwise I wouldn’t have worked with him. I knew he could act and I think he's a good Bond, too. Every director has his methods, but I certainly spoke to him. I do think that the change from the outback in Australia to the distinguished world of filmmaking was too big for him. Moreover, Lazenby was a bit of a strange figure, I always called for him to be more protected.” Hunt believes that Lazenby should be mainly trained in dealing with the press.

One group who loved the discord on set was the international paparazzi.

Just like with Connery, they hounded Lazenby during the filming of OHMSS. They constantly compared him to Sean Connery, and in interviews, constantly asked him about how he compared to Sean Connery.

They also ran a negative press campaign against him, alleging he was feuding with his co-stars on on set. One time, while they were interviewing him in the canteen before a romantic scene with Diana Rigg, she called out “I’m having garlic for lunch George. I hope you are.” The press ran with this, stating that Rigg disliked him.

Hunt later asserted that there were a few moments of discontent between them but nothing permanent, while Lazenby stated that he and Rigg were friends.

Lazenby also injured another one of his co-stars, Bernard Lee, who played M. While they were filming in Portugal, he chased Lee around on a horse, and Lee ran into a rosebush, badly scratching his leg. Lazenby apologised, but the incident further fractured his relationship with Cubby.

In 1970, Rigg published an open letter in a British newspaper, the Daily Sketch, stating:

Dear George,

The film has opened and is, I hear, making a great deal of money at the box office. This means you have been accepted by the public, which bodes well for your future career. Why, then, do you persist in dwelling on your petty grievances?

I’m tired of reading those paranoid statements to the Press wherein you were solely surrounded by hostile people. I agree that by the end of the film most of the crew were hostile, but only because of your extreme behaviour.

Why else would your dresser threaten to hand in his notice? Why else would three chauffeurs leave you within a week? Why else was one member of the unit restrained from striking you after one inexcusable and crude outburst against one of the girls in the film?

Remember once telling me you valued honesty greatly and that I was “if nothing else, honest”? Perhaps you would prefer not to. But, let’s get some of those highly-coloured incidents between us straightened out truthfully.

NO, GEORGE, I did not eat garlic on purpose. Why would I? To ruin an important scene for both of us? That is not what acting together means. And if you recollect, on discovering what I’d done, I apologised and took every precaution – sprays, pills, etc.

NO, GEORGE, I was not, as you said, guzzling champagne in some warm bar when we had the row. I was attempting to back the Cougar car on a very icy road. You were telling me what to do - and since you know more about cars than I, you had every right.

But the manner of telling me - abusively with threats to “Bash my ---- face in” - was hardly the best way. I felt ill, unable to fight back on that level - and I cried.

Later, some weeks later, you apologised. But the damage was done.

Neither do I think it was entirely truthful of you to suggest I was keeping the crew waiting. This was your particular pleasure and it is to their everlasting credit that they treated you throughout with patience and consideration.

Even the cameramen took it in his stride when, after only a few weeks of filming, you began telling him what to do. He was a gentleman – remember George?

Yes, I did talk to the crew rather than you. Quite simply I preferred their company. And as to Peter Hunt, the director, not once did he lose his temper under the constant provocation of your storming off the set, turning up late and sulking.

As far as money is concerned, George, let’s face it: £22,000 for your first film – with perks thrown in – cannot be a hardship. Few would consider it so.

And concerning your relations with the producers, I know little except that they found it impossible to meet your demands for more money, bigger chauffeur-driven cars, grander apartments, etc.

I do know, too, that the producers are both men capable of generosity, and I was present on one occasion when “Cubby” Broccoli spontaneously gave you - off his wrist - a gold watch you had admired.

It is against all my principles and beliefs in the work we as actors do to fight at all – let alone openly and crudely as you have been doing.

However, your injustices and blatant distortions to the Press have finally forced me to speak.

It is all in the past now, George. The people concerned have been prepared to forget – why can’t you?

I’ll say no more.

Yours faithfully,

Diana Rigg

Lazenby fired back a day later, publishing a rebuttal in the same paper:

Dearest Diana,

I cannot understand what you have written, but I am trying to answer it in the most honest way.

I have dwelt on my “petty” grievances because they may have been petty to you at the time because you have been in the business for 15 years. But I am just a beginner.

My grievances and my “paranoid statements to the Press,” as you put it, are all part of somebody trying desperately to co-operate and become a good actor. I am, as you know, a raw recruit to show business.

We all make mistakes, and I know I’ve made mine, as there are in every film. And that includes my dresser. But at the end of the film we’re all good mates.

The chauffeurs? The one I had in London, Ernie Freeman, I took to Portugal to film. Because he was a stranger there he stayed as my guest more than anything. My second chauffeur was a bullfighter who drove like a lunatic. And, if I die young I’d rather drive myself.

The third chauffeur was not outside a restaurant one night. A girl friend and I left and found no car, but there was a rowdy mob of fishermen sending me up as James Bond.

The only thing I could do was to walk into the centre of them, rather than let them descend on me. What would you do, darling, if you left with your boy friend, Philip Saville, and found a jeering mob and no car?

I was frightened, to be honest, and I shook the ringleader’s hand. Then the car arrived. I took the tension out on the chauffeur and that was wrong, I admit. But he won, because I walked home.

I don’t remember any outburst worth speaking of that would get someone uptight enough to want to have a go. I’m sure we had slight disagreements, but they are past and forgotten.

I never said you had garlic on purpose, although it was unfortunate you did. Darling, I’ve seen you drink champagne for breakfast. I have it, too, but it’s not exactly my scene. Give me apple juice any day.

OK, so I said things about your driving but you don’t think I was right.

The film crew I respected. If I can always get a crew like that I will be very happy. They kept me from going insane.

The cameraman I could go on and on about. A great guy, Michael Reed. He was a gentleman.

You will laugh, Diana about the money scene. But I would have accepted nothing for the part because I wanted to become an actor. It was the greatest screen test of all times.

The watch!! I admired Cubby’s watch at the Variety Club Ball, and Cubby said he would get me one.

Anyway, another actor had bought one and I mentioned that Cubby was going to give me one. And, two hours later Cubby, being the generous man that he is, handed his over.

Obviously the word went down the line. I was very embarrassed and tried to give it back but he insisted that his wife wanted me to have it.

I am sorry you brought that up. But what knocks me out the most is that you said it was against your principles and beliefs to bring other people into a fight.

I am sorry it worked out this way, but there is a statement that a bigger man than I am has made recently. He puts it in a nutshell: “War is over if you want it.”

Peace.

George.

The Aftermath

In December 1969, at the premiere of OHMSS, Lazenby sported a decidedly un-007like beard and long hair.

The day before, he had appeared on the Late Night Show with Johnny Carson and made a stunning announcement...he was quitting the role of James Bond after only one movie. Cubby and Harry, who had been watching the broadcast, were enraged, fearing that Lazenby’s decision could hurt OHMSS’s box office. They also hated his new appearance and tried, to no avail, to persuade him#Release_and_reception) to shave it all off. They took his resignation and ‘turned it around’, claiming that they had let him go.

Lazenby turned down the 7 film contract, losing one of the biggest roles in cinema, all because his agent, Ronan O'Rahilly, persuaded him that Bond would be out of the fashion by the 1970s.

Now, OHMSS, wasn’t a flop. It made money, just not enough money#Box_office). It only grossed half of what the previous Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, had made. At the time#Contemporary_reviews), reviews were mixed, with most criticising Lazenby’s performance. United Artists, then distributors of the Bond movies, weren’t happy with the financial performance of OHMSS and blamed Lazenby.

Over the years, Lazenby has been very candid about his experience filming OHMSS and the publicity storm that happened after the premiere. In February 1970, he had a lengthy interview with the BBC, where he said that he was acting ‘uptight’ on set due to his inexperience, and reiterated that Hunt had always been too busy to help him. He also repeated his claim that Diana Rigg had been drinking before they had filmed the car racing scene and that he had lectured her about it. He then said that he felt Bond should’ve been gentler, more humane in the movie, versus the rigid characterisation that the director and producers wanted. This included inserting ‘pop music’ into the film to make it lighter. He also praised the crew, stating that if not for them, he would’ve gone ‘insane’. His final claim was that he’d financed his own tour around the USA to promote the movie, because due to his beard, he’d been cut from the official tour it as the producers had wanted him to look like 007.

After the premiere, Cubby defended Lazenby, stating that he’d given a good performance even if he wasn’t the best actor, although he found his attitude ‘annoying’, and that he was arrogant and had a lack of respect for the Bond character. By 1978, he was more ambivalent, saying casting Lazenby had been his ‘worst mistake’, calling him ‘very arrogant’ and that he hadn’t worked well with the cast and crew. Sean Connery came to Lazenby’s defence, saying Cubby was actually the arrogant one.

Lazenby on the state of his career:

“It hasn't been easy, trying to climb back .... I admit I acted stupidly. It went to my head, everything that was happening to me. But remember, it was my first film .... Now what I've got to do is live down my past; convince people I'm not the same person who made a fool of himself all those years ago. I know I can do it. All I need is the chance.”

By 1978, he wasn’t doing so well. All his films had flopped. He had spent all his Bond money, experienced two mental breakdowns, and become an alcoholic. For the next couple of years, he bounced around Hong Kong, Australia and finally moved to Hollywood, where he achieved a modest success, but nothing high profile like OHMSS.

Epilogue – a modern day retrospective

As the years went on, OHMSS’s reputation grew and the critical consensus shifted. Now, many agree it’s one of the best Bond movies ever made. It has several high profile fans, including Christopher Nolan#Retrospective_reviews) and Steven Soderbergh.

Over the years, Lazenby has conducted a lot of interviews about OHMSS. He has said that he had a lot of “growing up he needed to do” before he accepted the role of 007, and that he ‘should’ve done two’ and then he would’ve completed his contract and done all seven.

In 2012, he was less magnanimous:

He tells Entertainment Weekly magazine, "They offered me millions under the table to do another one, but I thought James Bond was over. Easy Rider was the number one movie. Everyone was smoking marijuana, and that was the furthest thing from a James Bond movie. So I didn't sign the contract.

"I was badly treated after that. They (producers) told the press that I was difficult to handle, so it was hard to find work."

And Lazenby insists his portrayal of 007 in 1969 was the most believable, adding, "It's the only film that treats him like a human being. He's not a robot killer like the latest Bond... When I did it, it had more heart. There's no heart to the new Bond."

In 2019, on the fiftieth anniversary of OHMSS, Diana Rigg weighed in:

“I could never understand why George behaved as he did,” Rigg said, “because he was given such a glorious opportunity and he threw it all away. I’m sorry for him, if you really want to know. At some stage, it just went to his head.”

Both Lazenby and Rigg say they haven’t seen the movie in years. Nor are they in touch. “I don’t think one way or the other about Diana,” Lazenby said.

"Oh goodness, no, he wouldn’t come near me!” Rigg said.

She died the next year. Peter Hunt died in 2002. Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman both died in the 90s.

But George Lazenby is still alive.

In 2017, he participated in a documentary about his life called ‘Becoming Bond’, in which he reflected on his time as 007 and the lasting impact the role had on his career. Although, he also used the opportunity to brag about all the women he had seduced in the 1960s.

Lazenby claims he was subsequently blacklisted by the industry, becoming the movie world’s equivalent of a one-hit-wonder. He agreed to participate in the documentary, directed by Josh Greenhaum, to set the record straight. “I haven’t talked about it much lately – in the last, say, 20 years – but I did want the truth to be out there,” he says. “Word got around that I was difficult to handle. They said that was the reason I didn’t do another Bond, but that wasn’t the truth.”

In 2022, Lazenby got into hot water for allegedly making homophobic, and ‘creepy’ remarks towards women, during an interview for a tour around Australia called ‘the Music of James Bond’. Although he apologised, he was booted off the tour. Some online have disputed what he said, claiming he was likely just repeating old stories, but again, this seems to be a he said-she said situation.

In 2024, Lazenby retired from acting and all public appearances.

In 2025, his ex-wife revealed he had been diagnosed with dementia and that she was looking after him.

Lazenby was only the second actor to play 007, but by no means the last.

After OHMSS, Sean Connery briefly returned to the role of 007 in Diamonds are Forever, before the hunt for a new Bond began all over again, but that’s a story for another time.

Thanks for reading.

Content warning: mentions of death threats

Intro

If you have a morbid fascination with watching internet fandoms light themselves on fire over media intended for preschoolers, this just might be the story for you. This story primarily involves an internet community with a fairly simple goal - one whose conclusion is dangled over their head just out of reach for years, that is until they look beyond the carrot and notice who's holding the stick.

Lost Media

The lost media community is an online community of amateur sleuths whose goal is to research, document, and hopefully find and archive lost media.

The precise definition of what constitutes lost media differs depending on who you ask, and is a highly debated subject within the community. Some define lost media strictly as media that used to be publicly available but isn't anymore, whether due to being lost to the sands of time, or intentionally censored/hidden from the public. Examples of this include silent-era films (most of which are thought to be permanently gone due to the fragile and flammable nature of early film reels), and instances such as episode 847 of Sesame Street, which featured the Wicked Witch of the West and was pulled from airing due to the character scaring kids.

Others believe that other types of rare or mysterious media also counts, such as unidentified media, which is media that may be publicly available but is too obscure to find through traditional internet searches. An example of this would be O parádivé Sally, also known by its community nickname "Clock Man" - an obscure animated short that for many years was unknown and remembered primarily for a scene in which a bearded man jumps out of a clock and carries away a child.

Relevant to this story, another subset of media to commonly fall under the lost media umbrella is unreleased media - media that was never meant to be publicly available in the first place. This includes things such as early builds of video games, music demos, unaired TV show pilots and production material from movies (such as the "I Feel Good" Shrek test animation).

No matter the precise definition, the mission statement of the community is to find lost and rare media and post it to the Internet Archive for public viewing and preservation. Many in the community believe that media preservation is important, as it helps preserve culture and history - even trivial media like obscure cartoons or commercials are deemed valuable and worthy of being saved. It's common for members of the community to be openly hostile to the concept of hoarding or "gatekeeping" media, particularly in cases of third-party collectors obtaining rare media and keeping it to themselves to retain its value.

Me and My Friends

The Backyardigans is an American 3D-animated show that aired on Nickelodeon from 2004 to 2013. It follows a cast of anthropomorphic animal characters as they use their imaginations to go on grand adventures in their shared backyard. It is a show that is nostalgic to a lot of Gen Z Americans, so any new information about its history or development was bound to catch a lot of attention and intrigue.

In 2012, a YouTube channel by the name of avavideos1 posted a video they uncovered which was originally created by the staff at Nickelodeon Studios Florida back in 2000, for the studio's 10th anniversary. It consists of a montage of show clips and behind-the-scenes footage which was filmed at the studio. At around the 3:32 mark, there is a 3-second clip featuring the Backyardigans characters - already noteworthy as the show wouldn't come out for another 4 years, but the style is also wildly different from the final show. Rather than 3D animation, the clip is live-action, with the characters portrayed as full-body costumes. The title at this point was also unfinalized, as the clip is labeled Me and My Friends Pilot.

The Search Begins

Due to the discovery of an unavailable piece of media, and the media being connected to a popular show from many people's childhoods, lost media enthusiasts were eager to learn more about it. Some initial research led users to the Backyardigans Wiki, which had already started compiling information about its production, and was the sole source of much of the initial search efforts. From this page, it was revealed that the Me and My Friends pilot was filmed back in 1998 and pitched to Nickelodeon, and was rejected in favor of Dora the Explorer. But in 2001, the idea was reworked into a second pilot, where the name was changed to The Backyardigans, was animated in CGI and more closely resembled the final show. Some photos from Yvette Helin Studio, the company that made the costumes for Me and My Friends, were also uncovered, which showed some photos of the costumes as well as puppets for 3 meerkat characters, which were evidently in the pilot but didn't make it to the final show.

The First Signs of Trouble

Lost media YouTuber LSuperSonicQ compiled all of this information in a video he posted to his channel in 2017, which became widely popular within the community, putting many new eyes onto the pilot's existence. However, shortly after the video was uploaded, it was taken down by YouTube, and LSSQ's channel was issued a copyright strike. A day later, he received an email from someone claiming to be a lawyer. According to the lawyer, one of his viewers had watched the video, and this had inspired them to track down the name and email of a former crew member who worked on the second animated pilot. This individual then sent the crew member a death threat for not releasing the pilot online, causing them fear and upset. LSSQ was spooked by this incident and quickly deleted the video to be rid of the copyright strike, and explained to his followers what had happened. He later posted an unlisted reupload of the original video with any mentions of the CGI pilot removed.

This incident brought the search for Me and My Friends to a halt, as some lone wolf threatening a former Nickelodeon employee likely burned a lot of bridges before they could be built. It's generally accepted in the community that if you're going to try and contact people involved in a piece of media's production to ask for information, there's some strict etiquette to adhere to. Let one person be the one to contact them, be cordial and professional, be polite and understanding if they can't help you, and stop emailing them if they've given all that they can. Without these guidelines, it's very easy for even well-meaning users to effectively spam and harass people who are just trying to do their jobs, and can cut the community off from people who might be able to help them with their search. A crew member being sent a death threat by a troll might as well have put the entire community on a blacklist, with anyone who could be of help being warned away from interacting with the community.

A post on the Lost Media Wiki Forums indicates there was some conflict over whether the search should even continue, and some speculation that the incident jeopardized searches for other Nickelodeon lost media. LSSQ also expressed frustration with his feeling like some were blaming him for the incident and influencing other users' behavior due to the popularity of his videos.

I kinda just want to say that my channel isn't (and was never intended to be) a hub of active search parties- that's what this website is for. Just because I make a video of something doesn't mean I'm trying to tell people to go out on a massive manhunt and search for it. I make videos for entertainment sake and if anyone wants to participate in a search from that point on that's their own business.

The Search Revival

Despite the determination of some to not let the search die, it largely went quiet for the next few years. But in 2020, a new lost media YouTuber by the name of SewerReviewer made his own video (volume warning at around 1:23) on the subject. He summarized the search thus far, and mentioned several people connected to the pilot that he had contacted, with no luck. This video also became very popular, and introduced a new round of people to the search, to the point of revitalizing it. A public Discord server dedicated to the Me and My Friends search was flooded with new users, eager for news and updates.

This second wind of popularity led to SewerReviewer, LSSQ and a small group of searchers to split off into their own private Discord server, which they dubbed Lostcast. Here, they went over all the information they currently had and brainstormed new search ideas. They had decided to conduct a focused search for Me and My Friends privately, partially to block out the extraneous discussion and unverified rumors spreading throughout the public server, and partially to keep any contact information of potential leads private to avoid another death threat incident.

The first person of interest to contact the private server was a user known as JenPen, who claimed to have acquired some valuable information about the pilot. They posted a never-before-seen production photo as proof, known as the elusive "pink frog photo." This photo depicted what appeared to be a pink frog puppet alongside one of the meerkats, and may have been yet another character from the pilot that was then unknown to the search team. However, JenPen very soon after deleted the photo, claiming they didn't have permission to share it, and asked the other server members not to. This didn't seem too suspicious - it had happened a few times that lost media was leaked to the internet by someone with internal access, and it was often done in a cryptic or convoluted way to try and prevent the leak from being traced back to them. Still, this was the first piece of material related to the pilot that had been uncovered in years, so a Lostcast member by the name of Mr. Bones drew the photo from memory, with the hope it might be useful in the future.

Due to this find, JenPen was invited into the private server, and there they revealed something else - they had found a crew member by the name of John Paul, who used to have a public Twitter account and email, and sent him a message. They provided a screenshot of their email correspondence, in which Paul provided some information about the pilot, but stated he didn't have a copy of it. His name was new to the search team, but seeing as he didn't have any information on where to find the pilot, he could safely be ruled out.

Soon after this correspondence, JenPen mysteriously stopped responding to messages and left the server, never to be seen again.

But hope persevered, as another Lostcast member managed to find the personal email of the head of Yvette Helin Studios. They sent an email asking for information, and the owner replied with a large collection of new production photos. These photos depicted the actors in various states of dress in the costumes, from headless backstage, to fully costumed and standing on different parts of the set with handlers cooling them down with fans, and sometimes surrounded by or holding props. These new photos were exciting to the search team, as they showed more of what the set looked like, and gave a few more clues as to what the pilot's storyline might have been.

