Friday, October 10, 2014

Konno Yuuka Update

I reported two days ago that Konno Yuuka was leaving Aither, and this is true.  Yuuka's original announcement on the Aither blog was deleted twice by the management, although it appeared a third time and has stayed.  This was followed by Misaki's reaction to Yuuka leaving, which was also deleted.  Yuuka then posted a long comment yesterday (divided into three posts) about why she was leaving Aither on her new Twitter account.  Apparently Yuuka has not been paid her salary for ten months and had to borrow money just to get to Aither's gigs.  She feels her relationship with the management has been damaged and she cannot trust them.  It was decided a while ago that she would leave.  In addition, Yuuka had a fever due to the high amount of stress caused by all of this.  She said she wanted to continue her activities in Aither but cannot under the circumstances, and offered an apology to all the fans.  

This is very sad news, and totally unexpected.  I was not aware of what was happening, and I doubt many others (except maybe the other members of Aither) knew either.  It leads me to ask many questions, such as are Tsujimura Airi and Misaki being paid a salary?  If so, why hasn't Yuuka been paid?  What about the graduated members of Aither, Megumi and Sakura?  Were they paid for their tenure in the group?  Did they have other reasons for leaving Aither other than the official reason of wanting to focus on school?  Aither had announced back in July that they were releasing an album sometime in 2015.  Will this album still be released?  What about Yuuka's activities with Shamrock, her project with two members of Links?  So many questions, and I doubt any of us will get all the answers.

I feel terrible that Yuuka has been treated so poorly.  I sure all of her fans do.