From our other sites
The story
On 5ch’s Love Live! board, controversy erupted after an underground idol group ran a promotional event parodying a live show by Nijigasaki High School Idol Club — sparking protests from hardcore Nijigasaki fans known as “Niji-shin.” Some posters argued the flyer design and song titles were copied so closely it amounted to outright plagiarism, while others countered that the poses and costumes fall well within the industry’s common visual vocabulary and saw nothing wrong with it. The thread split sharply over where parody ends and homage begins.
Don’t get so worked up over a parody like this…
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
https://x.com/MrCupCakeP/status/2092678731047252219
Are they prepared to get grilled the same way if the roles were reversed?
the flyer design is a total copy on top of that,
and even after the 'correction' it's still copied — that's a real problem.
If 'resembles another work' automatically means it's not allowed, then the Superstar!! merch with the angel/devil motif that was popular among Nijigasaki fans would count as copying too, right?
Pikaere's clearly doing this on purpose — there's already precedent of Superstar!! ('Spasta') making the news for this exact thing
Pikaere was fully intent on steering the conversation toward Re: #18.
This guy is seriously anti-Superstar!!.
I mean, for Superstar!! it was the official side doing Re: #18 in the first place…
Nijigasaki's management should really put out a statement.
so Niji-shin fans should just be grateful, honestly.
https://x.com/aozorawokimini/status/1561669087046303744
Getting genuinely furious over what some tiny, no-name idol group does is just small-minded.
That's pretty funny honestly.
That's how the strong are supposed to behave, isn't it.
People with big hearts don't do illegal streaming, harassment, or defamation.
They don't post sneering comments or leak pirated videos either.
This thread's looking down on underground idols too, huh.
So does that make everyone on the Love Live board a Niji-shin?!
Honestly feels like a lot of people here do like Nijigasaki — I mean, most active Love Live fans these days are into Nijigasaki anyway.
If most people supposedly love Nijigasaki, then why are CD sales only 2,000 copies?
Yeah, that's true, but still…
Wasn't the Natsumi episode in Superstar!! season 2 said to rip off some movie or another?
Did they ever apologize for that?
Also, the song 'Kaika Sengen' actually resembles 'Ashita e no Tobira' ('Door to Tomorrow'), not that one.
And Road of Major's 'Taisetsu na Mono' sounds a lot like 'Mahou Tsukai Hajimemashita' — was there ever an apology for that?
Background and Points of Debate
Underground idol groups running parodies that borrow flyer designs and staging from licensed franchises while performing original songs are nothing new, and these are usually done without official permission. In this case, opinions split between those who saw the close match in design and song titles as outright “theft” and those who viewed it as “tribute,” an extension of derivative-work culture. The thread also brought up past cases where another idol franchise’s costumes sparked imitation controversies on social media, framing this less as a one-off flare-up of emotion and more as an ongoing debate over where licensing rights end and parody begins. That said, as of this thread neither the underground idol group nor Nijigasaki’s management had issued any official comment.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Love Live!) thread “Niji-shin Fans Go Ballistic Over Underground Idol Parody.”
Leave a Reply