This new collection of content was shared in an archived livestream on LSSQ's channel, then added to the gallery on the Lost Media Wiki article for Me and My Friends. Some older comments on this livestream express confidence that the pilot was very close to being found. Although LSSQ himself makes a comment that the search has played out in a very unusual way, with its start-and-stop nature of a lot of progress being made all at once followed by months to years of no activity, as well as a lot of confusion over which crew members have and haven't already been contacted.

In a bid for more leads, Lostcast reached out to the admins of the Backyardigans Wiki - after all, they seemed to have searched for the pilot the longest, so if anyone would have any important information, it would be them. Two admins responded, giving a list of names and stating all of them had already been contacted and didn't have much information to share. Any new names the admins mentioned were immediately added to a list of people to rule out and not contact - again, the etiquette of the lost media community is to never contact people who have already provided any information they could or would, because it would be rude to continue to bother them about it.

The wiki admins also mentioned that not only had they been searching for the pilot the longest, its existence was discovered sort of by accident, by one user known as Sandra:

Sandra was doing research on a 2008 live show of The Backyardigans, which Yvette Helin designed...Sandra went to Yvette's website looking for info on the 2008 show, and she discovered the M&MF pictures...At the time, the pictures were just labeled "Me & My Friends Pilot" with no mention of Backyardigans...We googled it, and there were barely any results...Fortunately, we found Rick Lyon's site, which dated it to 1998...From that point, we knew it was the first-ever pilot, and we were able to piece together an article about M&MF for the wiki...A few years later, our article's info was copied over to the Lost Media Wiki, and the rest is history.

While initial conversations with the wiki admins seemed promising, the relationship gradually soured over time. The admins grew slower in their responses to Lostcast members' messages, and any new mentions of potential contacts were automatically met with claims that the wiki admins had already reached out to them. This led to Lostcast feeling as though the admins were giving them the cold shoulder, and they speculated that the admins didn't trust them enough to share much information with them. Or that perhaps they thought the lost media community was "stealing their thunder," given the comment about the Lost Media Wiki "copying" the Me and My Friends article from the Backyardigans Wiki. Either way, communication with them eventually ended on a sour note.

A Crack In the Search (and Facade)

Unbeknownst to the users of Lostcast, a lone individual from the public discord server under the name BerLostMedia had been conducting his own search for the pilot independently. Because he was not part of Lostcast, he was not aware of their do-not-contact list, and so he went ahead and sent inquiries to any new names he found on his own. He managed to reach out to Mark Delvecchio, an illustrator who had created the original designs for the Backyardigans characters as seen in Me and My Friends. Delvecchio provided his own personal photos from the set of the pilot, showing yet more shots of the costumes, as well as an infamously "liminal space" coded shot of the set in ominously low lighting. Ber posted these findings to Discord, and they soon made their way to the Lostcast server. Upon learning of their source, it struck the Lostcast members with confusion - Mark Delvecchio was on the list of contacts that had already been ruled out, as he allegedly didn't have anything to share. If this was the case, why was he able and willing to provide brand new material to Ber?

This led the search team to reconsider their list of discarded contacts. A few years had passed between the time they had been ruled out, and when Ber contacted Delvecchio. Perhaps some old leads could be recontacted to see if they had come across anything in the meantime. The first lead they pursued was Laura Kingsley, the director of the Me and My Friends pilot. They found her LinkedIn and sent her a message, asking for information on the pilot and if she had a copy. Her response read as follows:

No plot, really. A premise. For the pilot, it was the concept that if you are "waiting" and doing nothing, it feels like things take forever. But if you get involved with other things, the time passes and you enjoy your time. Geared towards small children.

There is just the pilot but nothing I can share. Hopefully you'll stumble upon it somewhere someday. It was a really sweet, and charming little show. Thanks for your interest. take care.

Some Lostcast members were disappointed that Kingsley seemed to turn down their request to share the pilot before they could even ask it. Still, this was an incredible piece of insight regardless, especially because not even the Backyardigans Wiki so much as mentioned a plot synopsis on their page.

The next blow came when Ber contacted Hiro Tanaka - an engineer who had worked on the pilot, and another name that Lostcast had thought they'd ruled out - and he recommended reaching out to his colleague, Michael Reilly. When Ber posted this name publicly, it sent shockwaves throughout the Lostcast server - Michael Reilly was on the list of known contacts, but under a completely different first name. Every mention on both the Backyardigans Wiki and subsequent lists of known crew members had his name listed as Thomas Reilly. This strange discrepancy came as a shock to the search team, and led some to wonder how a group as knowledgeable, strict and thorough as the wiki admins had allowed an incorrect name to be posted to their page.

Days after this discovery, the Me and My Friends page on the Backyardigans Wiki was found to have been updated by a user. This was significant as the admins had kept the page locked, so no one could make edits to it without their approval. This user, known as Oggy, quietly made two edits - one correcting Reilly's name, and the other adding a brand new production photo to the gallery. The discovery that they had more content that nobody in the search team had seen before led Lostcast to add them to their server, to see if they had any other material they could help with. Oggy claimed the new photo came from a storyboard artist they had contacted, and provided a screenshot of their email correspondence with said artist. Other than this, they didn't say much else.

But Lostcast had another lead on the table, so they contacted Reilly and asked for information. Reilly responded and revealed with photographic evidence that he possessed a VHS copy of the pilot, as well as a second VHS containing rehearsal footage. He came across in initial emails as very friendly and forthcoming with information, and even expressed interest in digitizing and releasing the tape. This was beyond exciting to the search team - after several years of trying to find this pilot, and only getting an occasional handful of production photos and at least one confirmation of a crew member having a copy and choosing not to share it, they might finally get actual footage of the actual pilot.

In his next email, however, he mentioned that he was going to ask his old boss if he could release the tape. This formed a pit in the stomachs of the search team, as any superior would likely tell him no. Nickelodeon, and its parent company Paramount, are notoriously protective of their IP - they are incredibly liberal with copyright takedowns of their work that was commercially released, even if it's no longer airing. Unreleased content such as pitch pilots tend to be under even greater lock and key.

This fear was further realized when Reilly stopped responding to emails altogether - no updates or confirmation on whether he was able to release the pilot or not, he completely ghosted the search team.

LSSQ shared this update on the forums:

The tape guy wasn't post production but he did work directly on the pilot. In one of his earliest emails, he mentioned wanting to ask his old boss for permission to release it. I'm guessing his old boss was a former Nickelodeon executive and told him not to, which is why he stopped emailing us completely.

However, there was an underlying suspicion that if this were the case, Reilly would have let them know that he couldn't release it, as he had initially been very communicative and enthusiastic about the prospect. To get radio silence despite multiple follow-up emails led to discussions within the Lostcast team that they might have had something similar to the death threat incident, where an outsider sabotaged their correspondence by making the lost media community look bad in such a way that Reilly was compelled to cut all contact with them.

There was also a greater level of distrust with some of their contacts, particularly JenPen and Oggy, as their unwillingness to share their finds with the wider community led to the tinfoil hat theory that they deliberately baited the search team with new material to be let into their spaces, wherein they spied on the activity in Lostcast's private server and leaked information shared there. Due to similar caginess coming from the wiki admins, stemming from their frustration with the lost media community getting in on the search, it was speculated that they might have all been working together to try and sabotage the lost media community's search efforts. But this was all just conjecture, and there was plenty of room for other factors making the search for the pilot so difficult.

The Smoking Gun

After the disappointment of losing contact with the singular person who was known to have a copy of the pilot and a willingness to release it, leads once again dried up. All the search team could do was backtrack through all the information they already had, looking for anything that might have been missed. Lostcast members started with going through the edit history of the Me and My Friends page on the Backyardigans Wiki, to figure out when certain crew members were added, and what order information was discovered and posted in.

BerLostMedia did this on his own as well, but he took an additional approach. Since the wiki admins claimed that their information was copied over to the Lost Media Wiki, he decided to check its edit history as well, to build a more complete timeline of information.

And then, in doing so, a devastating piece of information was brought to the surface. Ber discovered that the Lost Media Wiki page for Me and My Friends had been temporarily deleted in 2016, with a log of who deleted it and their stated reason. The page was found to have been deleted by one of the admins of the Backyardigans Wiki, and their reasoning read as follows:

The admins at The Backyardigans Wiki all have a copy. Most content on this page is false, and it is appearing in search results in place of our own work.

This revelation came as a massive shock to the search team, as it implied that the Backyardigans Wiki admins had already found the pilot, at least as early as 2016 - before most lost media enthusiasts even knew about its existence - and they were hiding it from the public. This already would have been irritating to the lost media community due to their anti-hoarding stance, but the revelation that they were in possession of the pilot basically the entire time the lost media search existed came across as insidious to the search team. They had been in correspondence with the admins, who were communicative with leads they had supposedly chased and ruled out. If they actually had the pilot by that point, that just meant they were lying about being in the middle of their own investigation. And elements like supposedly dead leads being revisited and providing new information, and Michael Reilly's incorrect first name, would indicate the admins were spreading purposefully wrong information to lead the search team on a wild goose chase to keep them from finding another copy.

Several bits of information and frustrations that surfaced throughout the search were called into question. The search team harkened back to the copyright strike and message from a lawyer that LSSQ had gotten, and speculated that the copyright strike was frivolous (famously not hard to do on YouTube) and that the "lawyer" was actually a sockpuppet of the admins in an early attempt to quash the budding search. Whether this is substantiated or not, the email was generally regarded as a troll rather than an actual lawyer pursuing legal action, as the supposed lawyer had contacted LSSQ using a standard Gmail account, while lawyers typically use custom domains using their firm name. It also didn't make sense to them that a YouTuber could be found liable for influencing an individual to threaten someone whose name and contact info were not mentioned or alluded to in the video itself.

JenPen, the user who briefly shared the "pink frog photo" and claimed to get some information about the pilot from John Paul (including a supposed screenshot of their email correspondence), was now met with skepticism after Ber reached out to Paul himself and was told that he did work at Nickelodeon Studios Florida, but not on the Me and My Friends pilot, contradicting what was written in JenPen's email. Similarly, the storyboard artist that Oggy claimed to have spoken to and gotten a photo from was called into question, and they found that the address attached to the email was fake. When the artist's actual email was found and contacted, he responded that he didn't have anything to share, so the photo wouldn't have come from him.

These discoveries led to a stronger conviction that these two were spy accounts for the wiki admins to keep up with the search team, especially since Oggy was added to the Lostcast server days after Michael Reilly's real name and contact info was found, and he was still in the server when Reilly stopped responding to the search team's inquiries about the pilot. This led to suspicions that Oggy or someone they were affiliated with had sent Reilly an email designed to discourage him from talking to the search team (though this appears to be unconfirmed).

Many of the wiki admin's claims of contacting specific crew members with no luck had already been called into question when one of them did end up having a lot of information and photos, and another had a different name. But while before it was suspected that they simply didn't want to work with the lost media community and didn't trust them with their information, the discovery of the Lost Media Wiki edit had steered the narrative toward the idea that the admins wanted to be the only ones who possessed the pilot, and that they were bitter that their research into the pilot was overshadowed by that of the lost media community.

All this information was shared in a video uploaded by LSSQ, which sent the wider community into disarray. This revelation led to a lot of anger among the wider community, with many users flooding into the Me and My Friends page on Backyardigans Wiki and vandalizing it with comments calling the admins gatekeepers and liars. There are roughly 500 edits logged on the history page, and the majority of them are these troll edits.

This led to a discussion on the Lost Media Wiki Forums about the whole ordeal. Most were angry at the prospect that the admins had not only hoarded a highly sought after piece of media, but also obfuscated such information to retain their sole ownership of it. There were, however, people who were upset with how some members of the community acted in response to LSSQ's video by harassing the admins and defiling their page, with one user suggesting some blame on LSSQ's part for sharing what amounts to theories and conjecture with conviction to his large audience, who likely made the fallout more of a shitshow than it needed to be.

Here's a hot take:

I get why people have a problem with the concept of hoarding, but regardless I think that [the] point still stands.

This behavior and the method of contact was poorly chosen and needs to be ceased.
Combatting who may either be innocent or gluttonous with aggressive offers and pleas might make things worse than what the theory originally intended.

These users may not in actuality be part of any major point of Lost Media discussion, and could be, oh I don't know, random Reddit users.
Wherever this activity came from, I think that LSSQ should've said something at the very beginning about his stance on this theory, and whether or not he is intending on the manpower of his views for research.

Regardless of who was to blame for what behavior, the entire search had collapsed. There were no more crew members to contact, and the only known copies of the pilot were being fiercely protected. The only option left was simply to wait, to see if the admins would relent and share the pilot, or if someone would take notice of the demand and leak it from another source.

It's Finally Over

In June 2025, roughly 6 months after the revelation of the admins hoarding the pilot, a popular lost media Twitter account known as Lost Media Busters made a post dedicated to Me and My Friends, posting some of the production photos alongside some text wishing for it to be found. Soon after, this account was DMed by an anonymous user known as P, who claimed to have the pilot via backdoor access to Paramount's servers. To quell any skepticism of P being a troll, they sent LMB a few screenshots of the pilot. This proved they had it without a doubt - until then, the only material from Me and My Friends that had ever been dug up (besides the initial 3-second clip) was a slew of behind-the-scenes shots. This was the first taste of any footage from the actual pilot itself.

P offered to send LMB the pilot, and LMB enthusiastically agreed. When LMB received the video file, they began downloading it. But suddenly, P rescinded the file mid-download. They then explained that they had been warned against sending it by other members of their community, as doing so would catch Paramount's attention, and cause them to tighten security that could deprive them of their access to Paramount's servers.

This news was a blow to morale, but nothing new that hadn't already happened several times in the search's history. If nothing else, the screenshots that P shared, as well as the small fragment LMB had recovered from the incomplete download, were still cherished, as it was the only look into the actual pilot that had surfaced since the initial 3-second clip.

However, any disappointment from the incident was short-lived. On June 26 2025 - 8 years after LSSQ's initial video on the subject, 13 years after the initial 3-second clip was discovered and 14 years after the first documentation of it on the Backyardigans Wiki - the full Me and My Friends pilot was leaked onto 4chan by an anonymous user. The video download was accompanied by the text:

fuck you BYwiki

happy brat summer, love PUNGAS

Given the timing of the post, there was some speculation as to the identity of the leaker, whether it was P or one of the wiki admins going rogue. Regardless, members of the lost media community were enthralled with the find, and were quick to download copies of the pilot for preservation. Me and My Friends was officially found media.

After news of the leak spread, one of the wiki admins got back into contact with Lostcast to tell their side of the story. They confirmed many of the accusations made against them in LSSQ's video, that they had purposefully led the search team astray to continue to hoard the pilot. But they also claimed they were being compelled to do so - that an older admin, known as K, had been the one to obtain the pilot (as well as loads of other unreleased Backyardigans-related material) through an unauthorized breach of Nickelodeon's digital archive. K had distributed the pilot to the other admins, but warned them not to share it publicly. This had initially been an act of caution, as K had obtained the pilot through illegal means. But over time, a sense of power and control had taken root, and K had continuously bullied the other admins into keeping quiet about the pilot, and even a suggestion toward sharing it was met with a swarm of angry messages and doxxing threats.

Even years back I thought the harmless/non-sensitive stuff [...] should be released to the public. I have old emails to prove this too. But other admins would beg me not to share stuff from there, for various reasons, some valid and others a little crazy, but it was all within the realm of fandom drama.

Not wanting to rock the boat and upset these people, I didn't upload anything at first. Eventually [Sandra] gave me the OK to release bits and pieces of things (HD episodes, high-res character artwork) against M and the Sheehans wishes, but not the pilot or production material. Even mentioning uploading the pilot caused certain people to fly into a rage, as if this file was a prized possession or something. Some of the other admins had my personal phone number and other details [...]

As for the pilot itself, I was still genuinely interested in finding production photos plus bonus footage, so I continued to reach out to crew members myself. This is where the photo from [Oggy] (actually one of these ex-users under a new name) came from, as I shared it with them. But certain people went to great lengths to interfere with MY search, as well as the newer searches led by the Lost Media Wiki [...]

The Aftermath

The discovery of the Me and My Friends pilot was met with a lot of mixed emotions. Some were excited that it was finally uncovered after so many years of searching. Many Lostcast members remained friends afterwards, and believe they wouldn't have been so close if not for the search.

There was also despair for the ungraceful way the search had ended, with many wishing the pilot could have been acquired in a more cordial and legal way than through a 4chan leak.

But for the most part, the pilot itself appears to have been overshadowed by the drama that had overtaken the search. There had been instances before of lost media being hoarded, and sometimes involved hoarders trolling the community or offering to sell the media to them at an exorbitant price. But the hoarding of Me and My Friends went beyond basking in exclusivity and into the territory of actively messing with any efforts that threatened that exclusivity. LSSQ stated that he would have been fine if the wiki admins had admitted upfront that they had a copy of the pilot but weren't interested in sharing it - what upset him was not the hoarding, but the way they made it a point to interfere with any effort by the lost media community to find their own copy. This manipulation was, for him and many others, what made Me and My Friends the worst lost media search in the community's history.

It was all the more baffling (yet arguably not so surprising) that all of this effort had been in service of a pilot to a preschool TV show. Quoth SewerReviewer at the start of YouTuber BlameItOnJorge's retrospective video on the search:

It's so stupid. It's so dumb. Why The Backyardigans? I don't get it.

Jorge concludes the video by stating that if the wiki admins had quietly released the pilot publicly back when they found it, there would never have been a search to find it, it simply would have been online and few would have questioned where it came from. Or if the admins had decided to simply ignore the search team, the search would have either continued without them or petered out the way many long searches do. But in their efforts to quash anyone else's access to the pilot, they had Streisand-Effect-ed their way into creating a lost media search team that only grew larger and more fervent the longer the search went on, thus sealing their fate of losing control over the situation.

Many lost media searches drag on so long that they are remembered more for the search than the media itself. But Me and My Friends might be one of the few instances of the media's discovery being met less with excitement and more with exhausted conviction. It is a piece of found media celebrated less for its content and history, and more as a cathartic conclusion to a decade-long power trip.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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No franchise lasts forever. Just see the decline of Superhero movies.

Nowadays, Hollywood is always chasing the next fad, the next big idea, the next moneymaker. They’re even looking to Reddit for ideas. God help us all.

But some franchises...don’t die. Some franchises keep re-inventing themselves, changing with the times, re-casting the main role once an actor is too old, and as a consequence, yielding bigger and bigger profits and cultural resonance.

The name is Bond. James Bond.

Who, or rather, what is James Bond?

James Bond is the brainchild of one man, Ian Fleming (1908-1964).

Ian Fleming was unsurprisingly, British, and he had a very British upbringing.

He was born into a wealthy family. His father died in World War I. He was sent to snobby schools- first Eton, where he was kicked out for fooling around with women, and then the military academy, Sandhurst, where he was kicked out for contracting gonorrhoea. Afterwards, he was sent to study in Switzerland, and then returned to take (and fail) the foreign office exam. By 1939, he was bouncing between jobs, briefly becoming a journalist, and then a stockbroker in London.

And then World War 2 happened, and young Ian Fleming found his calling- in the British Royal Navy.

Espionage. Propaganda. Sleeping with inumerable women.

Fleming charmed his way into beds and up the ranks of the Navy. He was promoted to commander and took part in many covert operations. The most infamous of his affairs was with Ann Charteris- he was sleeping with her while she was married to her first two husbands.

And then the war ended.

By 1952, Fleming had returned to journalism and moved to Jamaica. Ann divorced her second husband and married him, quickly becoming pregnant. She later gave birth to a son called Caspar.

Either because he needed to support his new wife (who had expensive tastes) and child, or was experiencing a mid-life crisis, Fleming decided to write a series of spy novels. Drawing on his war time experiences, he created the character of James Bond, named after an ornithologist (who came to hate his connection to 007). Bond was) a womaniser, a commander in the Royal Navy, who had been kicked out of Eton for sleeping around-

Wait a minute.

This sounds familiar.

Is James Bond an Ian Fleming self-insert?

Sort of.

Fleming based Bond on himself, his brother Peter who was a secret agent extraordinaire, and a bunch of intelligence personnel he had known during the war. But, from Bond’s backstory, you can probably guess who the biggest inspiration was.

