In January, weekly tabloid JOSEI7 published an article alleging that popular utaite and previous Kouhaku Uta Gassen participant Mafumafu had apparently married then quickly divorced an unnamed person and was currently in a legal battle against their former partner.
Last week, Mafumafu responded to those allegations, first in an emotional blog post and later in streams on other people’s channels.
「女性セブンに掲載されている記事に関しまして」https://t.co/4KDkzMoGby
— まふまふ＠みかん (@uni_mafumafu) January 26, 2024
He confirmed the fact that he had in fact been both married and later divorced from December 2021 to July 2022, and apologized to his fans for lying to them. In the post, he stated that although he had believed himself to be aromantic, after being confessed to he had attempted to try and pursue a relationship with a party simply called “Ms. A” in the post. He admitted to wanting to announce his marriage, but also being deeply afraid to do so for fear of what the public and his fans would think. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he no longer wanted to continue lying, but given Ms. A’s occupation as an online celebrity and due to certain events it became harder and harder to find the right timing to do so.
As the events continued, this put pressure on their relationship, which led to controlling behavior (such as having to immediately return her messages or calls on services such as LINE or Discord) as well as other aspects of emotional and psychological abuse. This compounded the amount of harassment he was receiving at the time, as he was subject to vicious online slander by the public, which he had asked Ms. A to make things public so that the slander might stop in part. However, as she was attempting to restart her activities, her management one-sidedly denied his request without any attempt to meet in the middle. The stress eventually became so much that he urgently required medical treatment, and eventually led to his hiatus as well as divorce request to Ms. A.
During the proceedings, the house he had bought to live in with Ms. A but could not use at all due to her demands that she live there alone had been littered with garbage after she left, and she event left behind her pet’s ashes in the now-empty apartment. In addition, he noticed that there was significant online slander on both social media and anonymous forums that he saw but could not respond to as he was on hiatus, and eventually attempted to figure out who was behind them. To his shock, most of those posts — accusing him of doing everything from domestic violence to cheating to killing Ms. A’s cat via physical violence — were actually written by Ms. A herself. He found these actions deeply hypocritical, as publicly she was against such slander yet was on these forums writing them up herself. As such, he decided to go to court against Ms. A, and is currently deciding with a legal team on whether to pursue civil or criminal charges against Ms. A.
In online streams, he further reiterated specifics of his side of the story, also emphasizing that he was deeply upset at having to make this public now as a result of the tabloid article.
Several days later, VTuber Mikeneko, formerly Uruha Rushia of hololive, came forward with her side of the story.
お騒がせしている件について。https://t.co/4opilRipuP
— みけねこ！🥞療養中 (@95rn16) January 28, 2024
In her blog post on Fanbox, she apologized to her fans for the issues that this event had caused. While Mafumafu never confirmed that she was his former partner, Mikeneko publicly stated that she had in fact been his wife from December 2021 to July of 2022. She felt compelled to continue to lie about her relationship and marriage due to the fact that she was a streamer. She felt that as he had made many statements that were potentially defamatory, she needed to speak out about her side of the story, even if she had not been directly named in his post.
She then disputed his claim that she had cheated on him with a third party (Mr. B) and confirmed that she had in fact accused him multiple times of cheating, but felt that her actions were neither abusive nor controlling. In addition, she accused Mafumafu of being controlling over her life as well. She also confirmed that she had in fact posted the slander, but was advised to not speak about the lawsuit and was told that many of those posts would not necessarily be considered illegal in court. She was also asked to abide by conditions that she felt were unreasonable, so she had filed a countersuit and a complaint to the police. She then went on to say that several of Mafumafu‘s comments about her previous relationships were all entirely false, and that the pet ashes were left in the apartment by accident. She finished by mentioning that she too was also in the middle of a civil and criminal lawsuit against him.
