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What happened to Nekojishi?

We are a group of furry fans of Nekojishi. After the full release of the first game, we were deeply disappointed and enraged by the operation of Nekojishi Official (aka Orange Juice Dog Shanghai Co., Ltd. [1], ORANGE JUICE DOG CO., LTD. [2] and Studio Klondike PTE. LTD. [3]). The reason are as follows:

1. Nekojishi Official default on payment of wages to their artists [4] and staff members [5]. After the artists and staff failed to communicate with Nekojishi Official, they had no choice but to reveal their behavior publicly. However, the artists and the staff were offended, harassed, or even threatened [6] by Nekojishi Official not to disclose any further details. The artists and staff were also asked to accept a settlement offer.

2. Nekojishi Official broke their promise to the crowdfunding community. They promised to release a concept art book after reaching the target of 700k TWD [7]; and not to release any extended stories or sequel [8].

3. Nekojishi was originally promoted as a game set in Taiwan. However, after the release of the first game, there are no longer any Taiwanese artists participating in the Nekojishi team [9]. Furthermore, Nekojishi Official gave up the operation of the Taiwan version of the official website and the crowdfunding website without making any announcement to the Taiwan’s Nekojishi community.

Besides their operation management as mentioned above, there are also controversies regarding to the game and its content, such as:

4. The game was promoted as “A romance comedy featuring day-to-day life between three big cats(the Anthropomorphic characters)”, but one of the three characters, Yan Shu-Chi, was insulted, harassed and raped during the “perfect ending” route of the game.

5. Nekojishi was claimed to be a game that represents Taiwan culture. However, there was a lack of research in the story on Taiwanese indigenous people; and the game repeatedly stereotyped these people in the perspective of Han people. Without any follow up story and promotion in the Nekojishi community, Nekojishi failed to raise awareness on reflecting on the stereotype. This in turn became an act of making use of the image of the indigenous people instead of making positive contribution to their community.

6. Taking advantage of the issue of environmental protection, rationalise the spoof on the other endings (‘car crash ending’) of Yan Shu-Chi [10].

Although we really love the characters from Nekojishi, we can no longer support the game and its sequel, goods, and arts published by Nekojishi Official based on the above reasons. As we organise and reveal the unacceptable deeds of Nekojishi Official, we would also wish justice will be served.

Footnotes:
[1] Unified Social Credit Identifier: 91310230MA1JXT0B5K
Legal representative: 圣航
Established on 02 Nov 2016
Registration authority: 崇明区市场监管局
Registered Company address: 上海市崇明区横沙乡富民支路 58 号 D1-6988 室（上海横泰经济开发区）
The information is retrieved from the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System of China (http://www.gsxt.gov.cn/corp-query-homepage.html)

[2] Company name: ORANGE JUICE DOG CO., LTD
Unified Business No.: 65802313
Person in charge: 羅傳棋 (aka Pache)
Established on 04 Oct 2016
Registered company address: 新北市新店區中興路 1 段 289 號 2 樓之 1
The information is retrieved from Company Enquiry System from Department of Commerce, MOEA (https://findbiz.nat.gov.tw/fts/query/QueryBar/queryInit.do)

[3] UEN: 201921935M
Registered address: 51 GOLDHILL PLAZA# 07-10/11 SINGAPORE 308900
The information is retrieved from Singapore Business Filing Portal of ACRA (https://www.bizfile.gov.sg/).
With regards to the relationship between Orange Juice Dog Shanghai Co., Ltd., ORANGE JUICE DOG CO., LTD. and Studio Klondike PTE. LTD, please refer to the website of Pawprint Press (https://web.archive.org/web/20200305143631/https://pawprint-press-official-store.myshopify.com/pages/%E7%89%B9%E5%AE%9A%E5%95%86%E5%8F%96%E5%BC%95%E6%B3%95%E3%81%AB%E5%9F%BA%E3%81%A5%E3%81%8F%E8%A1%A8%E8%A8%98). In addition, the same company launched a crowdfunding for the board game of “Astatos – A Trail of Divinity & Betrayal”on FlyingV (https://www.flyingv.cc/projects/24315). It was scheduled to be released in February 2020, but the game has yet to be sent out yet.

[4] Please visit the statement posted by artist 鹿角烈(https://web.archive.org/web/20200305144154/https://images.plurk.com/NCd4hGQE47P6NnSZ7jTZZ.jpg) and his other statement (Chinese translated) (https://web.archive.org/web/20200305142406/https://www.plurk.com/p/npxv74). For more information please visit https://web.archive.org/web/20200305152306/https://www.plurk.com/p/noyl8e (screenshot only, as the original links became invalid)

[5] Please see https://web.archive.org/web/20200305142009/https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/C_Chat/M.1583334971.A.2DE.html Arthur was a member of the technical staff of the first game of Nekojishi, up till today (5 Mar 2020) he has not received his payment yet.

[6] Nekojishi Official referred to the real name of an artist when replying to the issue of default payment on Weibo (https://imgur.com/a/ekNArFA). Not only did they disclose the privacy of the artist, they also directly caused the artist to reveal his sexual orientation. This could cause artists in China who created Nekojishi-related or furry-related materials being sued.

[7] See the crowdfunding website on FlyingV (https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.flyingv.cc/projects/13155). The promise of reaching 700k TWD was to create a special edition (Note: which is a physical copy), concept art collection, and original soundtracks of Nekojishi the game.

[8] 羅傳祺 (aka Pache), one of the person in charge of Nekojishi, in an interview conducted on 22 July 2016 (https://web.archive.org/save/https://queer.watch/2016/07/22/12023) mentioned, “I can be certain to say that we are not going to make a sequel to Nekojishi. Also, Nekojishi Officials will not create any extended story via any means of media.” However, Nekojishi Official tweeted “The sequel to Nekojishi…” on 3 Mar 2020 (https://web.archive.org/web/20200305141900/https://twitter.com/NekojishiTW/status/1234826957344268288), which does not match with what they have promised.

[9] Please refer to footnote [5].

[10] Scriptwriter Pache mentioned “Will I be beaten (by the players) if I say that the ‘car crash ending’ (in Yan Shu-Chi’s storyline) was intended for the player to experience how it feels like when leopard cats were killed by cars in Miaoli County” on Plurk (https://www.plurk.com/p/mi97zb). Nekojishi officials even poked fun out of this. They sold the white car that is featured in the story as acrylic stand merchandise on their store (https://web.archive.org/web/20200305144950/https://store.pawprint.press/collections/nekojishi/products/nekojishi-car-acrylic-stand) and made a promotion video for it. For more information please visit https://web.archive.org/web/20200305144554/https://www.pttweb.cc/bbs/C_Chat/M.1527792730.A.823