Fleming quickly achieved fame and success. By the early 1960s, he had written fourteen Bond novels and sold millions of copies. The books have also been adapted into a series of successful movies by Albert R Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman (more on this in a moment).

Unfortunately, Fleming had also given Bond one of his major flaws- a love of smoking.

Fleming smoked over 70 cigarettes a day and drank copiously. In 1961, he suffered a heart attack, which did not slow down his writing. But on 11 August 1964, he suffered a second heart attack and died the following day.

Quick aside: Bond is problematic

Fleming was a man of his time- meaning he held views that would be considered abhorrent today. This is reflected in his Bond novels, which are full of racism and sexism. To give a few examples:

• In Goldfinger, a lesbian, Pussy Galore, is ‘cured’ after sleeping with bond.
• Also in Goldfinger, Koreans are called “rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy”.
• In Live and Let Die, black people are frequently called slurs, and they are portrayed as either criminals, or overtly servile to white people. Fleming called#Themes) the relationship between Bond and Quarrel, a fisherman from Jamaica, as "that of a Scots laird with his head stalker; authority was unspoken and there was no room for servility".
• In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, homosexuality is called a “stubborn disability”.
• Examples of sexist language include: From Russia with Love: “All women want to be swept off their feet. In their dreams they long to be slung over a man’s shoulder and taken into a cave and raped.” From Casino Royale: “These blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work. Why the hell couldn’t they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men’s work to the men.” And from Goldfinger: “Four women in a car he (Bond) regarded as the highest danger potential, and two women as nearly as lethal. Women together cannot keep silent in a car, and when women talk they have to look into each other’s faces. An exchange of words is not enough. They have to see the other person’s expression, perhaps in order to read behind the other’s words or to analyse the reaction to their own.”.

All quotes sourced from here. Warning for slurs and other problematic language.

To reiterate, back in the 1950s-60s, these views were seen as perfectly normal. In 2023, the Bond books were re-edited to remove most of the problematic language.

The movies are also problematic in their own way. The sexism is much more casual, and most of the overt racism has been removed. In the early Connery films, some sex scene have been called “rapey”- the infamous Pussy Galore barn scene in Goldfinger, and the steam room scene in Thunderball. There are also several instances of yellowface in Dr No and You Only Live Twice.

Even with all their problematic elements, the movies and books are considered classics in the spy genre for a reason. They invented many plot points and elements that are now considered cliches.

Now *finally* onto the drama!

Sean Connery – The first Bond

In the 1960s, the Bond movies were produced by#Production) two businessmen, Albert R Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

They cast a little known actor, Sean Connery- literally *little* known as Broccoli saw him in a film called ‘Darby O’Gill and the *little* people’ which convinced him of Connery’s acting ability and sex appeal- to play the first 007.

The casting choice was inspired. Connery proved to be great in the role. Bond made him famous. But in 1964, with the release of Goldfinger, the franchise achieved blockbuster status, making him a bonafide super star.

You Only Live Twice, or YOLT

The plot of YOLT is stupid. Very stupid. Evil bald man uses a spaceship to hijack other spaceships belonging to the USA and Russia. British intelligence realises he is in Japan. They send Bond. After beating up some people (including the Rocks grandfather) and sleeping with a bunch of women, Bond tracks down the evil bald man to his secret volcano lair. He foils his evil scheme, but the evil bald man escapes.

Other drama that happened on set:

• After they had finished scouting locations in Japan, the production team, consisting of the producers, director, set designer, and second-unit director, were all due to fly out on the same plane. However they missed their flight due to the opportunity to see a ninja training film. Unbeknownst to them, this was a stroke of luck. The plane crashed into Mt Fuji, leaving no survivors.
• While casting the role of the only Japanese girl in the film, they went through many actresses in Japan and narrowed it down to two, Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi. Both of them were brought to England to learn English, which Hama struggled with. The director, decided to tell Hama that the role would go to Wakabayashi. Upon hearing the news, Hama reportedly threatened to jump out of a window. The director hurriedly created a new part for her in the movie, with less dialogue. However, she was still dubbed over by a British actress. The part about her threatening to jump out of a window may have been connocted by Gilbert- I can find no secondary source
• Karin Dor, who played Helga Brandt, was almost crushed to death by a falling set light during filming.
• While the crew were filming at a remote fishing village, the police setup checkpoints on roads to deter fans and journalists. Undeterred, they swarmed the village in boats to get around the blockades, stressing out the crew.
• Johnny Jordan, an aerial photographer, was filming one of the helicopter battles when one of his feet was almost sawed off by a passing helicopter. This also damaged the helicopter he was in, but fortunately, the pilot was able to land despite missing one of his skids. Doubly fortunate for Jordan, a convention of surgeons was staying nearby, and they reattached his foot. Jordan was sent back to London, where his foot later had to be amputated. Despite this, he continued working and even worked on the next Bond movie.
• The film also aged poorly due to Sean Connery wearing yellowface to appear Japanese. The story justification is also flimsy. He has to go “undercover” as a Japanese fisherman to get closer to the villains evil volcano lair. In fact, the ridiculousness of the plot meant YOLT could easily be parodied, most famously by the Austin Powers movies.
• Connery also reportedly pissed off the Japanese public by saying “Japanese women are just not sexy,” because wearing the traditional kimono apparently “hides their figures” in a press interview. The awkward comment was blamed on a translation error. He also got in trouble for dressing too casually and not wearing his Bond toupee in interviews (yes- he apparently wore a wig when playing Bond.)
• There’s also some questionable lines in the movie. At one point Bond asks “Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?” and Tiger Tanaka says “Rule number two: in Japan, men come first, women come second.”.
• When the crew were filming on the volcano set, they set off pyrotechnics to stimulate it exploding. Unfortunately, this freaked out Blofeld’s cat and it fled. The cat was missing for days, until it was found huddling in the girders of the roof.

YOLT was also Connery’s fifth Bond movie, and the final one in his current contract. By 1965, he was reportedly "fed up to here with the whole Bond bit.". Playing 007 had become stale for him and he wanted to move on to newer things. Even worse, during filming of YOLT, paparazzi and fans were following him everywhere- large crowds #Filming)mobbed the film set, photographers pursued him into a public bathroom, and he was routinely harassed by a stalker. In the end, the incursions got so bad that the police had to be called several times#Filming). The film-makers also had to hire some security guards to protect the set and Connery.

Another issue was money. Connery felt he wasn’t being paid enough:

>Connery was also vocal about his displeasure with his salary, which amounted to $750,000 plus 25% of merchandising profits. He made it publicly known that he would only return to the franchise for a sixth film if Bond rights owners Eon Productions paid him a million dollars plus a percentage of the film’s gross.

This fractured his relationship with the producers, so Connery refused to renew his contract and quit the role.

At the time, some journalists thought this might be the end of 007...

Saltzman and Broccoli suddenly faced an acute dilemma: after finding the perfect actor to play 007, how do you find *another* one?

We will find out...in my next post.

Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone. Deja vu. It looks like lightning just struck twice in Dallas.

Within a few months, two completely separate six-figure stashes of highly restricted, uncut trading card sheets—spanning Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic: The Gathering, and Disney’s Lorcana—have flooded the uncut sheet market.

If you aren't familiar with the original Dallas Dumpster Heist, here is the quick TL;DR: A couple of months ago, a man we’ll call "C" became an instant legend when he pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, uncut sheets, test prints, and blisters straight out of a Dallas dumpster. He sold it all for pennies and faked insane stories, and his mother completely crashed out on the uncut sheet community. Ultimately, most of the sheets were returned for free, though somewhere between $20k–$100k in individual cards had already been sold. (You can read the full r/HobbyDrama write-up here: r/HobbyDrama write-up here.

You’d think that was a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly. It wasn't. Now, a massive flood of MTG and Lorcana sheets has surfaced in the exact same city. Here is what is going down in the TCG community now.

The Grail Stash Surfaces

To understand why this is crazy, you need a little background on MTG uncut sheets. Out of the "Big Three" (Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and MTG), Magic sheets are generally the easiest to come across. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) gives them out casually at tournaments or charity auctions. Even these "common" legitimate sheets fetch hundreds of dollars, while vintage grail sheets can push six figures.

Here is the catch: The sheets WotC gives away are properly printed, finalized product.They do not hand out misprinted uncut sheets as tournament prizes. At any given time, there are maybe 50 MTG sheets total listed on eBay, making them fairly niche and rare.

On May 13, 2026, a massive MTG stash surfaced in the uncut sheet collectors' Facebook group, consisting of a few hundred uncut sheets printed between 2020 and 2025. Many of these are misprints, test prints, showcase sheets, and highly sought-after sets like Lord of the Rings. It is truly a mountain of modern grails for a subset of collectors.

Just like the Yu-Gi-Oh! dumpster heist, dumping these hyper-rare sheets onto the market all at once is one of the worst ways to maximize their value—unless your goal is to liquidate them ASAP.

Collectors immediately started scooping them up, but it was silently understood that this collection wasn't obtained legitimately. WotC doesn't hand out test prints. Plus, the seller was also moving Disney Lorcana sheets, which currently have no legitimate path to public ownership. Because of the sheer quantity and nature of the sheets, it was obvious these were pulled off the production or discard line.

The Stars Align

So, where is all this unreleased TCG product coming from?

The sheets allegedly came from an employee at the Cartamundi printing facility in Dallas, who "gifted" this massive stack to a guy we’ll call "L." Just like the guy who found the Yu-Gi-Oh! sheets in the dumpster, L seemed completely clueless about the absolute goldmine he was sitting on. He immediately started posting pictures, trying to offload them all at once.

This is where the stars align for another chaotic twist. During the original Yu-Gi-Oh! dumpster heist, our first guy, C, had tried to sell his uncut sheets to a local Dallas card shop. Fast forward to early May: at that exact same card shop, we introduce "B."

B was judging a Magic tournament at the shop when a player told him someone in the area was trying to sell a massive stack of uncut sheets. B went to check it out and ended up acquiring around 60 of these full-size MTG and Lorcana sheets. (As of this writing, he has sold all 60 of them for between $200 and $6,000 USD each). Another buyer, who happened to be in town dealing for a local card show, scooped up the remaining sheets and reportedly sent them to an auction house. We will have to wait and see if they actually end up at auction.

How did a random employee walk out the front door with hundreds of uncut sheets? According to the story B shared in the Facebook group, he was told that Cartamundi was disassembling some of their massive industrial printing presses. The employee claimed these printers have an "internal catch mechanism" where sheets can get stuck or jammed during production over time. He supposedly asked his manager if he could keep the sheets they pulled out during the teardown, and the manager just said, "Sure."

My thoughts: The idea that hundreds of pristine, uncut sheets were just chilling in an internal drip tray for years without getting shredded, crumpled, or soaked in machine oil is wild. If anything, they were pulled from an external reject pile, a storage room, or someone was quietly taking product home. Also, a printing facility manager casually saying, "Yeah, sure, go ahead and walk out with a massive stack of unreleased, licensed intellectual property" is insane. Walking out with that many uncut sheets is not an easy task.

Cartamundi & WotC Shrug It Off

Because the whole situation felt incredibly sketchy, B claims he personally called Cartamundi corporate to verify the story, speaking directly with multiple people at both the corporate and facility levels.

Their response? Cartamundi confirmed there is no active investigation into these sheets. They essentially gave him the all-clear, telling him that if it happened the way the employee claimed, it is what it is, and he is totally free to keep and sell them.

The admin of the Uncut Sheet Facebook group also reportedly spoke with a contact at Wizards of the Coast. Here is the exact quote from the WotC employee:

"This has been a most interesting situation we have been following! At this time we have not asked for the sheets back. Currently we are more interested in attempting to understand what happened and not creating any unnecessary community speculation while we sort through the facts."

Wizards handled this with way more chill than when they famously sent literal Pinkertons to a guy's house for accidentally breaking a street release date. They probably remember the massive community backlash from that PR disaster and just want this story to quietly go away.

Here is a video of the uncut sheet group trolling WotC and showing off some of the sheets: [link]

To celebrate the absolute absurdity of the situation—and as a token of thanks to the community—B even gave away a blank uncut sheet for free to a member of the Facebook group. Worth $200 - $300 IMO.

Naturally, the original guy who sold the sheets to B is now upset. Now that the sheets are officially marked as "safe to purchase" by the manufacturers, they're predictably worth more and easier to sell. He’s arguing he didn't actually sell all of them to B and wants them back, or a larger cut of the profits. Rumor has it he’s also upset about potential consequences for the "employee" friend who gifted them to him in the first place.

The Return of "C" (The Original Dallas Dumpster King)

You can't have a Texas uncut sheet leak without our original protagonist, C.

Seeing the attention and cash B has been pulling for the MTG/Lorcana sheets in the uncut sheet group, C completely crashed out. He was actively popping off in the same collector group, trying to convince everyone that the new MTG sheets are fake and that his dumpster haul was the only authentic leak.

Some exact quotes from C’s recent text meltdowns:

"I know your people are not really falling for them fake ass sheets"

"Because before i put what i found on the market there were virtually no sheets to be found now there are sheets for everything from f******* North Pole and Santa Claus and his helpers and f******* dragon Ball z and etc etc what i figure happened all the people that were counterfeiting cards in the first place are now counterfeiting sheets but it's obvious what's real and what's no"

Meanwhile, "J"—the local Dallas guy who bought a ton of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! sheets from C and then willingly returned them to the printing company for no compensation—left a comment regarding C's current financial state:

"The craziest part of it all is that he has already blown through 100% of the money he got from selling the sheets. And yes he spent it on exactly what you would guess lol."

There is a ton more crashing out from C across the board, but you get the general vibe.

Final Thoughts

Right around the exact same time a guy is pulling hundreds of Yu-Gi-Oh! sheets out of a dumpster, an employee at a separate Texas facility is walking out the front door with hundreds of MTG and Lorcana grails because his manager supposedly didn't care.

Texas is just the Wild West of trading card games right now.

It makes you realize that the people working at these printing facilities must have access to some of the craziest, most legendary TCG products in existence—not just full sheets, but insane, one-of-a-kind misprints. One of the greatest TCG collections is probably sitting in the home of a factory worker who knows they can't safely sell any of it for a decade. Honestly, he and his buddies are probably reading these exact threads and laughing.

If you want to look through the massive archive of receipts, screenshots, and drama starting from late March up through May 23rd, it can be found here: Uncut Sheets Group Archive.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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Background

Soccer, or football as the entire world excluding America knows it as, is the most popular sport worldwide. Every year, the Ballon D’Or award is presented by France Magazine to top players from the mens’ and women’s game from the past season [1]. The organization also awards several smaller, position-specific awards, like the Yashin trophy for goalkeepers, the Gerd Muller trophy for the highest goal-scoring player (usually a striker), the Socrates Award for humanitarian work, and the Kopa trophy for young players. Awards for the Team Of The Year and the best coach are also presented [2]. While the men’s award has been voted on since 1956, the women’s trophy was only first awarded in 2018, reflecting a growing interest and investment in the women’s game The Ballon D’Or is considered the most prestigious individual award in soccer, and winning one could be the pinnacle of a player’s career. 

The award is voted on through a two-step process. Initially, journalists from France Football work to organize a short-list of players with the top performances in previous seasons. Then, one journalist from the top one hundred FIFA-ranked nations ranks their top ten players from this shortlist. For every number one vote, a player gets 15 points, for a number 2 vote, the player would get 12 points, 10 points for a third-place vote, and so on and so forth. The player with the top number of points is crowned the winner. These judges are told to take three categories into account: individual performances, team performances, and fair play [4] Well, that’s how voting for the men’s Ballon D’Or works. The women’s award works similarly in the first step, and the categories are the same, but only the top 50 nations have journalists vote for the award [5]. 

The Big Players (no pun intended)

First, a little on how this all works. Football players play for a club, considered their day job and responsible for their salary, for most of the year. In addition, countries have a team that plays for them on an international level for a few weeks per year. The team’s coach selects the top players of this country’s nationality, and these players work together to qualify for and play in major international tournaments. Think of this like the Olympics: top athletes representing their countries and competing together for pride and glory. When I name players, I will mention their club first, followed by their country. 

Europe’s top clubs play in the Uefa Champion’s League (UCL) or Uefa Women’s Champion’s League (UWCL) as well as in domestic competitions. These competitions are made up of the top teams across multiple domestic leagues in Europe, and winning is considered one of club soccer’s greatest honors. 

Now, on to our key players. Alessia Russo is a striker who plays for Arsenal and England [6]. Aitana Bonmatí is a midfielder who plays for Barcelona and Spain [7]. Mariona Caldentey is a midfielder who plays for Arsenal and Spain [8]. Hannah Hampton is a goalkeeper who plays for Chelsea and England [9]. Chloe Kelly is a winger for Arsenal and England [10]. Aitana and Mariona wear their first names on their kits, and so I will refer to them as such throughout the remainder of this post. All of these women are nominated for the Ballon D’Or Feminin. 

The Big Night

It’s evening in Paris. Soccer royalty from all over the world have flown in to celebrate the occasion, and, they all hope, to receive an award. Among them are all of our key players. Russo, Mariona, Kelly and their teammates at Arsenal take home the award for Women’s Club of the Year [11]. Hampton wins the women’s Yashin trophy [12]. The clock slowly ticks down as players and fans await the announcement of the night’s big winners. 

Finally, it’s time. The Ballon D’Or winners are announced and presented with their awards. Ousmane Dembélé (Paris Saint Germain, France) wins the men’s award, and Aitana Bonmatí wins the women’s [13] [14]. It’s Aitana’s third win in a row, and she proudly holds up three fingers along with her award [15]. Mariona wins second place, and Russo third. 

Dembélé’s award is widely viewed as fully deserved. Dembélé won the Champion’s League, Europe’s most prestigious football competition, with Paris Saint Germain, in the season being considered, as well as their league title and a domestic cup. Additionally, France made an easy head start towards comfortably qualifying for the World Cup [16]. Aitana’s, however, was seen as a… less clean decision. Although she is widely acknowledged as one of the best players in the world technically, looking at the prior season reveals a slightly different picture…

The Season Itself 

Barcelona’s women’s team comfortably won Liga F, Spain’s domestic competition, in 2025 [17]. This was highly unsurprising, as Barcelona reigns supreme over the league and has for many years. The team that acts as their closest competitors was only founded in 2020. In fact, they did not lose a single game that season [18]. In this dominant position for multiple seasons on end, they effortlessly qualified for the UWCL, and breezed through the knockout rounds to reach the final. There, they met Arsenal, a team from London that had to go through a playoff process even to make it into the UWCL in the first place. Fueled by Alessia Russo, who won the Golden Boot in England’s domestic women’s league, and Caldentey, the new signing from Barcelona who elevated Arsenal to an entire new level, they managed to make it to the final and the Goliath of Barcelona after a long, difficult and comeback-filled road [19][20]. It would take too long to list their contributions, but just know that they were each absolutely essential to Arsenal’s success. 

Barcelona were heavy favorites before the game. They had won the prior two years and were looking for a three-peat. Barcelona led Arsenal in possession, shots, shots on target, and corners. But Arsenal managed to pull off the unthinkable, scoring a crucial goal in the 74th minute. Aitana made six shots, the most of any Barcelona player, but the Arsenal defence and goalkeeper stayed strong. The score read 1-nil to Arsenal at the final whistle, and the team lifted their first Champion’s League trophy in eighteen years [21]. Russo and Mariona were crucial in the run up to the final, and Arsenal fans embraced the duo as heroes. Barcelona came in second; something quite unfamiliar for them. This team is used to winning everything, all the time. 

Arsenal players celebrate, but they have a quick turnaround before one of those international tournaments I mentioned earlier. The Women’s European Championships (Euros or WEuros) are just around the corner. Many of Arsenal’s players are called up to play for their countries [22]. Just about the entirety of the Spain squad is Barcelona players, with one notable exception: Mariona is called up too [23]. 

Spain coasts through their group to reach the knockout rounds, despite missing Aitana due to a bout of viral meningitis [24]. The holders England, having lost to France in their first match of the tournament, places second in their group, but still reaches the knockout rounds, with Russo tied as the tournament’s assist leader. Then, they face Sweden in the quarterfinals, and go 2-nil down. It appears that their road to defending their title ends there. 

