Maya Imamori Exits No.1 Sentai Gozyuger After Underage Drinking Incident; Management
 

https://us.oricon-group.com/news/6816/

An adult woman's career getting publically executed over something this trivial is just all around disgusting.

Holy hell. It's crazy that this is happening while I'm rewatching Bioman, the last time a Ranger was forced to abruptly leave the series. So close to the finish line too, as they probably only had a handful of episodes left to film.

Agreed with Kiwami too. She will never get another serious acting job again, which is a damned shame because she's a lot of fun in the role.

but who's gonna be gozyu unicorn?

People who think she got publicly fired over underage drinking not realizing that in of itself is a cover story are not gonna make it.

Buddy, who gives a fuck. A woman who has been racially harassed for months and has had tabloids spreading stories defaming her character has had her career torpedoed by a misogynistic and ass backwards industry, and no one in power at Toei or her agency is doing anything to defend her.

I am seriously worried for her safety now.

Cover for what?

Geez, they seriously used the word, "engaged". Kind of poor timing for a joke, huh. Also, "despite" doesn't make sense, as being underage and underage drinking is cause and effect. What a terrible paragraph.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it disgusting, but it's certainly unfortunate for both Imamori and fans of the show.

It's spooky for me that I watched Episode 36 yesterday which ended with Genji inviting Kinjirou out to drink and Kinjirou declining due to being "underage".

According to rumors, Oto.

A malicious scandal made up by a tabloid claiming that Imamori was having an affair with married man Asai, the former suit actor of Gozyu Wolf who retired due to health problems.

I get the whole thing about wanting to be mad at Toei or her agency over this considering the former's no stranger to actresses not being treated or supported well in some instances, but we also gotta keep in mind that what's involved here are held at different levels of contempt than they would be in the west.

Like drinking while being under the legal age may as well be par for course here. In Japan it's a serious offense. Couple that with the fact that she's one of the current faces of Sentai and is meant to be a role model for the younger generation, her being cut off immediately makes sense. It sucks, yeah, but it makes sense.

Same with the rumored affair. If it's true, then the above still applies. If either ended up happening, then it's a case of someone doing their own career in with their own actions. The third possibility is neither happened and it's a way to cut losses and distance themselves from her and any negative rumors and press surrounding her, which would then be squarely the fault of her agency and Toei, but no one has any clear evidence of that either outside of hearsay.

In the end it's still an unfortunate situation all-around. An actress's career is essentially completely ruined and the series now has this uncomfortable stain on it as a result. But let's not immediately just jump to "female actress = infallible/thrown under the bus" when all we have is broad reporting, statements and rumors to bounce off of.

It's a machine translation of Japanese article. Please stop being dim.

Well, that's sad news. I don't quite agree that the dismissal was completely undeserved and unfair. Here I'd like to quote from memory Hiroshi Fujioka's words after the scandal with Tetsuo Kurata: "I'm an ordinary person, and like everyone else, I sometimes do wrong. But I also understand that I'm a role model for many, and that's why I try to exercise responsibility." Yes, it's worth remembering that after the Kamen Rider Saber scandal, everything ended with only warnings, but it's still important to remember that there's a significant difference between less-than-praiseworthy behavior and a direct violation of the law (and possibly even a connection to adultery). That is, Imamori probably knew what such actions would lead to. Well, regarding stupid laws: no matter how stupid they are, they must be observed. And just search for "underage drunkenness" to see that it's not so senseless. So, to me, the situation is sad, but in its own way, fair.
And yes, it's a shame to lose Gozyu Unicorn. Especially since the show missed a great opportunity to more or less quietly phase out Sumino. And overall, the clouds are gathering around Sentai.

This is truly unfortunate.

This is sad news to hear. The world can be so mean to people for doing something so small like drinking. Also her figure from Gozyuger was removed from toy shelves in japan stores with how extreme japanese views are in the backward country.

Jesus, they already completely edited her out of the newest episode. No next time preview or date for the next episode either, which indicates the show is likely going on hiatus for reshoots.

So the show going to ignore Sumino existence ?

If they really want to remove her just do something similar like they did to Gozyu Tyranno, make an episode where she lost a duel & had to give up her ring.

She deserve better

I know this is off-topic, but I never fully understood what happened with both Kurata and the Saber Scandal.

