Gainax president Tomohiro Maki has been arrested on “semi-compulsory obscenity” for allegedly taking pictures of a nude teen girl who was working as a voice actress.
Yomiuri and Asahai News Network reports that the alleged incidents took place in February 2019. A voice actress “in her late 10s” (between 15 and 19) had allegedly begun working as a voice actress for Gainax, and was living in an apartment in Adachi (a place the company had dubbed the “Production Women’s Dormitory”).
She had allegedly been told she needed to take part in “training to be a celebrity”, which involved Tomohiro taking naked photos of her on four occasions between February 6th and February 23rd. He allegedly touched her at one point, stating “I’ll massage your legs if they become swollen.”
Nikkei and Narrow both report that Tomohiro is also the president (“representative director”) of Gainax International, a separate company to Gainax that trains voice actors and other talent. However Gainax International’s own website lists Daiki Fujimoto as the president as of this time of writing.
The girl reported the incidents to Tokyo Metropolitan Police at some point in February. During police inquiries Tomohiro claimed that the girl had asked him to do it, and he complied.
Tomohiro Maki has been a board director of the company since 2015, later becoming president of Gainax in October 2019. He was also involved on the creation of Neon Genesis Evangelion, though the rights were lost when director Hideaki Anno departed the company.
This is not the first time Gainax have had legal trouble. After the success of Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995, the company was audited and later found to have concealed 1.56 billion yen of profits. Then president Takeshi Sawamura and tax accountant Yoshikatsu Iwasaki were arrested on July 13th, 1999 for tax evasion and fraud [1, 2, 3].