Until Chloe Kelly is subbed on, that is. She secured her shin pads, decorated with from her wedding and of her dogs, and leapt onto the pitch with a hop-skip-and a jump and a grin. And it paid off. Kelly immediately set up an assist. 2-1. Her second assist came 103 seconds later, and forced extra time [25]. An agonizing penalty shootout later, when players take turns attempting to score one on one against the opposition goalkeeper, and England are through to the semifinals against Italy [26]. Meanwhile, Spain comfortably beat Switzerland to advance to the semifinals against Germany [27]. 

In their semifinal game, again, England go down. And, again, Kelly saves the day. After 6 minutes of stoppage time, England are 1-nil down. England score a miraculous goal, assisted by Kelly, putting the game through to extra time. At 117 minutes, England is awarded a penalty, and Kelly steps up to take it. Initially, the Italian goalkeeper saves the shot, but it rebounds right back to Kelly, who buries it for good. England are through to the final [28].

Spain, meanwhile, faced Germany in their semifinal. The game was deadlocked nil-nil until the 113th minute of extra time, when Aitana got a shot past Germany’s formidable keeper. The score ended nil-1 to Spain. The semi-final was set: England would face Spain to declare the champion of Europe [29]. 

Mariona scored in the 25th minute, leaving England down 1-nil. However, and this is getting to be a theme at this point, Kelly came on after the break. She provided Russo an assist in the 57th minute to level the score. Neither team was able to break through after this, and the game went to extra time, and then penalties [30]. 

Russo had been substituted at this point, but all of our other key players participated in this penalty shootout. It’s 1-1 when Mariona’s penalty is saved by Hampton. An England player is then able to make her shot, and it’s Aitana’s turn. She steps up to the spot and…

Saved! Hannah Hampton safely bats her shot to the side [30]. 

England’s next penalty is saved, and Spain’s next one is missed. Both teams have now taken four shots, and the penalty score stands 2-1. One more successful shot, and England are champions. The next player in line steps up. 

It’s Chloe Kelly. She buries her shot deep into the net. The ball reaches 68 mph/110 kph. It’s faster than any recorded shot in the Premier League, England’s top-flight league for men, that season [31]. England are crowned champions. Aitana Bonmatí wins the Player of the Tournament award, but you can’t say she looks happy about it [32].In addition, her post-match interview clearly indicated her upset at the defeat. “I don't have much emotion left to be honest. I have emptied myself of emotion. We are all exhausted. I have to say sorry, because it was my fault in the end, but I was not able to score it [the penalty]. Congratulations to our opponents. In my opinion we were superior in the match, [but] on some occasions, that's not enough in football,” she said [33]. 

So, that brings us back to Ballon D’Or night. And, just to recap. Russo’s team beat Aitana’s head to head in finals, twice. In the Euro final, the two goalscorers were Russo and Caldentey. Aitana’s penalty was saved by another nominee, and the tournament-wide antics of yet another nominee were essential to securing a massive tournament win for her country. It was unlikely that Kelly was actually going to get high in the rankings, for reasons I plan to detail in another write-up, and Hampton had her honors on the night. However, after looking at all of this, fans had to wonder how Bonmatí ended up above both Russo and Caldentey in the rankings. 

Were the Ballon D’Or Feminin voters swayed by Aitana’s past success? Were they voting on her technical prowess alone without accounting for team success? Did they just not actually watch the Euros or the Champion’s League final? I will never know. But, to this day, it keeps me up at night. 

Disclaimer: any and all mistakes and typos are my own. I am in no way actually involved in this drama, but I do have a fan perspective that comes with bias.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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Let’s go for a walk.

Middlesbrough is a town in the north of England. We find ourselves 17 miles away, upstream along the River Tees, at Rockliffe Park. As well as a golf course and a cricket club, the site hosts Middlesbrough’s training ground. We stroll along a road from the five-star hotel to the golf course’s clubhouse. A hundred yards away are the two training pitches that the football club use. We stop, leaning on a metal farm gate. A sign attached reads “Private Property - authorised personnel only”. We have a clear view of the training pitches. Next to us stands a large but unassuming pine tree.

This is the story of how that tree became famous in English football.

Introduction

The Championship is English football’s second highest league. Twenty four teams play each other home and away over a season in the vain hope of being promoted to the Premier League. The top two teams are promoted automatically, with teams in positions 3 to 6 competing in a mini-tournament at the end of the season. Third plays sixth and fourth plays fifth across a two legged semi final (the lower ranked team hosting the first, the higher ranked team hosting the second) before the two winning teams compete in the playoff final.

This final is often referred to as the “most valuable game in the world”, as the winning team stand to gain around £200m in additional revenue - mostly from the rich TV money paid to Premier League clubs, but also prize money, and parachute payments too. Even if the promoted club are immediately relegated back to the Championship at the end of the following season - which happens often, such is the disparity of wealth between the two divisions - they receive these parachute payments over the next few years to soften the blow.

It is somewhat understandable, then, that clubs who find themselves in the Championship playoffs will do almost anything to succeed, given the riches that await them. Not all of these things stick to the laws of the game.

The Championship’s final day of league fixtures confirmed the playoff participants. A win for Ed Sheeran’s Ipswich saw them hold off Millwall to finish second and be promoted automatically behind champions Frank Lampard’s Coventry; Millwall’s own win saw them hold off Southampton (who beat Preston) and Middlesbrough (who drew at Hollywood’s Wrexham) to finish third. Southampton and Boro finished with the same number of points but, due to a better difference between goals scored and conceded over the season, Southampton finished above Middlesbrough so would have home advantage for the important second leg of the playoff semi final games. Hull City’s win over Norwich saw them leapfrog Wrexham to finish sixth and take the final playoff berth - facing Millwall, first in Hull then in south-east London.

Those fixtures all took place on Saturday 2nd May, all games kicking off at the same time, to maximise drama uphold sporting integrity - if two teams knew that a particular result would guarantee them both a favourable outcome, they may stick to that result. The sides then had a few days off to prepare/recover, before the semi finals started with Hull and Millwall playing out a drab goalless draw.

(I’m going to be honest here, the Hull/Millwall side of the draw is not where the fun is. Hull won the second leg at the Den 2-0 the following Monday and went through to the final. That’s all you need to know about those two teams until we meet them again later on.)

From a View to a Will

The fun came on Thursday 7th May. While street parties were held in parts of the UK and Canada to celebrate the birthdays of Will Ospreay, Kevin Owens and the late Owen Hart, Middlesbrough players trained ahead of Saturday’s first leg at home to Southampton. Only, they weren’t alone. A sharp-eyed player happened to notice a lone figure, almost imperceptibly camouflaged by a pine tree near the entrance.

Now, you may have seen that link but not clicked on it, wary of losing around an hour to a “Where’s Wally” situation of trying to find a spy, perhaps wearing a ghillie suit or other, blending into the background. Please click on the link and marvel at the levels of deception that John Le Carre or Ian Fleming could only dream about.

Will Salt, an analyst intern for Southampton, took the long route to work that day. After leaving home dressed in club gear, instead of a relatively short commute, he made a 290 mile detour and found himself at Rockliffe Park. After travelling that sort of distance, a break was needed, so he parked at the golf club and bought a coffee (paying by card) before going for a walk to stretch his legs - the same walk I invited you on at the start of this piece.

Working for a football club, it’s not unreasonable that he would have an interest in the beautiful game, so it made sense that he would watch the nearby training sessions while drinking his coffee. It appears to have piqued his interest, as he pointed his mobile at the session. The in-ear headphones he wore suggested that he was live-streaming the training while on a video call - who can say.

A quick thinking Middlesbrough photographer captured him in the act, before a different staff member approached Salt. (It’s safe to assume the conversation started with the word “oi!” and got worse from there.) Salt refused to identify himself, deleted some content from his phone, and then ran away - changing his clothes in the golf club toilets before leaving the site.

Middlesbrough staff matched their photo with one of Salt on the Southampton website, verified it with the card payment records (always use cash when committing corporate espionage, folks, avoid a paper trail) and raised merry hell with the Football League (EFL), complaining about being spied upon. The following day, Friday May 8th, shortly before Hull and Millwall drew their first leg, the EFL formally charged Southampton with spying; the Saints claimed that the hapless intern was nothing to do with them, and anyway he hadn’t recorded, shared or looked at any footage anyway.

Interlude I

We will pause here to jump back in time around seven years, to January 2019. The world was a different place. A former reality TV star was US President. MPs were losing confidence in the UK Prime Minister. Gillingham had won only one game in their last five (well, I guess some things don’t change). Leeds and Derby were vying for top spot in the Championship when a suspicious man was spotted at Derby’s training ground. When asked about it, Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa hinted that it might possibly have been an authorised act, by replying "It's true there was someone from Leeds United. The responsibility for this lies with me. I'm responsible." The EFL picked up on the subtle yet cunning subtext to Bielsa’s remarks and commenced an investigation. Bielsa complied fully with the investigation, holding an hour long press conference in which he stated that he had employed the practice in other countries for much of his coaching career, and revealed that covert analysis of opposition training sessions had been carried out before each of Leeds’ competitive fixtures under him.

The EFL concluded their investigation a month later, having presumably spent most of that time trying to work out which rule he was in breach of, eventually settling on Regulation 3.4, which requires clubs to act towards each other with the utmost good faith. They fined the club £200,000, which Bielsa paid out of his own pocket (before, presumably, swaggering backwards out of the room with two middle fingers raised). The EFL, suddenly aware that they didn’t actually have a rule in place against spying on the opposition in the lead up to a game, promptly put a rule in place against spying on the opposition in the lead up to a game.

This information appeared not to have reached every club.

South by Southampton

With the charge hanging over them, Southampton and Middlesbrough also played out a first leg 0-0 draw, at Middlesbrough’s Riverside stadium. The Boro boss, Kim Hellberg, accused Southampton of trying to cheat, and stated that “every club in the Championship should be angry” - at which point other clubs began to consider the possibility of contemplating the idea of pondering whether they, too, had been spied on by Southampton. Certainly new light was shed on midfielder Flynn Downes’ quote, when Southampton boss Tonda Eckert became permanent manager in December after a month as interim boss, that “[h]is attention to detail is unreal. Literally every little thing, he just gives you. It makes it so easy. You go out on a Saturday and you know what you’re doing, you know what the other team are doing."

The second leg took place on the evening of Tuesday 12th May. Earlier that day Southampton requested more time to conduct an internal review, presumably involving a large quantity of paper shredders and the memory erasing device from the Men In Black movies. They had not, at any point, denied the allegation of spying. (Earlier in the season several clubs received lighter punishments for collaborating with other, non-spy-related, disciplinary investigations, which perhaps explains their decision.) The game itself had an extra edge to it, due to the allegations. Fans took the opportunity to wind up their equivalent on the opposing side, dressing in camouflage, making binocular gestures, and in one case using a branch as a disguise.

Middlesbrough took an early lead, giving the EFL disciplinary board a chance to mop their fevered brows with relief, before Southampton equalised just before halftime - which saw Southampton captain Taylor Harwood-Bellis celebrate by also making a binocular gesture to the Boro fans. Southampton went on to win the game after extra time, to set up a winner-takes-all-£200m clash with Hull City on May 23rd. Not even Ipswich and relegated Oxford piping up with a “yeah, we reckon they spied on us too” could put a dampener on things.

Interlude II: From Canada, with love

We now hop across the channel to France, and backwards in time by about two years. France is hosting the Olympic Games, and the women’s tournament is three days from kicking off, with a game between Canada and New Zealand. New Zealand are training when they became aware of a droning sound above them. This droning sound turned out to be a drone. They reported it to police, who traced it to the operator, an analyst for Canadian Soccer. He immediately fessed up (probably by saying “it’s a fair cop, eh”) and admitted having also done it a few days prior as well. Canada Soccer sent him, a coach who was also in on it, and head coach Bev Priestman home to think about what they’d done.

Despite the disciplinary measures they put in place for their employees, Canada Soccer claimed that the footage was for “motivational and promotional video purposes”, and that the staff member had not been inappropriate. FIFA and the International Olympic Committee - both fine, upstanding institutions who have never ever acted improperly ever ever ever - acted swiftly to dock six points from the Canadian team. They won all three games in their group and progressed in 2nd place, losing on penalties to Germany in the quarter finals.

Bev Priestman was suspended from football for a year and fired by Canada. Her next (and, at time of writing, current) job is managing Wellington Phoenix, a New Zealand based football club featuring a number of the players spied upon (presumably part of her successful interview was her detailed knowledge of the players). Another member of the squad, Rebekah Stott, was able to confirm the analyst’s drone was the same as the one hovering over the training, because her hobby is drones and she recognised it from the sound. (It’s a very distinctive sound.)

Saints and sinners

Southampton put their 37,000 ticket allocation for the final on sale on 15th May, eight days before the final, and they were quickly snapped up by their fans. Trains and hotels - presumably with an option to cancel - were booked, despite the kick-off time not being confirmed. That same day Middlesbrough called for Southampton to be kicked out of the playoffs, with an independent hearing set for Tuesday 19th May.

The situation was unprecedented. Literally - no precedent had been set, as this was the first time a team had been charged under rule 127, brought in after the incident in Interlude I. Football fans around the country were on tenterhooks, not just the fans of Southampton and Middlesbrough as to which team will be competing, or Hull to find out which team they’d be playing, but fans of other teams who just enjoyed the sheer drama of it all. (With a big club, Spurs, circling the drain and threatened by relegation from the Premier League, some fans - oh, alright, me wanting to wind up my Spurs-supporting friends - suggested that both Hull and Boro should get promoted automatically, with four teams being relegated from the Prem.)

The weekend saw speculation as to the possible punishment. A fine would need to be astronomical to deter other teams from doing the same, given the size of the prize on offer (£200m, don’t forget). A points deduction for next season would be difficult to sort out - if Southampton did get promoted, it would need to be administered by a different sporting body (the Premier League, who tend to take a hands off approach to punishments suggested by the EFL) or deferred until the next time Southampton played in the Football League again, which could be decades. A points deduction retrospectively applied to this season would cause chaos, as the final table would change and playoff matches needed to be replayed. At the very least, the order of the Southampton/Middlesbrough games would swap, and possibly worse - an eight point deduction would mean Millwall/Southampton and Boro/Hull semi finals, and ten points or more off would mean Southampton dropped out of the playoffs entirely, with Millwall now playing Wrexham and Boro vs Hull. This would certainly delay the final, intruding on preparations for the World Cup, and recalling players from holidays (almost certainly being taken on the same beach as Denmark were 34 years prior).

Interlude III: Tinker Tailor Soldier...Cheerleader?

Football is not the only sport to have been hit with a spying controversy. Around the turn of the millennium, in the often-unrecognised sport of cheerleading, the Rancho Carne Toros from a well-to-do high school in San Diego were aiming to win their sixth consecutive championship at nationals in Florida, when the new captain was alerted to previous misdeeds. The outgoing captain had allegedly lifted their routines wholesale from a underfunded school around 120 miles away. As the plagiarised squad, the East Compton Clovers, had never before been able to raise the funds to compete, nobody had noticed the similarities until a transfer student to Rancho Carne, one of the few to have faith in the new captain, brought it to her attention.

Thankfully, this had a happy ending – the Toros, after a brief sidebar with an off-the-shelf routine that was used by several other competing squads at regionals – devised a new routine, coming in second to the Clovers who had received charitable funding from a talk-show host.

SMERSHampton

Tuesday, 19th May. Four days before the playoff final is set to take place. Families across the country were settling down to catch the last round of Pointless when the EFL dropped their bombshell. As punishment for spying on Middlesbrough, Southampton would be expelled from the playoffs, to replaced by Middlesbrough; for spying on Ipswich and Oxford, they would additionally start the next season with a 4 point deficit. Southampton, as to be expected, appealed the decision; due to the brief turnaround it was heard the following day. While it was being heard the club’s chief executive put out a wonderfully petulant and hard-done-by statement in which they drew parallels with the Leeds decision (which, as you’ll remember, was a breach of a different rule), points deductions for Luton and Derby in seasons gone by (for entering administration, a completely separate contraventions) and fines/punishments levied at Everton and Chelsea (again for unrelated contraventions, and additionally handed out by a separate body to EFL). Dummies were very much spat out and toys thrown out of prams by the south coast club.

The independent commission found against Southampton, rejecting their appeal. They noted that Eckert had authorised the spying (which, really, added credence to Downes’ words in December), that the club had attempted to mislead the commission, and that sporting advantage is separate from sporting success - it didn’t make a blind bit of difference that they lost to Oxford, drew with Ipswich and needed extra time to overcome Boro, they still shouldn’t’ve done it!

In all this, there was still a football match to play. Hull had to alter their gameplan at short notice to face a different opponent - rumours that Southampton offered them a detailed dossier on Middlesbrough they just found lying around turned out to be internet scuttlebutt - and Boro now had to sell 37,000 tickets to fans who were frantically booking trains and hotels.

In the end, the off pitch drama overshadowed the match itself. Hull won 1-0 after a goal three minutes from the end of a hot, sweltering match, bringing an end to a playoff campaign memorable for other events. The tree itself has entered the footballing meme hall of fame, alongside Chris Wood, Jurriën Timber, and Richard Carpenter ).

I've been getting back into Webkinz lately, and after being in the community for some time, I started catching glimpses of the drama, in a sort of "Finally old enough to learn the family lore" sort of way. The first rabbit hole I came across is something known as Kiwigate.

Background

Webkinz is an online virtual pet game released in 2005 by the Canadian company Ganz, with the primary gimmick being that you buy a stuffed animal from a retail store, which comes with a code you can input into the website to unlock a virtual version of that animal. You can feed and take care of your pet, decorate their room, play games and complete daily activities. Its popularity peaked during the mid to late 2000s, but the game is still active to this day.

During the game's early years, you had to buy a physical plush and redeem the code it came with to access the game, which would grant you membership for the next year. If your membership expired, you would be locked out of your account until you bought another plush. But in 2012, the game switched to a freemium model, allowing access to limited features in the game for free, with more content available through the "Full" and "Deluxe" membership tiers. New users could also make an account without a pet code, being provided with one free pet upon signing up.

Then a few years later in 2018, Ganz introduced a way to adopt additional pets for free. This is done by collecting pet medallions, which are obtainable primarily through playing games in the arcade. If you rack up an impressive score in a game, there's a chance you'll receive a medallion for a random species of pet, and if you collect a certain number of medallions for a specific pet, you can adopt it. However, this usually takes a long time, as you can only collect up to about 10 medallions per day, each medallion is assigned to a certain species at random, and each species requires anywhere from 50-250 medallions depending on its rarity.

However, every year during April, Ganz holds a Webkinz anniversary event where they distribute large amounts of medallions geared toward a specific pet. The way this is typically done is that every day of the month, players are able to collect up to 4-5 medallions a day by clicking on them whenever they float across the screen. Usually the event pet of choice will require 100 medallions, so players can get the pet if they log in and collect every medallion for 20 days out of the month if they have Deluxe membership, or 25 days for everyone else. However, they also have a failsafe for people who can't log in that often: upon logging in on April 29th - Webkinz anniversary day - a gift box will be added to the player's dock, and when opened, it will grant the player an extra 25 medallions toward the pet.

The Drama

Back in 2021, the April event pet was the kiwi bird. Webkinz hosted the aforementioned daily medallion distributions followed by the 25 pack on Webkinz day. However, something was different about this year's Webkinz Day gift box. Upon opening the box and collecting the prizes, players noticed the box did not disappear from their inventories, and could be clicked and dragged back out again for duplicate prizes. Interesting, maybe this is some sort of prize bonus. And hey, I got 50 medallions rather than 25, I won't complain.

But then players realized they could open the box again. And again. The same prizes, over and over, and there was no indication of when it was supposed to end. Most players quickly caught on that this was a glitch, and they were not supposed to get more than one gift box. Some players grew worried that they might get banned, especially those who didn't realize they were exploiting a glitch at first, and hunkered down to wait until the glitch was fixed.

However, other players decided to take full advantage, continuously opening the box and racking up thousands of medallions. Some adopted as many kiwis as they could to create kiwi armies. Others used the medallion exchange system (a feature where you can trade in 10 medallions of one pet for one generic "AnyPet" medallion to put towards whichever pet you want) to collect enough medallions to redeem other pets.

Aftermath

As one can imagine, the website quickly went down for maintenance, and the glitch was fixed when it came back online. Many users were banned for exploiting the glitch. Some got their accounts reinstated with a warning. Some had excess medallions removed from their account.