Wait, wait, wait. I haven't seen Gozyuger but they really just fired one of the Rangers for underage drinking?

Like, look, I get that underage drinking is serious but she was literally one year away from the legal drinking age. Is this really something to fire someone over? I don't even drink alcohol and I think this is nuts.

I'm honestly more inclined to think this is a cover-up for the affair accusations and racism being hurled towards her. Because this is all so unbelievably stupid that I'm actually losing my mind here.

Also, what's the Saber controversy? I try to keep myself from drama so kind of out of the loop here but I'm curious now.

seems a bit too serious to fire an ongoing sentai member over a legal drinking age thing and there's probably more. But hey Japan is Japan. If an idol can be fired for having a boyfriend reflection being seen in a mirror/drinking cup, I can get the idea of a superhero for children needing to be clean as pure white.

Actors who get in these show know what they sign for. Even if this sounds harsh.
(if it's just the drinking though, that's nowhere near the level of junya Ikeda scamming people or Tsunenori Aoki harassing a woman). But hey, rules are rules/contracts are contracts.


That being said, wasn't Subaru Kimura (KR Vice VA) also kind of making racist posts at some point ? (though doing blackfaces and this kind of posts seem to be taken "less seriously" in Japan than somewhere else) and nothing happened to him at all ? maybe because he was too big of a name already ?

You could argue the discrepancy is kinda unfair.

I believe it was early on in the show where Shuichiro Naito, who played Touma/Saber, was caught by Bunshun (the very same tabloid paper responsible for publishing about the supposed scandal involving Gozyu Wolf's suit actor and Imamori not too long ago). They pieced together that Naito and a youtuber were going out after they caught him leaving the condo (or "mansion" in Japan) where said youtuber resides. Naito admitted about the relationship.

On another account, they caught him chilling with Ryo Aoki, aka Mr. Kamen Rider Espada himself, smoking cigs in a random street corner.

I think during the filming of episode 37, Toei hadn't yet made the decision about her dismissal. So cutting it is a middle ground between not airing the episode and ignoring the company's decision. We'll see what happens next.

On Kamen Rider's 50th anniversary, Kurata wrote that Kotaro Minami was just a role for him, which upset fans. The upset fans also found that he was making money from photos in Black's costume without Toei's permission, which is also not entirely legal. And during Saber, Shuichiro Naito and Ryo Aoki smoked together, drank beer, flirted with girls, played pachinko?all during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But they're still adults, and fans liked that the actors were as close as their characters, so they were treated with leniency.
And in Imamori's case, I think the main reason for her dismissal from the show was a breakup with her agency. Toei needs new faces every year, so working with agencies is more important to them than with an individual performer.
And overall, with the annual introduction of new characters into the fandom, the memory of scandals is fleeting. If Gozyuger has a 10th anniversary in the future, I'm 70% sure Sumino will appear. And 97% if it's the 20th anniversary.

THIS. So many people on here who seem just as clueless as children

This is a website dedicated to shows for preschoolers and elementary school students. I don't think there are many children here, but there are definitely some teenagers.

I wouldn't count on that at all. Toei has not gone scorched earth for a main actor like this since Bioman. Mika Yajima, the original Yellow Four, has NEVER done a public meet up with the rest of the cast. She pretty much vanished off the face of the earth. If they're going out of their way to delete her from existence in episodes they've already filmed, her career with Toei is finished. The only hope she has now is if someone like Sakamoto will be willing to work with her again on an independent project, and she will probably have to work under a pseudonym at that.

That was 40 years ago, and she left right at the beginning of the show. Times have changed, and the grudge has faded. In any case, we'll see.

And alot of people who act like children. Like those who get upset over SKC being used over SS.

My heart goes out to Imamori-san.

Bunshun has been hounding her for so long and, whatever the validity of the accusations thrown against her, I can't help but feel like her agency and Toei is just throwing her under the bus to cover for themselves from all these purported scandals.

For such a promising up-and-coming talent, to have her entire life and career destroyed like this just feels wrong.

From what I've been hearing, they've pretty much wrapped up filming for the series proper already, since they started filming early like with Gavv and Zeztz. All that's left are the VS movie, V-Cins, and Stage shows, all of which Maya will not be appearing in. So everything that's happening right now, is happening right now. And there is either going to be a lot of money spent on post-production edits to remove all of her civilian scenes and dubbing over her suit scenes, or they're going to spend a lot of money to recast/replace her, and edit them into her place throughout the rest of the series.

