Online resale of fan goods at high prices is an ongoing issue in Japan. One voice actress says she’s so disgusted by the practice that she won’t do any more signings going forward.
Veteran voice actress Yamaguchi Yuriki, 59, is perhaps best known for her turns as Akagi Ritsuko in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, Nico Robin in ONE PIECE, and Nurse Joy in Pokemon. This year, she and other voice actors participated in charity event Kandensai’s “sign hunt,” where fans could find a star and get an object of their choice signed. Profits were designated to help fund recovery of the Noto Peninsula earthquake.
However, Yamaguchi and others were furious when Nippairen, the organization that runs Kandensai, announced that some of the auction items had ended up on reseller sites like Yahoo! Auctions. (The listings have since been removed.) Resellers were also using non-consensual photography from the event.
Nippairen said it would consider suing resellers for intellectual property, right-to-likeness, and copyright violations.
Yamaguchi retweeted Nippairen’s warning, lashing out at resellers. “Dammit! I’m so freaking angry….I can’t do signings anymore. It’s too much.”
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She followed that up a day later with a message of thanks to people who’d reported the reseller, saying she also wanted to pursue “additional strategies” to end reselling.
Resellers in Japan sell everything from limited edition items to old Nintendo employee manuals. Special events are also often beset by people from other countries, particularly China, who buy out limited edition items to resell them for a profit on sites like Yahoo! Auctions, Mercari, or overseas sites.
Earlier this year, the Tokyo Museum found itself mobbed with resellers who cleaned the institution out of limited edition Hello Kitty 50th Anniversary goods.
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