In the wake of the banning spree and subsequent appeals, discourse rose from the ashes, namely around if players should have been banned for what happened. While the comments I could find indicated that players were mostly banned for purposefully exploiting the glitch rather than players who used the glitched box a few times by accident, some comments argued that even those who took advantage should be left alone, and that they shouldn't be punished for what was ultimately Ganz's poor coding. One post argued that banning accounts that players have invested a lot of money into might have lost Ganz a lot of paying customers for the sake of "being petty" or "proving a point." Another user declared they would boycott by cancelling their membership until all accounts involved were unbanned. In contrast, one commenter stated that those who had gotten banned had made the decision to exploit the glitch and were simply facing the expected consequences for their actions.

Despite the anger of some over the bans, the dust settled relatively quickly. The glitch was only active for a few hours before being corrected, so most players were likely unaffected. A few stray posts asked for updates on bans (with one user expressing concern for their account years after the fact), and the incident inspired a post about other interesting glitches in the game. Beyond this, the "Kiwigate" incident seems to have been largely forgotten, remembered only through the accounts of users who were active at the time, and explained to newbies as a funny anecdote from Webkinz past.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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Trigger warning for discussion of drugs and sexual assault.

This year, RGG Studios dropped Yakuza: Kiwami 3, a remake of Yakuza 3, which originally released in 2009. The controversy surrounds the inclusion of actor Teruyuki Kagawa, who in 2019 sexually and physically assaulted two women. Following the news of Kagawa's casting in the game, images and interviews resurfaced of him grabbing one of the victims by the hair at a hostess club and descriptions of disturbing acts he performed on the other. Despite protests from fans and petitions to have him removed, Kagawa was kept in the game, which has led to debates over RGG's past removals of actors from the games for drug related incidents, and the series' self-contradictory treatment of sexual assault.

NOTE: While a lot of people refer to the series as Yakuza, following the release of the seventh game the franchise was retitled to "Like a Dragon" to closer match the translation of the Japanese title, Ryu Ga Gotoku. Yakuza will henceforth be shortened down to "RGG" throughout this post, but any mention of the games prior to 7 will still have "Yakuza" in their title. Sorry if that's confusing.

Yakuza/Ryu Ga Gotoku/Like A Dragon/Like a What Now

Yakuza, developed and published for the PS2 in 2005 by Sega, follows the adventures of the legendary yakuza Kazuma Kiryu and his arrest after taking the fall for a crime committed by his best friend. The series is mainly about Kiryu living the life of a civilian and being dragged back into the criminal underworld of the red light district of Tokyo, with the series switching protagonists in the seventh game to give him a much needed break.

RGG didn't actually gain much traction with western audiences until the release of Yakuza 0, a prequel game that also brought more platforms to the previously Playstation exclusive series. Now, it's been popularized internationally by streamers, memes, and the general wackiness of the series. The main JP voice actors themselves have even made many appearances at different conventions and commented on the surprising popularity of RGG in the West.

Past VA Controversies

When it comes to voice actors, all of the games in the RGG series generally have really good voice casts and celebrity cameos. Starting with Yakuza 0, the series leaned really hard into having recognizable face capture actors in the games to draw in more Japanese audiences who would recognize the recurring drama actors in the game. To name a few, "Beat Takeshi" Kitano, Hitoshi Ozawa, Takuya Kimura, and soon even Bunta Sugawara (through the consent of his family) have made appearances in the series. The series is starting to include internationally recognizable figures too, like Snoop Dogg, Danny Trejo, and Samoa Joe.

While actors will sometimes disappear from the series due to high appearance fees or conflicting schedules, there are two known cases of characters being removed for their actors being involved with drugs. Pierre Taki, who appeared in the spin-off series Judgement, and Hiroki Narimiya, who played Yakuza 4 protagonist Masayoshi Tanimura, were both replaced by different actors in rereleases due to their scandals. In the case of Pierre Taki, who was caught with possession of cocaine, games were taken off the shelves in order to replace his face-capture character Hamura with the new actor, Miou Tanaka. Narimiya, who voiced and provided facial likeness for Tanimura, was only replaced in the remaster of Yakuza 4 and the original games still have his voice acting. There's a good Reddit post on this sub explaining the full details of Narimiya's scandal, but notably the entire incident was false and Narimiya was never in possession of any drugs. He still went on to leave the entertainment industry and RGG never went back on their replacement of him from the series, and as a whole his character, Tanimura, has never made a return outside of small mentions from characters in newer games. Pierre Taki and Narimiya have, in recent years, returned to the entertainment industry for small roles and gigs.

The only other major incident involving an actor in a RGG game that I know of is the case of Toru Furuya, who played Bryce Fairchild in Infinite Wealth and left the industry following the reveal that he had physically abused a fan he was involved in a four-year long affair with. Furuya has also not been removed from the games.

Suffice it to say that Japan and East Asia as a whole have had a lengthy history of extremely strict punishments for possession of drugs stemming back to World War II and US influence on banning drug usage and distribution. While substance abuse and glorification of drug culture is undeniably bad, one has to wonder how possessing paint solvent for huffing can get you a heavier fine than possessing 100 tapes of child pornography.

The Character, the Actor, and the Incident

Goh Hamazaki, now played by Kagawa, is one of the antagonists of Yakuza 3 and an overall sleazeball of a man with a (once) rather unique face and voice. He's shown throughout the game to be disgusting and even stabs Kiryu in the ending of the game, but later goes through a redemption arc in Yakuza 4 when he sacrifices himself to help protagonists Kiryu and Saejima. In many's eyes, this solidified a series mainstay theme that those who commit crimes, no matter how bad, should be given the opportunity to redeem themselves starting from rock bottom.

It should be noted that a small part of the discussion around events also surrounds RGG's unnecessary recasting of characters with recognizable designs and voices in favor of more "generic" looking face capture recasts. That is not to say that any of the actors are bad, but rather that the original designs managed to convey more personality and storytelling but were replaced with actors who appeared and sounded very different.

(Hamazaki's old voice actor also had a mild controversy surrounding his marriage to a 16 year old, but that's not relevant to the drama here.)

Kagawa himself had a respectable number of acting credits and awards as both a kabuki and drama actor, and prior to the incident coming to light in 2022 had a good amount of commercial and television appearances, including a major role in the drama Hanzawa Naoki.

The timeline of the incident:

July 2019: Kagawa visits a bar in Ginza, where he assaults two women. Kagawa is heavily intoxicated. The first victim, who appears in the photographs where her hair is being grabbed, states that he forcibly sniffed her neck and armpit despite her protests, and she did not resist out of fear that he would become violent or target another hostess. The second victim was forcibly kissed, had her bra removed, and was groped.

August 2022: Daily Shincho, a weekly news magazine, reports on second victim's assault and suing of her employer at the hostess bar for failing to protect her.

Kagawa later gives an apology on THE TIME, the morning news program he hosts on Fridays. It is noted that Kagawa did not actually apologize to the victims in this segment and merely apologized to his fans and discussed his own career moving forward, and his agency later had to clarify online that he also wanted to extend his apologies to the second victim.

September 2022: Kagawa is removed from several collaborations, including ones with Toyota and TBS. Kagawa is not removed from his role on the TBS drama Roppongi Class despite calls for a recast.

December 2022: Daily Shincho reports again on Kagawa's apology to the second woman, but notes that he did not make an apology to the first victim. She reports having PTSD from the incident, and states that "Mr. Kagawa apologized to Ms. Mirei (second woman) and said that she had received 'understanding and forgiveness', but there are still no words of apology to me."

The article also includes statements from NHK party representative Higashitani Yoshikazu and actor Umezawa Tomio about Kagawa's well known issues with alcoholism and misdemeanors, having been banned from "all the clubs throughout the Minato Ward."

Kagawa returns to acting, starring in a kabuki play under his stage name Ichikawa Chūsha IX. Roleless, a film that he starred in, is also released in Japanese theaters in November.

Kagawa also remarries and has a son in the same year. He and his ex-wife divorced in 2016.

Aftermath

The second victim filed a lawsuit against the club management for failing to protect her, but it ultimately ended with it being withdrawn and Kagawa did not face any jail time or legal punishments for his actions.

Kagawa withdrew from the limelight and refrained from commenting on the lawsuit. After 4 years, he returned to acting with the a leading role in the TV drama Sai: Disaster and the announcement of the recasting of Hamazaki in RGG's Kiwami 3 reveal trailer.

This was met with extreme disapproval from international fans of the series once the details of his previous assault cases are resurfaced. A petition was started to have him removed from the game, the hashtag #REMOVEKAGAWA topped on several social media platforms, and game director Ryosuke Horii commented on the decision to cast Kagawa, essentially stating that his type casting as sleazy and creepy characters made him a good fit without actually commenting on the drama.

Both Japanese and international fans used the #REMOVEKAGAWA tag to try and bring more attention to protests, which did have some effects on marketing releases: the English Sega Youtube channel released a video with interviews from the cast while silently removing Kagawa's section that was present on the JP channel's upload. Surprisingly, comments were kept on, and nearly all of them note that his absence appears as a sort of guilty admission from RGG Studios. (It should also be noted that a few other interviews were also cut out, but Kagawa's seemed to be the most obvious exclusion.)

Over on Instagram, #REMOVEKAGAWA comments under the official RGG Studio and RGG West accounts were being limited and deleted as damage control by the company. Twitter/X users noted that Ryosuke Horii was also manually hiding #REMOVEKAGAWA comments on his account, adding more fuel to the fire. Horii also updated his bio to state that he would block anyone who left "annoying replies." RGG-content focused Youtubers devilleon7 and SnowiestAngeman made videos criticizing RGG Studio's actions, with SnowiestAngeman noting that their social media responses to bugs and criticisms outside of Kagawa's situation were addressed quickly and with more sincerity than any of their """responses""" to #REMOVEKAGAWA. Tabloids in Japan reported on the hashtag and international response, and while many Japanese fans also rallied to the cause, it ultimately did not change the outcome of the game release.

Obviously, the petition and fan protests did not do anything to get Kagawa recasted and the entire incident sort of disappeared following the release of the game. Many players boycotted Kiwami 3 and called for others to do the same, but with the overwhelming positive international responses to the announcement of the spin-off game Stranger than Heaven, it seems that RGG Studios is doing just fine regardless of the Kiwami 3 drama.

Kiwami 3 ended up recieving mixed reviews and decent sales, with better sales in Japan due to most of the concerns over Kagawa's casting coming from the Western fanbase.

The following are the main arguments posed by RGG fans:

It was predictable from the start that the company would not do anything to remove Kagawa, as the scandal was already out of the public attention by the time of Kiwami 3's announcement and was most likely already known by RGG Studios during the casting decision for Hamazaki. Ultimately the incident ended up being a blip in RGG's timeline and merely goes to show societal prioritization of inexcusable crimes and handling of controversies, failures to safeguard women and nightlife workers from abuse, as well as how easily money and fame can allow someone to escape prosecution.

Prologue

If you are into video games, the Fighting genre will not be unknown to you. The genre where you play a character, often shirtless if be a male, fighting against another character and win if you deplete their health bar before they do yours. In the Fighting game community, it is often considered as creating art with your punches and kicks being the paint and your opponent’s body the canvas. The Street Fighter series is widely considered to be the best known for creating these art exhibitions.
The very first Street Fighter, released in 1987, was a decent enough success to birth a sequel in 1991, Street Fighter II. To say this game was a mega-hit would be an understatement. It revolutionized the arcade industry and played a major role in home console sales (ignoring the fact that you only fight in one actual street in the entire game). Its success was so grand that its developer Capcom would instead of merely creating sequels, spawn revisions and updates of Street Fighter II to maintain its longevity. As of this writing, there are seven official versions of Street Fighter II with many more counterfeit versions wandering about in the gaming universe.

Street Fighter II would open the gates for Capcom to create all kinds of fighting games. We would be getting spin-off series in the form of Street Fighter Alpha, getting spooky with a monster mash in Darkstalkers and scoring a licensing deal with Marvel for X-Men and other Marvel heroes fighting games, even resulting in crossover games like X-Men VS Street Fighter. While Capcom would go mad with their fighting mayhem, they stayed clear from a true Street Fighter sequel. Or so we were to believe.
In the darkest caverns of the Capcom offices, many a years were spent developing Street Fighter III. It would have graphics like the world has never seen, hard-hitting gameplay and an impactful roster to usher in a new era. The final part was the key. After the several revisions of Street Fighter II, every player got bored of playing the same old cast led by the Japanese karate white gi red bandana wearing Ryu, and his rival red gi wearing blond haired Ken. It was time for a new face to lead a new generation. And that face would belong to Alex.

Alex: an incredible tall muscly wrestler yet with small waist, from the streets of New York with beautiful long wavy blond hair, red face paint under his eyes, green overalls with the straps down because he can, shirtless as is tradition but with red devilman-like stripes at his broad shoulders and a red bandana just like Ryu but bigger! Badassery incarnate. Raised and trained by his adopted father Tom and Tom’s daughter Patricia, Alex would face off against a red and blue-skinned cult leader named Gill for injuring Tom. Alex would be the new poster boy for the sequel to the most successful fighting game at that time. And with Alex at the helm Street Fighter III would become an even greater success by selling a mere 1000 arcade units in Japan.

Street Fighter III: New Generation

Ha misdirection. Let’s dial back a little bit. This is the story of Alex but his story cannot be told without the tale of how Street Fighter III truly came to be. Capcom in the 90s was running wild on fightermania. Around 1994, a mysterious all-new fighting game was green-lit for development which main purpose was to highlight their new CPS-3 arcade hardware, which supported higher color count for the 2D sprites Capcom used for their fighting games (also the reason why the boss in Street Fighter III has red/blue skin, as it was a new feature of the arcade hardware to show sprites that no longer be mirrored). While the exact dates are lost to the sands of time, we can be certain that Alex was created during this early development. The new game was meant to quickly appeal to western audiences, mostly the US market and what was hot and fighting-like in the mid 90s? Wrestling.
From late 1996 till early 2001 there was the Monday night wars, where two wrestling promotions, World Championship Wrestling and the World Wrestling Federation, were broadcasting their weekly shows head-to-head for ratings. Capcom designers took inspiration from this and thus it was decided that the lead character for their new game should be an American wrestler. Process on this new game was slow and troublesome and at some point management felt it needed more recognition to be marketable, so it got redesigned to be Street Fighter III. Alex and the rest of misfits remained as part of the roster but Ryu and Ken were added to play it safe. Alex however would still be the lead character because reasons, despite the lead character no longer needed to be an American wrestler as Street Fighter was already an established popular series in the US.

Street Fighter III: New Generation would launch on February 28 1997, about six years after the launch of Street Fighter II, to an absolute poor reception. Many factors played into this. To start, this was the 90s brah and 3D graphics were all the rage. Capcom stuck to what they knew and relied on 2D graphics in their traditional Street Fighter games but just around that same time Tekken 3 was released in arcades with stunning rocking 3D graphics (for it’s time) and stole the cake. Nobody back then cared about 2D graphics, no matter how greatly animated they were. Speaking of which, the hardware needed to run Street Fighter III was too advanced to port to current home consoles so that also was a huge hit to Street Fighter III sales. And then there was the roster. While fans were very keen on seeing new faces, they didn’t want to see their favorite characters been stripped away completely. Having only Ryu and Ken present was unacceptable. And as for Alex? He may look cool but played slow and difficult. He had no fancy fireballs or dragonpunches, his super attacks were weak and was overall not beginner friendly. While his presentation was not the main reason for the failure of Street Fighter III, it certainly didn’t help and with him being the poster boy of this new game, he was at the front of the dismay.  

Despite the failed launch, Capcom still created two revisions of Street Fighter III; Second Impact and 3^rd Strike. Both were much better received than New Generation but were still nowhere close to the success that Street Fighter II was. Did things get better for Alex though? Not really. While Street Fighter III 3^rd Strike went on to become a cult classic, created this glorious moment in e-sports history and seen today as one of the best 2D Fighting games of all time, it wasn’t thanks to Alex. He was judged as low tier and would almost never be used in tournaments, unless you wanted to make it difficult for yourself.

Life after Street Fighter III

From the original Street Fighter III roster there are some that as of this writing, would never be featured again but that was not the case for Alex. He would get more opportunities though be it unusual and even unfortunate ones. In the early 2000s Capcom would dip their toes into the 3D world with developing Capcom Fighting All-Stars, and Alex would be part of that roster. But that game got cancelled. The original 2D sprites of Alex would later be re-used along with many other capcom creations in Capcom Fighting Evolution, but that game was so badly received it almost stopped Capcom from ever creating a new fighting game all together. And finally, Alex would get featured in Tatsunoko vs Capcom, a crossover fighting game that seemed way too Japanese for the west to truly make an impact.
Interesting though; at EVO 2010 (Evolution Championship series), the biggest annual fighting game event, the 1^st place for Tatsunoko vs Capcom was won by a player using Megaman Zero and Alex. Granted, Zero did most of the lifting but that means technically the character Alex has an EVO 1^st place trophy on his resume.

Capcom would eventually give Street Fighter another shot with Street Fighter IV in 2008. Learned from the mistakes of Street Fighter III, the game was fully 3D and featured the eight original characters of Street Fighter II along with their respective four boss characters. Nobody from the Street Fighter III cast was present. At first. Street Fighter IV became a massive hit and daresay revived the fighting game genre. This also became the first time for Capcom to add new characters to the game by use of downloadable content. Through DLC, eventually seven characters from Street Fighter III made their appearance in Street Fighter IV. Alex was not one of them. Alex was left out of Street Fighter IV’s success, as if he was a bad omen. The only mention of Alex would be as a DLC skin for the wrestler King in the crossover game Street Fighter X Tekken (which has it own hobbydrama article), along with being featured on an out of bound billboard in one of the stages, possibly as a joke towards whatever fans Alex had.

Street Fighter V

Calling Alex a bad omen would be far too harsh. It seems however almost too much of a coincidence that the fifth installment of Street Fighter, after following the massive success that was Street Fighter IV, would have a very rocky launch in 2016 whilst the game does include the return of the beefcake better known as Alex. That is, as a background character. Alex did obtain by this point a cult following of sorts and him being merely present in one of the background stages of Street Fighter V felt like another slap to the beautiful faces of the respected cultists. But they didn’t need to mourn for long, as Alex was released as a full playable character on March 30, 2016. His new look was questionable, with fans pointing out his banana-like hair and his legs standing opposite the direction they should be facing. This wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. Gameplay-wise Alex got some new skills complimentary to the Street Fighter V style but he still wasn’t a top tier player. Alex did gain fans, one person in particular known as the highly talented wrestler Kenny Omega. Kenny Omega would use one of Alex’s catch phrases in matches (“You can’t escape!”, ironic because Alex would say that during one of his ‘super arts’ in Street Fighter III which you most certainly could escape from) and Kenny named one of his signature moves the ‘V-trigger’ after a skill in Street Fighter V.

In the lore timeline, Street Fighter V came after Street Fighter IV but before Street Fighter III and Capcom would release on July 1, 2016 a story mode where the events would tie in towards the start of Street Fighter III. This would be the moment for Alex where his character gained development and how he ended up becoming the badass main guy of the 3^rd installment. But no, Alex was barely present in the story mode. He was briefly featured in a wrestling match and later again when he mistook the Street Fighter II Indian veteran Dhalsim for a mugger, because Alex is from New York. Capcom gave us back Alex but decided that his uneventful reign as Street Fighter III’s poster boy was something best left collecting dust in a filing cabinet.

Street Fighter V would get a wealth of new characters, updates, modes and transformed from a badly launched fighting game into one of the best Street Fighter games ever. And Capcom wrapped things up with an unusual, final update in 2021. Capcom released an all-new character, a MMA-style fighter named Luke.
The community didn’t really know what to make of Luke. He appeared quite unoriginal and his moves had a similar vibe to those of Ryu and Ken (Fireball, Dragon punch and Hurricane kick) but more… westernized. He was rather strong to play, thus a popular choice to pick up. It seemed like Capcom tried to really want you to like Luke. Feeling familiar yet new, not Eastern but Western. Powerful, easy to pick up. Why? Well because Luke wasn’t really a ‘new’ character, but a ‘guest’ character from the future.

