Sailor Moon director wins harassment case against deranged fan

Fame always ends up arousing envy and the legendary director Kunihiko Ikuhara has been dealing with a harassment campaign and a lawsuit that accused the creator of plagiarism for his work on Sailor Moon It is Revolutionary Girl Utena.

It all started in April 2022, when Kunihiko Ikuhara received messages from the harasser who believed the director had stolen her work. After stating that this was not the case, since Kunihiko Ikuhara clarified that the woman’s art was nothing like his own, the director became the target of a campaign of harassment. Starting a band with various seiyuu he had worked with over the years, Kunihiko Ikuhara discovered that the woman was sending a large number of emails to Kunihiko’s sponsors and clients claiming that he was a plagiarist. Later that same month, Kunihiko spoke to the police to see what could be done and had to cancel one of the band’s live shows due to security concerns.

Even after the lawsuit was filed, the woman continued to send emails to sponsors of Kunihiko. As the director stated, the woman was trying to harm her financial situation:

It’s natural for my sponsors and clients to distance themselves from me because they think I have a problem. She knows this very well. It’s a cowardly attitude. There are people out there. They act because they have been successful somewhere.

The court case has now come to an end and Kunihiko stated:

I interpret that almost all of our arguments were accepted and I am satisfied with the decision. The claim that it is a copy is absurd; the lines do not overlap. It’s hard to be creative when things like this happen. She knows that sponsors are essential to our work.

The woman was ordered to pay 1.21 million yen ($8,000) for the false allegations and targeted harassment. Although the conviction does not prevent the woman from continuing to make the accusations, her lawyer Kunihiko hopes that the director’s name is cleared.