Akihiro Nishino’s “POUPELLE OF CHIMNEY TOWN” gets kabuki treatment, but salon membership down 20,000 due to Yoshimoto’s departure

Yoshihiro Nishino of “King Kong” suddenly resigned from Yoshimoto Kogyo on January 30 this year. It all started when he posted a screenshot of a LINE conversation with his manager on his Twitter account, revealing his promotional work for the movie “Entotsumachi no Puppel,” which is based on his picture book.

I’d like to thank you all for your support. Get a grip!

Three days later, he took a sudden turn and left Yoshimoto Kogyo. On the website of Yoshimoto Kogyo, it says

On the website of Yoshimoto Kogyo, there was only one sentence, “We are pleased to announce that we have terminated the management contract of King Kong Nishino Ryouko, a member of our company, as of January 30, 2021, based on mutual agreement.

There was not the slightest hint of concern for Nishino, who had contributed so much to Yoshimoto over the years.

However, Nishino did send an email directly to Chairman Osaki, appealing that he was “not in trouble. On King Kong’s official YouTube channel, he said

“I’d like to appear as King Kong in Yoshimoto’s theater, even if I have to pay nothing.

However, this has yet to happen.

It seems that once you part company with a major agency, your public exposure, not to mention TV appearances, decreases. In fact, the impact seems to be showing up in the numbers.

The online salon that Nishino runs had about 74,000 members before he left. However, as his exposure decreased after he left the company, the number of members gradually dropped to about 54,000, a decrease of about 20,000.

Even so, at 1,000 yen per month, the monthly sales are 54 million yen, which is still a huge amount of revenue even with 20,000 fewer members… The YouTube channel that Nishino runs alone has 430,000 registered users, but there are several videos that have less than 10,000 views.

What makes me feel that Nishino’s presence is fading even further are the news articles about him.

An article about Ichikawa Ebizo and his son adapting Nishino’s “Pupel” for the stage hit the sports papers. However, when I looked at the comments on Yahoo News and other Internet sites, I found that there was not much excitement, with as few as one comment.

“Hiroyuki Nishimura, the founder of the anonymous message board “2channel”, once expressed his personal opinion about Nishino’s declining popularity. He said, “He had a very successful movie, but after the movie was over, I couldn’t see any movement from Nishino. The fans want to see him continue to grow, so the number of members is decreasing… He analyzed the psychology of the fans,” said a reporter from a sports paper.

I guess the fans want to keep seeing Nishino working hard and sweating. I’m looking forward to his next move…!