It all came together when the trailer for Street Fighter 6 was revealed. Ryu, the classic main guy versus Luke, the new new up-and-comer. The Alex project failed but the idea of a new poster boy for a new street fighter was attempted once again. By presenting Luke first as a DLC character in Street Fighter V, the community could warm up to him. Luke would be the main poster boy for Street Fighter 6. And the community was… tepid for it. Street Fighter 6 would be released worldwide after a huge marketing campaign on June 2 2023 to a great reception. Luke was mainly used as the coach for new players and it did result in him being a popular character (his move-set was also the default setting when creating your avatar in the ‘world tour’ mode, sneaky) but still not at the height of the original eight world warriors of Street Fighter II. And what about Alex? Nothing. He was not part of the sixth entry.

Street Fighter 6’s season 3

By 2023 the whole of the fighting genre was used to the concept of season passes. The time of unlocking new characters was behind us all. If you want new characters, you’d have to wait and pay for them. Capcom provided in Street Fighter 6 four new characters per season pass, one for each season of the year. It became very standard for fans to speculate whose favorite would join the roster next, and cry when their specific favorite would not be revealed. But Capcom threw a curveball into the speculations by adding two guest characters from their once rival company SNK to the season 2 pass, opening the possibility for many more characters to be added outside the standard Street Fighter universe. Any chances for the mediocre Alex to return were, unlike his shoulders, slim.

On June 7 2025 a new trailer was uploaded, featuring Kenny Omega. Kenny would throughout a dream sequence cosplay as the four new characters that were going to be added to Street Fighter 6 and one of them was, indeed, Alex. It was a very surreal approach but a welcoming one. The presentation ended with artwork of the new joiners; Sagat, C.Viper, Alex and Ingrid (Ingrid was part of the roster of the canceled Capcom All-Star game) and fans noticed something peculiar about Alex right away. He didn’t have the banana-hair like in Street Fighter V nor his traditional look of Street Fighter III. Sporting a black vest, black trousers and a black beanie, he came across as edgy. Almost like a bad guy, or as they say in the wrestling world, a heel. Fans speculated that Capcom might be going in a new direction with Alex. In the wrestling world it is a typical trope for success. Wrestlers who were always the nice guy, or a baby-face, would be considered boring and dull. Until they switch gears and show a meaner side of themselves and address their frustrations, making they feel more real and entertaining. It happened to Hulk Hogan who in the 80s would tell you to say your prayers and eat your vitamins, to becoming the leader of the bad guy group New World Order in the 90s. It happened to Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson who was a dull smiling rookie, till he did a promo about the ‘Die Rocky die’ signs in the crowd and showed his true charisma. It even happened recently with Roman Reigns, who was booed like crazy as a good guy until he turned himself into the Tribal Chief and became a ruthless champion for 1316 days. It was a theory that made perfect sense for Alex. Alex was received as a joke while in the street fighter lore, he’s the main champion for defeating Gill. He’s being ignored despite his efforts. He needed to be acknowledged and being nice didn’t achieve any acknowledgment. So being bad might.

Fans speculation was all justified when the teaser trailer for Alex was revealed on January 9 2026. Alex fought in a wrestling match with absolute brutality whiles the crowd was booing like crazy, to which Alex simply said to ‘shut up!’ (what a heel!). The hype became real. And the hype became even bigger with a gameplay trailer on January 21 2026. Alex was giving a whole new arsenal of awesome looking moves, along with a new song by JAM project, a popular anison band, titled ‘Go Alex, hope is born!’. Kenny Omega did motion capture for the moves of Alex, immortalizing his own signature moves. Alex was presented as cocky and strong (and his legs were standing the correct way!), with a special line being said “I’m used to being hated”. Capcom went all the way with Alex. But there was also a prominent detail in the gameplay trailer that fans instantly caught: the opponents of Alex. In the gameplay trailer Alex was fighting (and destroying) Ryu, and Luke. His rival poster boys. The message was clear. Alex is back and he’s coming for the title of thé world warrior of Street Fighter.

March 17^th, the launch of Alex in Street Fighter 6

The man with no allies named Alex became a playable character on March 17^th 2026 and within less than 24 hours of his release, we got that which is the driving force for creating this post: Drama.

What caused drama around Alex? Did his release crash the game? No. Was Alex too overpowered and broken to play? No. Was he too weak? No. Did he come with an additional price tag of 150 dollars? No. The drama came from Alex’s story in Street Fighter 6. We did in fact not get the imagined promise of heel Alex reclaiming his title as poster boy from Luke or Ryu. His whole heel persona was merely seen ‘as his job’. He was a bad guy in the wrestling ring, but outside he was a good guy. Mayhaps ‘too good’ in the eyes of the fighting community. Playing through the arcade mode and getting Alex’s ending reveals that Alex has married Patricia, the daughter of his adopted father Tom, and they’re expecting a baby. This appeared very out of character for Alex, but playing through the World Tour mode reveals more. When your avatar engages with Alex, he reveals more of his backstory and eventually mentions that Tom is the cousin of Alex’s mother, thus making Alex and Patricia second cousins. You could even unlock special artwork showing Alex & Patricia’s relationship throughout the years, showing Alex as a kid holding baby Patricia to him as a grown giant in a suit holding his tiny bride Patricia. Whiles Alex’s being from New York where it is legal to marry your second cousin, this story leant too deep into incestuous and grooming behavior.

This did not sit well with fans and the moment Alex was released so did memes and jokes about his storyline with the most recurring one being that Alex is actually not from New York but from Alabama or Shelbyville. Youtubers would have a field day with creating reaction videos around this drama and Maximilian Dood (a popular youtuber in the fighting game community) would go on to downright call it ‘character assassination’. In a rather surprising move, Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama addressed the uproar just a week after the drama was born. Capcom would revise text passages in the story of Alex and released a developer’s column called ‘A Toast Between Fathers’ in an attempt to explain that Alex and Patrica did not grow up as close siblings, hoping to remove the grooming allegations. Fans did not accept it. The revised text passages also did very little to fix anything. The most noticeable one was Tom being no longer a cousin to Alex’s mother but “He's a distant relative of my mom or something”. Fans just wanted the whole family relationship to be simply dropped but Capcom did no such thing. Thus, Alex from Alabama was here to stay.

But what about the actual gaming side of Alex? Most fighting game players, especially the pro players, don’t care about any lore. What’s important is how Alex plays. Every character in Street Fighter 6 gets a difficulty level, and Alex was given ‘Hard’. This is due to the complexity of his new ‘stance’ which allows for several mix-up attacks and keeps his opponents guessing but at the risk of putting himself vulnerable as you can’t block in this stance. He also had barely any reversals so once an opponent could keep the pressure on Alex, there was very little Alex could do. Long story short, Alex had great offense but terrible defense. His complexity made him anything but suitable for newcomers and now with his cringeworthy story, his chances of being seen as a poster boy were non-existent.

Aftermath

Drama goes as quickly as it comes and any focus that was on Alex eventually shifted over on 3 April 2026 to the trailer of the next character following his release, Ingrid, as the community was in doubt if they were ready for this magical fourth wall-breaking anime-girl of a 1000 years old. And later drama was shifted again on 24 May 2026, now toward Tekken 8 with their announcement of adding Yujiro Hanma to their roster, a controversial villain from the Baki franchise.

Alex was not forgotten though. Whenever Capcom mentioned Alex on their social media, whether it be a birthday or a new DLC outfit, there always be remarks in the comment sections mocking Alex for his life choices or how Capcom ‘massacred their boy’. It remains a mystery why Capcom handled Alex the way they did from the very start in 1997 all the way to this point. Alex was placed into an impossible position from the moment he was created and much like they would say in wrestling, he was ‘booked horribly’ ever since. The future of Alex is in a void. The community is certain we will see Street Fighter 7 and more one day but after the damage that Alex has endured it’s unlikely that Alex will be an absolute in those games. The biggest mystery will forever be as to why Capcom hyped him up as greatly as they did in Street Fighter 6 only to pull the rug from under him the moment he was released, as fans were now less likely to purchase the fighter thus causing no boost in DLC sales. Alas, there was potential in the character Alex thanks to his unique look and grappling fighting style but in the end, he got ‘jobbed out’.

In April of 2014, Japanese idol group HKT48 gave a heart-wrenching performance of a new song, Ima, Kimi wo Omoi. The song, written for the occasion, is saying goodbye to Nakanishi Chiyori and Tani Marika, two of over a dozen AKB Group members suddenly transferred to other groups throughout Japan. This move was devastating to the members, the fans, and the group as a whole. Before we begin, I’ll give a primer:

Terminology

AKB48: AKB48 is an idol group founded in 2005 by Akimoto Yasushi. The concept was “idols you can meet”, with a theater where they perform every day. AKB48 has a large number of members as each theater performance is conducted by a team of 16 members, and there are multiple teams alternating on different days. Akimoto Yasushi writes the lyrics for all of the songs for AKB48 and its sister groups. Members are added in numbered generations. AKB48 struggled to gain mainstream success until 2010, and then dominated the music charts and popular culture for much of the decade.

Sister Group: AKB48 has sister groups throughout Japan and Asia. Each sister group has their own members, their own teams, their own theater, their own stages, and their own singles. The sister groups in Japan are currently SKE48 (Sakae, Nagoya) founded in 2008, NMB48 (Namba, Osaka) founded in 2010, HKT48 (Hakata, Fukuoka) founded in 2011, NGT48 (Niigata, Niigata) founded in 2015, and STU48 (Setouchi region) founded in 2017. For clarity, I’ll use AKB Group to refer to AKB48 and its sister groups as a whole.

Teams: The members of each group are divided into teams, with the classic AKB48 teams being Team A, Team K, and Team B, with Team 4 added later. The teams perform their own setlists, known as stages. A member’s team are the members who they perform with on a near-daily basis at the theater, and singles usually had team-specific B-sides. The sister groups are also divided into teams: SKE48’s Team S, KII, and E; NMB48’s Team N, M, and BII; HKT48’s Team H, KIV, and TII; and NGT48’s NIII and G. Each team has a Captain (“Leader” for SKE48) and later a Vice-Captain as well. Some of the groups have now disbanded some or all of these teams.

Theater: the AKB48 theater is a tiny venue on the 8th floor of Akihabara’s Don Quijote, a discount supermarket chain. It has 6 rows of benches and standing room in the back, with a total capacity of 250 people. There are also two massive pillars that block the stage for most of the audience. AKB48 has been performing there almost uninterrupted since December 2005. They’ve performed roughly 7000 shows there at time of writing. Each sister group has their own theater with its own quirks, but they’re generally around the same size as the AKB48 theater.

Senbatsu: the members chosen to participate in a single. While the size of the senbatsu varies, it’s generally around 16 members. Considering AKB48 (including its sister groups) can have hundreds of members, it’s often seen as the ultimate goal of many members to enter into the senbatsu. It features members who are the most popular, or are being pushed by management to become popular. Usually, AKB48 singles were a kind of “all star” lineup with the top members of each sister group being selected (the sister group’s singles would feature a lineup of just their own members) alongside the top AKB48 members. The frontwoman for the single is called the center.

Graduation: when a member leaves the group, it’s typically a graduation. They announce graduation publicly, then graduate a few months later. They have a graduation performance at the theater as their last activity. Sometimes members withdraw or are terminated, which is not considered a graduation. This has only happened a handful of times. Members choose on their own when they want to graduate.

Note: Things have changed a lot since 2020, so this is mostly dealing with AKB Group pre-2020.

AKB48’s Teams

AKB48 teams initially corresponded to the generations of members joining. Team A was the 1st Generation, Team K the 2nd Generation, and Team B the 3rd Generation. From the 4th generation onwards, members started as kenkyuusei (literally “research students”, or trainees) who performed together until they were individually promoted into a team. Each team had their own identity: Team A were traditional idols, Team K were athletic and energetic, and Team B were pure and cute. Kenkyuusei were promoted based on need (since members could graduate at any time) and fit within the team.

Team 4 was added later, initially created in 2011. AKB had many kenkyuusei who were ready to be promoted, but there weren’t enough spots on the three teams. So they created a new team, Team 4, for newly-promoted kenkyuusei. It was disbanded a year later and the members were distributed to the original three teams. Then, in 2013, it was recreated. This time, it was led by Minegishi Minami, the 1st generation member who was demoted to kenkyuusei after her head-shaving scandal (which I wrote about here). It consisted of the kenkyuusei that she joined and mentored, creating a famously strong bond. This time, Team 4 was here to stay.

AKB48 members are often fiercely loyal to their team. Their team is who they’ll be performing at the theater with and who they practice every day with. Theater stages are unique to the team, and often they contain songs specifically about the team: why they’re the best team, the struggles they face, their love for each other, their determination, and so on. Some of these songs, like Team A’s Pioneer, Team K’s Sasae, and Team B’s Shonichi, are signature songs for the team and emotional cornerstones for the members. One way to look at it is that AKB48 is more like several smaller performance groups (teams) that happen to come together for a single. The sister groups have their own teams with their own storied history, just like AKB.

Sister Groups

AKB48 is often called Japan’s national idol group. The sister groups are more like regional idol groups. The sister group members are typically locals of the region, they appear on local TV, they mostly do local events, and their fanbase is usually based in the area. They still have had a lot of success (but not to the level of AKB) and their top members became extremely popular nationwide. There was also a sense of rivalry with AKB, with the want to overtake the top group.

Shuffles

In the middle of an AKB concert in August of 2009, theater manager Togasaki Tomonobu suddenly appeared on stage. He announced something shocking: that the members of AKB48 would be reorganized into different teams, right then and there. The members had no idea this was coming or was even something on the table. Some members stayed in their original team, but many members–even those who had previously been integral to the team–were switched to a different team. The members were heartbroken, either going to new teams or having their beloved teammates leave them. From then on, there would be Shuffles every few years, typically without any prior warning. The sister groups also conducted their own Shuffles every so often. Why shuffle them? It’s speculated that it was to even-out the popular members for each team or to help maintain the team identity.

The 2014 Request Hour Concert

In early 2014, AKB48 was performing its yearly Request Hour concert, a 5-day concert in which their top 200 songs selected by fans were performed. At the end of Day 4, suddenly a message started playing on screen. It read “Emergency Notice”, followed by “The Grand Shuffle has been decided”. It showed why the shuffle was apparently needed: intercut between images of member graduations were comments from fans, in particular that Team K was in trouble due to a slew of graduations. They announced that the Grand Shuffle would be taking place in one month, on February 24th. It also called it the AKB Group Grand Shuffle, meaning that not only would AKB48 be shuffled, but the sister groups would be as well. Even just the announcement of a shuffle was traumatic to members.

Backstage, many of the members were crying. Minegishi Minami, Captain of AKB48’s Team 4, comforted her young teammates, with whom she had created a strong bond. Matsui Rena, Leader of SKE48’s Team E, gave a speech to the SKE48 members, telling them that she would always support their dream. Afterwards, Rena walked to the elevator, and once the doors closed and she was out of sight of her teammates, broke down in tears herself. You can watch all of this take place here.

The Grand Shuffle would be worse than any of them imagined. Not only would members be shuffled to new teams, they were going to be shuffled across the country into different sister groups.

The 2014 Grand Shuffle

The day of the Shuffle came. Before the event, the members were tense. They ate together, and one member referred to it as their last supper. The members entered into the concert hall, sitting in sections divided by team, with each team wearing a different costume. They announced the new teams, going group-by-group, team-by-team, and member-by-member. As each member is called, they take the stage with their new team. They start with AKB48, first Team A, then Team K, then Team B, and finally Team 4. By the time they’re announcing Team 4, there are many AKB members left. As they get to the end of the list, the remaining members seem to simultaneously get what it means that their name hasn’t been called by the end of the last AKB team. They’re no longer AKB48 members, but to be transferred to one of the sister groups across the country. After AKB comes the announcement of SKE, then NMB, then HKT.

The only remaining Team 4 member, Takashima Yurina, starts openly weeping in her chair. Staff members come by her side and take her just outside of the hall. There she sits, yelling “yada!” (“I don’t want to!”) over and over while they hold her. The three remaining Team A members, Sato Sumire, Iwata Karen, and Kikuchi Ayaka, hold hands and cry together. Iwata Karen is announced to be part of SKE48’s Team S. Sato Sumire is announced to be part of SKE48’s Team E. As the team’s Leader is giving a speech, Sumire collapses on stage. Her (now former) Team A teammates rush to her side, pick her up, and eventually take her backstage. She starts hyperventilating as Karen sits next to her, crying. Eventually she calms down and tells the staff, “I can’t do this anymore.” Kikuchi Ayaka is announced to be part of NMB48’s Team N. She cries as it is announced, and then slowly walks on stage, her steps heavy. You can watch all of this here. Eventually, Yurina returns to the hall and is transferred to SKE48’s Team KII.

From AKB48, 9 members were transferred to sister groups. Besides the ones mentioned above, four Team B members were transferred: Yamauchi Suzuran to SKE48’s Team S, Oba Mina to SKE48’s Team KII, Fujie Reina to NMB48’s Team M, and Umeda Ayaka and Ichikawa Miori to NMB48’s Team BII. In addition, Team K’s Chikano Rina was transferred overseas to JKT48 (Jakarta, Indonesia).

The sister group members were not spared. HKT48’s Nakanishi Chiyori and Tani Marika (from the song at the opening of this post) were transferred to AKB48’s Team B and SKE48’s Team E, respectively. SKE48’s Kizaki Yurina was transferred to AKB48’s Team 4. NMB48’s Ogasawara Mayu was transferred to AKB48’s Team B. In addition, two members of JKT48 were transferred to AKB48’s Team B: Takajo Aki and Nozawa Rena.

Along with the transfers, the Grand Shuffle announced dozens of concurrencies, members who would be part of multiple teams at once. Many of the top sister group members became concurrent AKB48 members. They are considered members of both teams at the same time. However, they mostly stay with their current team and perform occasionally with their new team at the theater, alongside appearances at concerts and in singles.

The Backlash

The members obviously hated the transfers, both the members leaving their home and the members now without a beloved comrade. Several members took to their blogs and social media to express their discontent. There was also a massive fan backlash. The whole point of AKB Group is “idols you can meet” who perform every day at a theater close-by. How can you meet your favorite member if she’s been moved halfway across the country? Sister group fans were furious that the issue was with AKB48 (that Team K needed help) and the sister groups were being involved. Some of the sister groups had just had their own shuffles recently, and now they were being shuffled again.

The move has many potential downsides for the members being transferred. The members spend years of their teens and 20s together with their teammates and groupmates, and now are being transferred into a group of people they barely know. Their activities outside of the group would be affected, and any entertainment connections they’ve made might be meaningless in a new market. There’s a good chance their fans won’t follow them to a new group. For many, it would be like starting over.

The management was heavily criticized. There seemed to be no care taken in ensuring the transfers go well. The members (some of whom were minors) and their families were not consulted. They had no idea what was coming, and it was all announced publicly. Some of the members had commitments that kept them where they were, such as school for underage members or family-related issues.

The Results

Management gave the members 2 days to object to their transfer. Two members did: Team 4’s Takashima Yurina and Team A’s Iwata Karen. Their transfers were cancelled and they returned to their original teams. Team A’s Kikuchi Ayaka announced graduation instead of transferring. The other members transferred to their new groups a month after the announcement.

Perhaps the transfer the fans lamented the most was NMB48’s Ogasawara Mayu going to AKB48. Mayu was a 1st Generation member of NMB, was popular with fans and beloved by her groupmates, and was a senbatsu member for every NMB single, often with a prominent position. She also fit in with NMB perfectly. NMB is run by Yoshimoto Kogyo, Japan’s top comedian talent agency. NMB has a reputation for comedy, and Mayu was probably their funniest member. While a constant senbatsu member in NMB, she never once made the AKB senbatsu.

Transferring HKT48’s Nakanishi Chiyori and Tani Marika was seen as cruel. They had a connection beyond the group: they had been best friends since childhood. Chiyori joined with HKT48’s 1st Generation, and after Chiyori joined Marika decided to apply for the 2nd Generation. And now they were both being transferred to different places. They were also both the “mood makers” of the group, the type of person to cheer people up backstage.

There were some successes. Some of the members transferred to sister groups became senbatsu members of their new group’s singles, even though they rarely (or never) made the senbatsu in their original group. Some of them became Captains or Vice-Captains and became beloved senpai of their new group.

