#beastygimmick

so, background info:

ruby is a vocaloid developed by syo, voice provided by misha. they are independent developers who got in touch with anders (a man who is sort of a go-between for indie voca developers and companies), who took their idea and pitched it to several vocaloid companies, in hopes for funding

2 companies were interested: powerfx and crypton. syo, misha, and anders chose powerfx because, supposedly, powerfx promised them freedom over the design of the character; crypton did not

so, during development, syo and misha heard nothing from pfx in regards to design. great! they began working on their own design. now, anders had told them that pfx would likely want to make “tweaks” to the design. okay, that’s fine, no big deal yea? so syo and misha finalized their design with help from friends, and even had finalized box art made by natasha allegri (creator of bee and puppycat)

now came time for pfx to make the big reveal of ruby, at anime expo. at this point, anders had already told syo that pfx had created a different design, but said that he wasn’t allowed to show it yet. syo was suspicious, but sent him natasha’s art to be shown at anime expo anyways, because he still thought that they could reach a compromise.

syo wasn’t able to attend AX, but misha was. misha arrived at the unveiling event, which was being filmed for television by the way, with the full expectation that the design being shown would be natasha’s. instead, misha had to stand there and publically endorse a brand new design that she had never seen before, and was completely opposite of the one she had designed

thus, the online explosion of anger

from there, there’s been a lot of speculation, but it’s basically been established that this entire thing is due to miscommunication between syo/misha, anders, and powerfx. powerfx just straight-up didn’t receive natasha’s design, so they had no idea they had made one

since then, various fans have been rallying to get ruby’s intended design back, under the hashtag #saveruby. there was a lot of misinformation floating around about why the design had been changed, including that powerfx was racist, that they manipulated syo, that they just didn’t care, etc.

fans sent bil bryant (the ceo of pfx) a number of stern emails discussing their concerns, and in all of his responses he seemed extremely hesitant to change the design, saying that ruby had already been sent to yamaha, etc.. it also became obvious that bil had never once directly talked to syo, and in fact didn’t consider syo to be the main developer–he considered anders to be the man in charge

fans were beginning to lose hope that ruby’s design would ever be changed, and sales seemed to be dropping fast, with many saying they just wouldn’t buy it if it came with powerfx’s design. then, enter bil bryant’s ultimatum to syo:

“we will change ruby’s design if syo issues a public and private apology in the next 24 hours for accusing us of whitewashing ruby.” (whitewashing referring to the fact that syo/misha’s design was tan and latinx, and powerfx’s was white)

syo had never once accused powerfx of whitewashing: it was entirely the fandom who did that, and even then only a small portion ever directly e-mailed bil to accuse him of that. so, naturally, syo refused to apologize, but said that he would talk to bil directly in hopes of working something out, because at this point we had all realized that powerfx wasn’t trying to be shady, it was just horrifically unorganized and out of touch with its developers.

thus, syo released this letter to bil, and that’s currently where we stand. we don’t know if bil has seen it, or what his reaction will be to it, but we’re all hoping for the best

syo’s twitter