KADOKAWA is pausing digital sales of the I May Be a Guild Receptionist, But I’ll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time light novel series owing to a sexual scandal involving its illustrator Gaou and a minor, with the publisher saying that it has confirmed the scandal’s veracity with Gaou himself. The existing physical volumes will also be removed and will go out of print.
The current plan is for the light novel series to go back on sale when an illustrator change has been made.
KADOKAWA also announced that digital sales of the Selfie Girl Gaou Sakuhin-shuu art book and the Hallelujah Vamp trilogy will be suspended. Additionally, the former will have its physical volumes pulled and will be made to go out of print.
As other media previously reported, the decision to replace Gaou as the illustrator of I May Be a Guild Receptionist was announced by the Dengeki Bunko label earlier this month on July 1 JST, although a decision on how to handle the current volumes hadn’t been made at the time. OVERLAP‘s Welcome to the Outcast’s Restaurant! also announced a similar change around that time, with its illustrator swap applying to even existing volumes.
The effects of the scandal extend beyond the publishing industry — the popular independent VTuber Yuki Sakuna, whose character design was handled by Gaou, announced that she would refrain from using his illustrations moving forward, although recent projects that are already in motion will go on. (On the subject of VTubers, Gaou is also known for designing the graduated hololive member Minato Aqua.) The Girls Creation game, which had some contributions from Gaou, also distanced itself from the illustrator.
The Gaou scandal broke in late June when KoreKore, described in Japan as an exposé-type influencer, hosted a livestream that delved into Gaou’s inappropriate past encounter with a teenage girl (some details, like the alleged victim’s age during their first encounter, were revealed on KoreKore’s Twitter/X; Anime News Network notes that the livestream archive has some words bleeped out, and the same is true of the edited video version on KoreKore’s YouTube clip channel). The alleged victim, who participated in the stream, claimed that she had a sexual encounter with Gaou at his house when she was 14. The encounter apparently happened some time after Gaou (who is said by KoreKore to be in his 40s) contacted the girl on Twitter/X, inviting her to play the video game Splatoon together.
According to the alleged victim, she was blocked after making multiple requests to meet up again. However, a year later, her Threads account, which used a different name, received a private message from Gaou (also an invitation to play Splatoon), which led to two years of communications and eventually a second meetup in May of this year (around three years since the first encounter). The two went to a hotel and later briefly entered into a relationship. Both the girl and a later participant who claimed to be Gaou said that Gaou remained unaware that she was the same person he’d previously interacted with throughout all this, with the girl telling KoreKore that she’d dyed her hair and, when meeting in real life, acted like a different person. The girl said that she revealed her real identity to Gaou on the day of the stream.
The apparent Gaou in the livestream confirmed that he had had an inappropriate encounter with the alleged victim and said that he thinks he has no choice but to retire as an illustrator. The person also admitted to having some inappropriate involvement with another party around five or six years ago.
The person purporting to be Gaou apologized after the alleged victim requested an apology for hiding the fact that he was married at the time of their first sexual encounter (the girl also claimed that Gaou had a separate girlfriend at the time) and for hiding that he cheated on her when they were dating.
In the livestream, the girl said that she was still considering whether to file a police report and wanted to consult with her parents first.
Source: KADOKAWA (via Anime News Network)