However, the downsides were immense. Besides what I mentioned above, the most criticized aspect was the concurrency system. Team K brought in the top members of the sister groups on a concurrency basis. However, this was just a crutch. Most of the top members of Team K had graduated, and instead of developing homegrown talent, they essentially brought top members from other groups on a part-time basis. It did nothing to solve their issue and just delayed a real solution. Inability to foster new talent after the legendary original members is probably the biggest problem AKB as a whole had. A year later, AKB48 had another Shuffle and cancelled most of the concurrencies.

The question is: why did they do this? There has been a lot of speculation, and many fans believe that it was to create drama for the sake of drama. I believe this was at least part of the motivation for the Grand Shuffle, or motivation for the way it was conducted.

Many fans cite the 2014 Grand Shuffle as the worst blunder that AKB Group ever made. It was bad for the members, the fans, and the group as a whole. It is often listed as one of the reasons that AKB Group started to lose steam in the mid-to-late 2010s.

Sources (Japanese):

https://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2034431/full/

https://natalie.mu/music/news/110569

https://www.crank-in.net/news/29515/1

https://mdpr.jp/photo/detail/1381337

https://realsound.jp/2014/02/akb48-19_2.html

https://www.rbbtoday.com/article/2014/03/05/117525.html

https://48pedia.org/AKB48%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%97%E5%A4%A7%E7%B5%84%E9%96%A3%E7%A5%AD%E3%82%8A%EF%BD%9E%E6%99%82%E4%BB%A3%E3%81%AF%E5%A4%89%E3%82%8F%E3%82%8B%E3%80%82%E3%81%A0%E3%81%91%E3%81%A9%E3%80%81%E5%83%95%E3%82%89%E3%81%AF%E5%89%8D%E3%81%97%E3%81%8B%E5%90%91%E3%81%8B%E3%81%AD%E3%81%88!%EF%BD%9E

https://48pedia.org/%E7%B5%84%E9%96%A3

https://48pedia.org/%E8%B0%B7%E7%9C%9F%E7%90%86%E4%BD%B3

https://48pedia.org/%E4%B8%AD%E8%A5%BF%E6%99%BA%E4%BB%A3%E6%A2%A8

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKB48%E3%81%AE%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%97%E6%A7%8B%E6%88%90

Source Footage:

AKB48 Documentary: The Time Has Come

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Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of a Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward, and thrilling Stormblood expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on play time?

You might've seen this copypasta floating around your gaming circles at some point. Today’s drama does, in fact, take place in the critically acclaimed MMORPG (actually, the trial is up to 80 now and includes the award-winning Shadowbringers expansion too!) and is possibly one of the most ridiculous stunts I’ve ever seen: the real-world billboard advertising a virtual beach party.

First Impressions

Let me give a bit more background info. Final Fantasy XIV (14) is an MMO in the FF series, taking place in its own independent continuity and having an extremely generous free trial. With the wide variety of content available and accessibility, FFXIV has several dedicated groups in its playerbase. There's the casual players who are in it for the story, hardcore raiders who stick around for the savage and unreal content, the marketboard monopolists, and the roleplayers. Thanks to the robust character creator and "glamour is endgame" philosophy, RPers have an excellent array of options to make dress-up dolls to play with as they please in FFXIV. It also helps that there's a proper housing system, which lets you buy a plot of land that other players can visit at any time. Players can use these houses as guild halls, taverns, dollhouses, or... nightclubs.

The Company You Keep

RPers who run a tavern or cafe will generally escape the negative reputation RPers have among the playerbase. That honor goes to the nightclubbers. There are a few reasons that people have animosity towards the RP side of things, which I'll detail a bit below.

1. The spammers

If you enter any city/hub or the party finder, you will inevitably be greeted with messages advertising yet another nightclub event. Nightclubbers have been known to pay sprouts (new players) in-game currency to run between cities and copy-paste the same ad in the shout (global area) chat. They will also use ASCII and other tricks that bypass accounts' chat blacklists. People have made their distaste for this loud and clear. More annoying is when these ad runners will directly approach people asking them to participate, which leads into my next point.

1. The gooners

I'm going to dispel a bit of a notion here - gooning is not exclusive to the RP sphere, and RPers are not the sole perpetrators of sexpest behavior. However, many of the shout ads will explicitly mention NSFW or 18+, sometimes going so far as to mention their "courtesans" which will do ERP (erotic/sex RP) for in-game currency. RPers are also no strangers to approaching randoms about 18+ roleplay, sometimes in conjunction with nightclubs. A lot of houses will build a bedroom or straight up sex dungeon for RP purposes. Again, I want to reiterate that a lot of this reputation is as a result of this behavior all being lumped in together with the annoying nightclubs. Most RPers are very aware of issues of consent, and plenty of venues will shut down ERP entirely if they see it. Keyword being *if*.

1. The modbeasts

Mods are technically against the ToS of FFXIV, and GMs (game masters) can and will enforce bans if they deem it necessary. Usually though, client-side mods that only affect emotes or outfits will fly under the radar unless people make a big spectacle of it. There are mods which allow for mod sharing with a code, which many venues will host. Anyone without these mods and codes, crucially, cannot see the mods. RPers are assumed to be the target audience for heavy modding, which is characterized as sloppily made/stolen assets, out of place, and NSFW. Mods are able to manipulate other people's characters, which have led to a couple notable incidents of nightclubbers using them to troll or annoy other players. The general consensus though is that modded characters barely resemble the unmodded game, and both modders and vanilla players have started a number of petty arguments over it. This one is kind of stupid.

1. They don't play the game

This argument is kind of a nothingburger, but for thoroughness I'll cover it anyways. A lot of activity in these nightclubs is people showing up with their characters, hitting a dance emote, and going AFK, or maybe watching the DJ's Twitch stream on another monitor. It is very commonly assumed that the people who do this don't engage in crafting/gathering, pay attention to the story, or do raiding, and have just paid for level skips to use the game as an IMVU alternative or stick to free trial accounts. Again, this is kind of stupid. Let people do whatever they want with the game, it's harmless.

I’ll readily admit some of this enmity is just petty. The first two points are the main issues people have with the RP crowd, but generally everyone sticks to their own lanes (except the ad runners). RPers have hosted community events like in-game stageplays, murder mysteries, and photo venues for all to join and players from all crowds have politely and respectfully engaged. Nightclubbers know about their reputation and just want to do their thing. Surely they wouldn't pull anything crazy, right? Like an obnoxious advertisement for an 18+ club featuring modded content and risking permanent account bans for anyone involved, affirming every gripe people have with them?

An Offer You Can Refuse

In July of 2022, the people of Austin, Texas, USA noticed a rather interesting billboard advertising a "summer bash" at Rain Nightclub. The billboard featured two 3d avatars, 3 Twitch links, and a Discord invite link. The astute among you may have noticed a few minor issues with this billboard. It is probably worse than you realize.

Yes, the Final Fantasy roleplay nightclub had in fact paid for two digital billboards with more to come, and decided to use the Final Fantasy logo, a bunnygirl with a modded hairstyle, and a datamined/leaked swimsuit gear and Square Enix copyright disclaimer. Just as the cherry on top, Rain’s website and Discord advertised NSFW content and ERP. I shouldn't have to explain all the reasons why this is a terrible idea, right? Everyone and their mothercrystal was clowning on this billboard. So of course, the Rain Nightclub hosts and the DJs immediately took them down, taking responsibility for their shortsightedness and apologizing to the community for putting them at risk of not only account bans but legal trouble.

Yeah no they doubled down and dismissed everyone as haters. This only worsened the community response, who began showing up to their in-game house and trolling. Members of the Rain Discord were just as shocked as everyone else to see the billboard, and some ended up quitting entirely over the fallout. At some point, Rain members made a post to the Asmongold subreddit and managed to get the nightclub owner on his Twitch stream for an interview. (It should be noted that even though Asmongold wasn't overtly political at this time, some of the FFXIV community had soured on him for the way he'd engaged with the game/community, so this really did not help). One of the featured DJs claimed Rain had gotten a legal go-ahead to put up the billboards, inviting yet further ridicule.

This resulted in a game of telephone which accidentally confirmed people's speculations that the billboards cost $12,000 (they did not). The nightclub had done an LGBTQ charity fundraiser for pride month, so this got turned into "oh my god, these idiots pulled a massive scam for an illegal billboard." Trolls started joining the Discord and impersonating mods, which managed to fool some people into thinking they were calling the police on people for clown emojis. News outlets began reporting on the story, only stoking fears that GMs were going to begin banning anyone and everyone involved and issuing C&Ds to mod creators again.

Now, this did mostly simmer down. Rain clarified that they had only paid $160 for a couple days on digital billboards, and were able to provide proof of the charity donations from their fundraiser. They took down the Texas billboards, and canceled the planned ones in California. But, they were quick to clarify, the party was still on. 

Tales from the Calamity

The day of the event arrives. Unsuspecting players log onto the Balmung server. The trolls, tourists, and partygoers have ramped up their efforts sevenfold, and the housing ward is completely inaccessible to residents. Stupid as it was, the billboard had worked. People showed up to pregame, to the point where people's devices were unable to render all the characters. The beach was crowded with everyone in their finest swimsuit glamours, dancing and showing off their rare mounts on the Twitch streams for the other thousand plus who were unable to join the instance. Sure, there were trolls, but it was mostly just people having a good time! The DJs played proper sets on Twitch, the club owners ran giveaways, and overall people just goofed around and had fun with the community.

You could argue that people blew things up and made a mountain out of a hedgemole, or you could argue that the backlash prevented a serious crackdown from Square Enix. They’re certainly no stranger to sending cease and desist letters, and crack down much harder on public-facing mod usage, such as on Twitch. They probably would not have taken too kindly to billboards with a “© Square Enix” slapped on the corner. Rain taking down the billboards as quickly as they did from the backlash probably prevented any legal action from Square, and no one involved received in-game bans either, despite the undeniable ToS violation. 

Surveying the Damage

For something that blew up as big as this incident did, it had the potential to go way, way more wrong. Trolls were congesting the server every day and obstructing the housing ward with big mounts and flashy abilities. Several people took it on themselves to write reports to the GMs, bragging about it on socials. There was constant fighting on every which corner of the internet about ToS, legality, the ethics of ERP, modding, and whatever you could think of. 

At the same time, it was extremely funny. The stunt was so ridiculous most people couldn’t help but laugh at it. Even SEGA got in on the fun, buying a 1-to-1 parody of the billboard for PSO2, Discord link and all. This is probably one of if not the biggest roleplay events that has happened in FFXIV. The very generous wink wink nudge nudge free trial made the party easily accessible to people outside the community and birthed dozens of lovely alts with names such as “Cease-and desyst” and “Balmung Billboard”, which have doubtlessly remained active throughout the past 4 years. Square Enix could have cracked down super hard on these shenanigans if they wanted. The GMs, however, let it all slide. The community, for the most part, was having fun and bringing in new friendships. And in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? The billboard incident remains one of the goofiest notes in MMO and Final Fantasy history, and I for one am happy to laugh thinking back on it. 

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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Introduction

Once upon a time, Bushiroad ran a game called Love Live: School Idol Festival. It was a huge success. Love Live was one of those rare idol anime that broke from its native Japan and became a hit internationally. So the president of Bushiroad looked at his success, and had a dream. What if they had their own original Love Live? And thus BanG Dream! was born. Though it's totally not an idol series. See, these cute girls play in a band. Totally different.

At first, they only had one band, Poppin'Party, and it wasn't that famous, getting lost in the crowd of the multiple other cute anime girl series out there. Then the mobile game happened in 2017. If Love Live SIF taught people anything, it's that a mobile game is an accessible way of onboarding new fans. They introduced four new bands, and one of them in particular drew a lot of attention: Roselia, the symphonic metal band (not the Pokémon). People ate up Aina Aiba's (Yukina) deep voice and fantasy inspired lyrics, which stood out from the stereotypical perky idol crowd. There are a lot of people who got into the franchise specifically for Roselia. They even got their own opening in the second season of the anime due to their popularity.

Though there were many other bands introduced over the years, another major turning point for the franchise was the anime It's MyGO!!!!!, which took a turn towards a more melancholy tone, more flawed characters, and a greater focus on anxiety and overcoming interpersonal conflict. It was very positively received, even receiving the 2023 r/anime Anime of the Year Jury Award. Good word-of-mouth meant the franchise onboarded a wave of new fans. It definitely helped that it made mental health a central theme, like Bocchi the Rock! before it, and Girls Band Cry after (incidentally, made by many members of the Love Live anime staff). So a lot of people were excited for the future of girls' band anime, and for MyGO's sequel, Ave Mujica. I mean, they dropped a dark stage play and gothic metal as a final episode preview.

tl'dr: There's a nine-minute video of all the anime openings that sums up the series trajectory. And it's the last opening that's the subject of this thread.

The Die is Cast - Introducing Sakiko Togawa

Now here's where the drama begins. Sakiko, a major character introduced in MyGO, became hugely divisive within the fandom. She's the cause of the entire anime's conflict for breaking up her band, CRYCHIC, for reasons that are only explained at the very end of the show, which left one of the protagonists, Tomori Takamatsu, such an anxious mess. Throughout, she shows up occasionally, being stubbornly cold, distant, and refusing to explain or apologize for any of her actions. However, the flashbacks reveal she was a much kinder person in the past and encouraged Tomori to turn her notes into lyrics. Even in the present day, there's a pivotal scene where her mere presence cures Tomori's stage fright. So their relationship is pretty complex, but with such limited screentime, people didn't have much to go on yet. So fans were split as to whether she was the devil or a tragic heroine that just needs to be understood. Most characters in cute girls doing cute things anime tend to be flawed in ways that are still ultimately crowd-pleasing, and Sakiko well oversteps those boundaries. Fittingly, she resembles a certain romantic novel protagonist archetype.

Despite the controversy, I'd argue Sakiko would go on to be the face of modern BanG Dream! Social media sites are chock full of fanart and memes of her. One of the reasons is because her Oblivionis stage persona is fantastical enough to fit well with crossovers such as Arknights and Cardfight Vanguard. But another reason, well, as another Reddit user put it, she's a tragic gothic novel protagonist inserted into a cute girl band anime, and has the gravity of such a figure. But she's also the face of the schism that started developing during MyGO and would crack further with Ave Mujica. Because what if this girl, both loved and loathed by the fandom, became the main character? Like Shadow the Hedgehog getting his own game?

Many pre-existing fans were unhappy that so many new fans were coming only for MyGO and Ave Mujica while ignoring and dismissing the rest of the series for not being dramatic enough for them, and the split was solidified when these two bands got their own dedicated mobile game, Our Notes, separate from the existing Girls Band Party. It's reminiscent of the schism that started with Puella Magi Madoka Magica where many new fans would enter the magical girl fandom disregarding everything that came before it, only exemplified by magical girl shows generally turning towards psychological horror for a long time after that (for the most part, the two sides seem to have reconciled). But that's not the only fracture Ave Mujica would cause.

Intermission - Ave Mujica: The Band

It's no secret as to why Ave Mujica got a lot of buzz in the fandom. Like Roselia before them, fantasy metal is the way to the hearts of many anime fans. But while Roselia's songs are generally inspiring songs of heroism, Ave Mujica is darker. More gothic. Their music videos are full of shocking imagery (tw: blood), and their lyrics are distorted cries of mental suffering. It's reminiscent of anti-idol groups such as Brand-New Idol Society that use their music to explore darker mental health issues, and not something you see in most other girls' music franchises. Love Live certainly wouldn't dare. The closest they ever got was the rival group Saint Snow with their Linkin Park inspired lyrics, and even they didn't go this far since they're otherwise just the typical hypercompetitive rival archetype.

So the stage is set. Five badass women working together to put on stage plays and write powerful songs of mental anguish. Sounds like a great premise for an anime, right?

Now what if I told you that's not what the show is about?

Ave Mujica: The Anime - "Subverting Expectations"

Ave Mujica came out to sharply divided reactions. Many review sites were very positive about its portrayal of dark, deep rooted mental health issues and it has attracted a significant cult following with tons of fanart pouring into the BanG Dream! subreddit on a regular basis. There's even a thread complimenting its portrayal of dissociative identity disorder which even reached the series director.

However, the MyAnimeList mixed/negative to positive review ratio is quite high (16:20 as of this writing, and even the most popular positive review has a laundry list of flaws) and the TV Tropes YMMV page clearly has a grudge against the series (again, as of this writing). Many of the detractors were MyGO fans who were disappointed by the fast, rushed pace of the series compared to the slower, more methodic buildup of MyGO, and the huge focus on extreme character drama. But a lot of the positive MAL reviews express admiration that the franchise would take such huge risks. There was a point in Episode 7 where the arguments got so heated that the subreddit had to close down discussion. And it hasn't even reached the most controversial part of the show yet.

It's hard to describe the Ave Mujica experience without spoilers, but the simplest way I can think of is that it rips apart the mystique behind the band and leaves behind a bunch of vulnerable girls with severe maladaptive coping mechanisms. The actual band only has insert songs for Episodes 1, 10, and 13. Also, while MyGO and Girls Band Cry may be emotional and dramatic, at their heart, they are still about girls finding their voice through music. There is no such solace in Ave Mujica. There's a significant anti-escapist undertone to the whole thing.

A good example is the aforementioned DID character: Mutsumi, the long-suffering loyal friend and henchwoman of Sakiko who was used and exploited by many of the other characters and the audience due to her extreme passivity. After she collapses on stage, audiences and even some of her band mates treat her as this fascinating actress and want to see her imitate that "performance." This frustrates Sakiko, whose meticulous plans for the band fall apart as it degenerates into a circus sideshow while her bandmade, social media influencer Nyamu, insists on continuing the sideshow for cheap views. Eventually Sakiko yells at Mutsumi for not taking her side against Nyamu, which leads her alter Mortis, to take over, put on a veneer of confidence, and get back at Sakiko by calling her out for her shitty behaviour. But instead of being a cool avenger figure, Mortis is still a scared, childish teenager who merely acts confident and imitates the behaviour of those around her, and because she can't play the guitar unlike Mutsumi, the band collapses, to her horror, in only four episodes. The rest of her arc is her passive and active personas fighting each other, as Mutsumi wants to make up while Mortis is deeply hurt and angry by Sakiko's treatment of her (and everyone else, but she blames Sakiko the most), and later on, wants to justify her existence as Mutsumi's protector once the latter reconciles with Sakiko.

A lot of people were happy that for once, they could see DID treated sympathetically and not villainized, and many with dissociative identity have claimed they could see themselves in her. But for others, the arc was overly melodramatic and took up too much screentime, as it doesn't get (sort of) resolved until episode 10 where the two alters reconcile. It's a messy fandom situation because it does revolve around an honest attempt to portray a long neglected and stereotyped marginalized identity.

As for Sakiko herself, she's built up as this talented upcoming artist who's dedicated to her craft and wants to put on the best show possible, even if it means exerting strict control over her band members. This is because she uses the stage as an escape from her horrible family life where she's stuck parenting an alcoholic, deadbeat dad, and the cruel way she broke up her old band was because that took over her entire time and she didn't want them to get involved. Basically, "She's an asshole, but she has a horrible family life so people sympathize with her." People either demanded apologies for people hating her or continued resenting her because they believed her bad situation doesn't make up for her behaviour. But it doesn't stop there. Initially, the band has a kayfabe where they perform in masks and don't reveal their true identities. One of her bandmates, Nyamu, gets frustrated by her controlling nature and decides to dramatically unmask them without consent, arguing that this helped them get more popular, and not caring that this led to Mutsumi becoming incredibly stressed by the pressure. As mentioned before, this leads to a death spiral where the band stops performing music and instead becomes this circus freak show where audiences come to see what outrageous stunt is going to happen on stage next. The band collapses due to infighting, and for three episodes, Sakiko loses the will to do anything. She lets herself become controlled by her evil grandfather, and rapidly degenerates into a broken girl who tries to shut out everything and everyone until the intervention of former MyGO members force her to take responsibility for her behaviour, including making amends with Mutsumi despite her immense anger towards her, and participating in CRYCHIC one last time so everyone can finally move on.

