Spine

RIP REITA of the GazettE

A great Japanese musician and legendary Harajuku style icon has passed away. There was no band more popular with Harajuku visual kei fans of the 2005-2010 era. The famous Jingubashi bridge was full of REITA/GazettE cosplayers every weekend back then. RIP 🖤🖤🖤🖤

And it’s not a simple matter of them just airing or streaming somewhere else now. It’s a very complicated issue of rights and contracts and money but essentially it’s very possible that these shows will never be available again in official capacity and their creators will never see another penny from them again, either. Some completed episodes may also be lost media, indefinitely.

For a couple of series, such as Mao Mao and Infinity Train, Cartoon Network has gone back and scrubbed all tweets, youtube clips or other mention of the series existence, confirming they likely no longer have the rights to take them anywhere else.

The tweet today by the art director of Tig N’ Seek made me saddest.

A lot of people this week have simply given up on their industry careers, seeing years of their life’s work just vanish into a corporate vault overnight. Being able to point to your work on a streaming service had apparently even become a pretty critical part of the portfolios they now rely on to get new jobs.