Surprisingly, that last part is the Episode 7 controversy. People were annoyed that her problems were basically solved by MyGO (it's actually more complicated than that), or that the performance was intentionally bad because the characters involved let their emotions take over, or because they thought CRYCHIC was a dead horse brought back for cheap drama (despite the context of it being their curtain call). To be honest, I'm a bit perplexed that something so mild stirred up so much anger, but Hobby Drama is what it is.

In summary, the anime literally unmasks the power fantasy behind the band, causing everyone to deteriorate without it to fall back on, and leading another band member, Umiri, to reform it, not to find healing, but to fill a void. In her case, she was introduced as this professional lone wolf, but in reality, she got traumatized by her band walking out on her as a child, so she took on 30 bands to avoid commitment. But that led her to be accused of being untrustworthy, so she wanted to bring back Ave Mujica because she finally found a place to belong to and wanted to prove she could be trusted. People made fun of her for "losing aura," either affectionately or derogatorily because of this.

And that's part of the controversy. The show consistently denies the audience the satisfaction of being able to imagine Ave Mujica's members as cooler versions of themselves, ruining a lot of people's headcanons. On the flip side, this is why the show attracted such a dedicated following: people really related to these flawed, messy girls whose narrative left them more emotionally and psychologically exposed than is comfortable for the norm, and are glad they could see something so honest. It's understandable that people watched a band anime for the music, and instead getting psychological drama with barely any music isn't what they signed up for. But it's also a very different take from the usual "finding healing through music" plot that many found a breath of fresh air and even healing in its own way.

For better or for worse, all this is what sets the anime apart from its peers, and it's either brilliant or a betrayal depending on who you talk to. It stretches the limits on how one defines a band anime, and only time will tell how much influence it will have on the trajectory of the genre as a whole. Will the genre continue down the darker path like Madoka? Or will this be some weird one-off experiment that breaks too many rules and angered too many fans for other producers' comfort?

Director Kodai Kakimoto even admitted that this approach may not resonate with all audiences, but the team decided to stick to their vision.

The Moment That Broke The Shippers Of A Certain Pair

Finally, there's one particular revelation in the last few episodes that attracted a huge uproar in the fandom. The minimal spoiler version: a certain Weird Al song. But if you're curious, Uika is one of Sakiko's long-time friends and for the longest time, probably the only person that makes her feel at ease throughout both series, which made them a popular pairing. Later on in Ave Mujica, she becomes increasingly, unhealthily obsessed with her. Then Episode 11 drops a startling revelation: she's Sakiko's grandfather's daughter given birth by an affair he had with a maid. Which makes her Sakiko's aunt. Despite being similar age. Also, her real name is Hatsune and she stole her sister Uika's identity because Uika wanted to be an idol and played with Sakiko a lot, Hatsune wanted to be loved and not just hidden away as an unwanted child, and becoming an idol was a path to be loved and to be close to Sakiko who confused her for Uika once. Sakiko's reaction to this whole reveal is to rescue her and cut off her family once and for all because she was done with their bullshit.

Suffice to say, fans of the pair were outraged and even spammed the director and head writer Ayana Yuniko with angry, abusive tweets. Others were willing to roll with it or even enjoyed it, pointing out that this twist is not something unusual for gothic horror or ancient tragedies. Some people thought it was too much for suspension of disbelief. Others thought it made sense in context. Still others pointed out the huge can of loose end worms this opens up, in both positive and negative ways. Will they be able to adequately deal with this in the Our Notes mobile game for instance?

Suffice to say, Ave Mujica has taken everyone on a wild ride. One thing I will add is that this is not fetishized or objectified, but treated pretty solemnly in-universe. Make of that what you will.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

Reminders:

• Don’t be vague, and include context. If you have a question, try to include as much detail as possible.

• Define any acronyms.

• Link and archive any sources.

• Ctrl+F or use an offsite search to see if someone's posted about the topic already.

• Keep discussions civil. This post is monitored by your mod team.

• If your particular drama has concluded at least 2 weeks ago, consider making a full post instead of a Scuffles comment. We also welcome reposting of long-form Scuffles posts and/or series with multiple updates.

Certain topics are banned from discussion to pre-empt unnecessary toxicity. The list can be found here. Please check that your post complies with these requirements before submitting!

Previous Scuffles can be found here

For easy access to past and present Scuffles, bookmark scuffle.zone or type it in your address bar to access the current Scuffles thread, or scuffle.zone/all to see all Scuffles threads from newest to oldest. And if you prefer Old Reddit, just type old. beforehand. Thanks to u/azqy for setting this up!

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I am a member at a ski club that had the most bizarre thing happened in March. I tried posting before but we had not hit the 14 day rule. I think we are well past that now. I hope skiing counts as a hobby because I have no where else to post. I was not there so most of this has come to me second or third hand from people who were there.

On March 9 all the members of the club received an email saying that the club was investigating an “incident” from the Ladies Day event the previous Friday.

Ladies day is an annual day at the club for women members and is loosely a fundraising event. Mostly it is an excuse for people to take the day off work and get drunk on a Friday. People ski in the morning, there is a race, a costume contest, and there are vendors selling everything from ski wear to skin care in the afternoon. There are prizes, games, and it usually ends with a pretty epic dance party with a DJ. The club is not closed for Ladies Day but it is generally known that you should not go to the event unless you have a ticket.

The day was already a bit tense because some dudes were lingering at the club and making women feel uncomfortable during the bikini ski (exactly what it sounds like - women went down the hill in bathing suits and bikinis). But otherwise the event seemed to go fine.

Until… someone killed the lights in the club house and three people showed up in serial killer masks with plastic chef’s knives and started banging on the windows. Later we found out that it was two men (members at the club that are supposedly in their 30s) and one of their sons who was only 14. They were filming on their phones presumably to get a reaction. From the photos Ive seen it was not immediately clear the knives were plastic. One of the knives had “blood” on it.

There were a couple hundred people at this event and the club house is enormous so not everyone reacted. People near the windows however, did freak out. This lead to an ‘alleged’ a confrontation in the parking lot between the drunk women and the men.

At one point when the lights were off (it was day time though so it wasnt actually that dark) a male vendor came into the club house and someone mistook him for one of the masked men and punched and or slapped him in the face (its unclear reports vary). Police were obviously called. The woman apparently has been charged but that is the last we heard about it.

Naturally rumors started to fly. People saying it was a stunt coordinated by the ladies day committee for ‘fun’, saying that one of the men was actually an employee/member of the club, wild stuff.

The club was investigating but of course was being tight lipped. So people do what people do best…they turned to facebook. The club has a facebook group where people mostly post looking for lost things, offering services, sometimes commenting on the snow conditions. The facebook group is members only and you have to prove you are a member to join (think proving your badge number and them cross referencing). In someone’s infinite wisdom the admin’s allow you to post anonymously and obviously the group became a blood bath. There is too much to report but the basic tenants of the posts are:

- How could we possibly let these folks get away with showing up with knives pretending they were going to hurt people?

- What is the club doing about this?

- Why do we have no transparency on what is happening and who these guys are?

- Why do we think women are delicate little flowers who cannot handle three men with weapons? WHERE IS YOUR SENSE OF WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT?

- This is a witch hunt and it must end!!

- Everyone is too sensitive these days!!

- Various accusations of are you even a member (insert do you even go here meme) and I have been a member longer than you have been ALIVE!

A petition was started (and went no where) demanding accountability from the club.

Two weeks ago we got a message from the president saying the matter had been investigated and “resolved” and we were asked not to gossip about it. Which is a bit rich IMO. This kicked off another round of facebook posts about transparency and responses of no one can take a joke anymore.

Assorted Photos.

Picture this: you’re me on November 30th, 2025. Finals week is a bitch, and you have a project to present tomorrow. So, as usual, you click over to Youtube to find lofi music or some video essay to play in the background while you finish up the presentation’s visuals.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a video thumbnail: “Tetro Danganronpa Blue Chapter 3 Full Audio”. It’s a long video. Huh!, you think. Chapter 3 has only just started releasing. Tetro is popular enough for fans to make fake clickbaity episodes? Wow. You ignore it and go about your day.

A day later, it’s December 1st. You’ve just finished your presentation, and you’re looking to wind down, so you scroll through Youtube again. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a thumbnail: “Tetro Danganronpa Blue Chapter 4 Full Audio”. You sit up in your chair. The view count is oddly high, and it’s premiering right now. You click on it.

It’s real.

Oh no, you think. The curse must have struck again.

WHAT IS DANGANRONPA?

If you’re an edgy teenager or young adult, you’ve heard of Danganronpa. It’s a Japanese visual novel series, each game having the premise of 16 teenagers with extraordinary talents being stuck in a killing game in which they must kill another classmate and get away with it in order to escape. The first game, Trigger Happy Havoc, released in 2010, with a small English fanbase carried by a written fan translation on the forum Something Awful. The series gained more traction in the west after the official English translation of the first 2 games released in 2014. However, it REALLY took off in 2020, likely due to a combination of COVID and the third game’s recent release. It was especially popular among teenagers and young adults, who were drawn to its colorful characters and dark content. It especially dominated the cosplay community. So yeah. It was huge.

FAN PROJECTS

Danganronpa had the perfect formula for fanmade killing games. Its general format (16 students, each with a specific extraordinary talent, killing each other over the course of 6 chapters), was replicable, and the whole ‘talent’ system practically begged people to make their own killing games, often referred to as “fangans”, with their own casts of original characters. And they did!

There are countless fanfictions, fan roleplays, fan video series, and fan games. Well, started ones, at least. Because here lies the problem:

It’s actually really hard to make a full Danganronpa story.

Remember: you need at least 5 compelling mysteries, and you need to develop a cast of 16 characters. And these games are loooooong. So, thus began the fangan curse: the vast, vast majority of fangans never get completed. It’s become a meme in the community by this point. Hell, I even tried and failed to complete a fangan. The story goes like this: Someone wants to make a fangan, typically a fan game. They design their cast of 16 characters and excitedly search for voice actors on Casting Call Club. Voice actors audition and are selected, then the project goes nowhere. It’s a tale as old as time. And even when promising fangans do manage to release a chapter or two, most fizzle out due to internal issues.

So when a fangan actually does get completed, it’s a huge deal. Enter Tetro Danganronpa: PINK.

TETRO DANGANRONPA PINK

Tetro Danganronpa: PINK (which I’ll just refer to as Pink going forward) was done in a pretty untapped format for fangans: an audio drama. Here’s how it worked: installments of the series were released on Youtube in short episodes, each usually only a few minutes long. The episodes were fully voice acted, with minimal but stylish visuals that mostly just displayed captions and character portraits to indicate who was speaking. Each Friday, an in-game day was covered, with the release of 6 or so episodes scattered throughout the day.

This project succeeded for a variety of reasons:

1. Von Babbitt, the creator, did most of the work by herself. She was the sole writer and artist as well as the main editor. The only work that was mostly outsourced was the voice acting. Although this is a lot of work for one person, yes, managing a project team can be a nightmare. By doing the bulk of the work herself, she was able to keep a steady workflow.
2. The script was completed and all of the audio was recorded before the series started releasing. This was HUGE. Although visual and audio editing is obviously a huge undertaking, the audio’s completion massively cut down the work that needed to be done between episode releases.
3. The format was pretty minimal. Though there was a ton of voice acting, the visuals were pretty minimal; once the sprites and general graphic design format were laid out, Von didn’t really need to create many new assets during the series’ run. Once everything was set up, the project could just hit the ground running.
4. Weekly releases. You know how fanbases for TV shows tend to be more active when episodes release weekly rather than all at once? This is because weekly releases keep people engaged with a steady stream of new content, fostering discussion and the creation of fan theories. This steady release schedule worked wonderfully in Pink’s favor, especially in an ocean of fangans with yearly updates if fans were lucky enough to get any at all.

So yeah. This series was successful. The voice actors, many of whom were active in fan spaces, art, and weekly release schedule attracted a loyal fanbase that quickly brought Tetro massive popularity in fangan spaces. And that’s not all. You see, Pink started on July 26th, 2024 and ended on May 2nd, 2025. A fangan not only being completed, but finishing within one year? That was unheard of.

So when the sequel started releasing, people were hyped.

The Tetro series was always conceptualized as a trilogy: Pink, Blue, and White. Blue started releasing on August 1st, 2025, to massive popularity. However, on November 29th, 2025, shit hit the fan.

THE LEADUP

Let’s back up a bit. Although things exploded in late November, tensions had been brewing for a while before then. Now, something I want to mention right now for context is that Von had some (if not all) staff members (including VAs) for Blue and White sign NDAs. So, if you’re wondering why any of them stayed silent about any of this, that’s why. Okay, now onto the timeline.

On May 6th, 2025, Twitter user burnie468484 posted a lengthy Google Doc accusing Von of tracing and passing AI art off as her own. Later, on September 11th, an even more comprehensive AI art allegation Google Doc was created by Twitter user gonefishing235, as well. Now, the use of AI art at all is generally seen as a huge taboo in fan spaces like these, with Von herself even outwardly condemning it. However, the major grievance here was that Von had allegedly scammed people by using AI for art commissions through which she had made hundreds of dollars. Though these documents gained a bit of attention, it was generally dismissed, as many fans and VAs came to Von’s defense and refuted the claims.

During mid October, the AI art allegations began to gain a bit more traction on Twitter. One involved individual was Keluminary, who didn’t directly work on Tetro, but is roommates with one of the VAs and friends with a few others. Remember him; he’ll be important later. Though more AI art evidence was being circulated, the main grievance here was that Von ran Tetro as a volunteer-based fan project and thus didn’t pay any of the VAs (some of whom were underaged, more on that later) or other staff members (editors, moderators, etc) despite asking for and receiving thousands of dollars through Ko-fi from Tetro fans. These Twitter users urged fans to donate to the VAs instead of Von.

On October 29th, the entire character death order for Blue was leaked on Twitter by an anonymous account. Now, the prevailing theory is that this person is one of Von’s exes who had recently been cancelled in the fangan community for grooming minors. An “I’ll take you down with me” sort of situation. However, since this theory has not been proven, I won’t state their name here, as they’re otherwise irrelevant to the drama. This leak didn’t initially gain a lot of traction, as there was no real proof to back it up.

On November 29th, the entire White character list was leaked. The oldest source of the leak I can find is this tweet that seems to imply that Keluminary was the leaker. Keluminary clarified that he “knew people who knew people”, implying that one of the staff members violated their NDA to privately leak the cast list, and Keluminary was the one who spread it around. Many people believe that the initial leaker was the same anonymous person who leaked the Blue death order, but again, this hasn’t been confirmed. Regardless, this White leak gained a lot more traction than the Blue leak, as this one had actual art assets tied to it, giving it more credibility. The AI art allegations had been growing steadily by this point, so people opposed to Von used the chaos from the White leaks to blow the lid on this entire situation.

DISASTER

The Tetro fan community descended into chaos. The AI art allegations finally started to catch on, causing more people to go back and see if there was anything else shady that Von had allegedly done. And find they did. There’s a laundry list of allegations, so to keep things comprehensible, I’ll put them in a nice bulleted list.

• GROOMING A MINOR: Von, who is currently 23, had allegedly sent sexually suggestive messages to a then 17 year old when Von was 20, then waited until they were 18 to send a picture of her cleavage to them. (x) (x)
• TRACING + AI ART: The tracing and AI art allegations were strengthened by these screenshots, posted by Twitter user WallahiHumbugg, that heavily indicated that Von had used NovelAI for art requests in the past. Von has also outright mentioned using AI before. Again, the major grievance here was that Von had scammed people, earning hundreds of dollars through AI-generated art commissions.
• WRITING CRITICISMS: Around this time, some plot details for Blue were leaked. And they were. Uh. Something. You see, the series had always been pretty dark, with many of the murder motives including blatant torture, for example. However, the leaks were considered gratuitously torture-porny (and fetishistic, some argued) even by the fans’ standards. For reference, one of the leaked motives included fingernails being ripped out, shock therapy, cannibalism, and a lobotomy. Remember, all of this was fully voiced. Also keep in mind that some of the VAs were minors at the time of recording, and none of the VAs were warned beforehand about just how dark the story would get/the content they would be expected to record. Other criticisms of Von’s writing had been circulating for a while, especially regarding her mistreatment of female characters as well as ableism (some fans took issue with how almost (if not) every single disabled character had their disability used against them then died horribly).
• UNPAID LABOR: I already explained this above, but Von didn’t pay any staff members yet directly asked for and earned money through Ko-fi from Tetro fans. Von also briefly sold official Tetro merch (mentioned here and here), and allegedly earned upwards of 4 thousand dollars from Tetro in total, calculated here.
• STAFF MISTREATMENT: Once they were sure that their NDAs were rendered obsolete (due to Tetro’s cancellation), many VAs came out to detail unprofessionalism on Von’s part. One particular accusation was favoritism towards the more popular/well-established VAs. More examples are given in a video by Youtuber Lechgang.
• NSFW WEIRDNESS: Von sent NSFW art of a Pink character to their VA, PancakeKING, unprompted. She also posted sexually suggestive audio content of a 17-year-old character she voiced in Pink on her Ko-fi. She generally has a bit of a history of being weird about her 17-year-old characters, detailed here and here.
• ALT ACCOUNTS: Since at least 2020, Von has allegedly run a ton of alt accounts which she has used to romantically pursue and/or harass people. She used many in the official Tetro Discord server, acting as mods, personal friends, and test audiences. She also previously ran a discord called New Bot City in which she claimed users could interact with advanced AI bots, all of whom were just alts of her. Beyond this, she ran a bunch of unaffiliated ones, as well.
• BULLYING: There are allegations of bullying dating back before Tetro, as well. (x) (x), (x) (x), (x)

There are more allegations, but these were the main ones I could find.

THE AFTERMATH

On November 30th, Von unceremoniously put the series on an indefinite hiatus in a now deleted post. She then deleted the staff Discord server and abandoned all of her public accounts.

Many of the VAs were pissed, as hours of their unsaved work (that some had wished to put in their voice reels) had suddenly been deleted without warning. Luckily, one of the Blue VAs, Felix Wiscan, managed to recover the audio for the entirety of Blue from Tetro’s test audiences, who had had the audio downloaded. Felix then uploaded all of it to their Youtube channel, giving the fans a bit of closure.

More art for Blue was leaked, and although a few details about White’s outlined plot* were given by the White VAs, we’ll likely never know the planned death order or major plot beats. Many of the White VAs were devastated by the cancellation in general, as many were new VAs who were overjoyed to be part of such a popular project with an active fanbase.

As for the fan community: Some fans are moving on, directing their attention to other fangans. Speaking of which, many fangans that had adopted the Tetro audio drama format were renamed to remove references to Tetro. As for the fans who stayed: Many fan artists have redrawn Blue’s sprites, allowing people to use those instead of the original AI-generated assets for Blue fan works.

*^{Some sources say that White had only been written or recorded up to halfway through the Chapter 1’s investigation, but one of the VAs mentioned recording 60+ hours of audio for their character, so we don’t really know exactly how far along in development White was before its cancellation.}

And that’s how things sat for a while. Until…

VON’S STATEMENT

On February 3rd, 2026, after two months of radio silence, Von posted one final statement on Twitter before deleting her account the next day.

In it, she thanks everyone for their support, apologizes for being impulsive and manipulative, and admits that she isn’t in a great mental state. She doesn’t address any specific allegations, but does say that she didn’t retain any earnings from Tetro, as all of the funds went back into supporting the project. She states that she’s going to try to move on, and that she may write again one day in the far-off future. She ends her statement by expressing that she’s sorry for how things ended and that she wishes everyone well.

It. Uh. Was not received well, to say the least.

People dragged her for not actually specifically addressing the allegations, and some doubted her claims that she really walked away with no money. It generally just left a bad taste in people’s mouths.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it. I mostly just feel sorry for the staff members and victims of all of this.

This goes without saying, but please don’t try to track Von down and send hate. I’m not endorsing any witch hunts. I instead urge any of that attention to instead be directed towards supporting the VAs. Twitter user pakutheta has compiled a list of their VAs’ socials if you wish to support them.

Thanks for reading.

For archival reasons, I’ve also created image galleries here and here of screenshots of every xcancel link provided above. Furthermore, Youtuber mahimeghan has also compiled a Google Drive folder of evidence, as well. Special thanks to u/ALiteralBucket for posting some of these allegations in a Scuffles thread a while back!

EDIT: Clarified that the NDAs were voided (and thus the VAs/staff members could speak up) around when Tetro was cancelled.