Yep.

Yajima was a different case though. The agency didn't drop her, she dropped them and just stopped showing up. From what I heard, Ota's (Takasugi's actor) the only one who's seen her since. Any contractor will see that behavior as a permanent liability, whereas it will be literally impossible for Imamori to repeat her faux pas in 4 months. Of course, it's true that the fact she did it at all will surely work against her.

What could Toei even do though? The agency dropped their talent, so the contract between Toei and Imamori was rendered null and void. The other Gozyuger actors are probably obliged to stay quiet about it right now, but I'm curious to hear their opinions once the show is over.

Considering how Gozyu Unicorn has also been removed from publicity, it looks like Toei and TV Asahi are now making an effort to disassociate the hero from the character Sumino, which suggests that they intend to give the hero a new identity in a new user.

Absolute fucking disgrace of all this to happen, I wouldn't blame the actress for drinking considering the racial abuse and slander hurled her way from tabloids. It's also disgusting how she gets worse punishment for this than when any male actors actually do anything wrong, I'm happy that a bunch of classic toku actors have been showing their support to Imamori, especially as it makes it clear that this is wrong. I really hope she can bounce back from this

Doesn't this feel kind of backwards? Maybe I'm being naive, but drinking age laws are put in place to protect people that society has determined aren't mature enough to be responsible with alcohol, or to whom it poses a greater health risk because they're still maturing. Underage drinking is basically always the result of someone else's negligence, and in that sense, someone underage drinking really should be considered the victim, especially since the person most harmed is themselves. It doesn't sound as though she got behind the wheel of a car or acted aggressively towards anyone.

I get that the letter of the law is that what she did was illegal, but it really seems like a situation where someone deserves support and help rather than total blacklisting. I don't necessarily want to speculate, but it does seem plausible that this was a response to the awful rumors going around about her, as substance use often is a form of escape, though I maintain that this isn't really deserved either way. Rather than sending the message that "Drinking before you're 20 is bad," I feel like the main thing this communicates to all the kids out there is that one small mistake can totally ruin your life.

I don't argue that her agency wasn't within their rights to do this, but that doesn't mean I can't think they're pretty scummy for totally cutting her loose. It seems like it's going to have a more negative impact on the show than keeping her on ever could have as well, as I've seen a number of people saying they're dropping it -- if not for solidarity with the actress, simply for how mangled the last episode was by the attempts to scrub her from it. Sorry for dropping the paragraphs, I just wanted to get my two cents out there on this since I'd been stewing on it the past couple days.

No disrespect to Fujioka, and it's a very admirable way to handle being in the spotlight, but he has had 50 years to develop that sense of maturity and responsibility. I don't think it's fair to expect the same thing from a 19 year old. If there's one thing that's almost universal about that age, it's making dumb decisions, and hopefully getting the chance to learn from that so that you CAN be a better, wiser person in your later years.

Or... They just don't follow stuff outside of the show itself because it's not that important to their lives to do so.

I'm gonna keep this brief, but I did hear of this as the news dropped but was waiting for any other information to be sure, and well, it sucks.

I know Japanese Entertainment is a cutthroat industry and drinking laws are important, but given what's available, I can't rule out that she wasn't caught intoxicated and the agency (who I'd honestly put most of the blame on) wouldn't stand for that, or if someone found a bottle of scrumpy in her trailer or something, so I'm rather neutral on that stance. I'm not going to blow up Toei for some Agency's decisions or blame the person or culture in question.

As for the "allegations," as I'll call them since I don't think any of its confirmed, I'm going to rule out the racism since Japan, or any Asian countries don't care about that, but for the possibility of a scandal with a married man would certainly do it. Again, I only learned about these recently, so I'm not considering these as "big reasons."

Personally, I'm not going to focus too hard on something I don't have the information or ability to fix, and while I can understand that things like this are taken seriously, I personally have been enjoying this show which has always been a highlight of my week and with the Unconfirmed End of Super Sentai with Gozyuger being the finale, it's just not going to feel the same going forward and I'm sad this happened to her (heck, even anyone else and this would be terrible), I'm wishing the best for Imamori-San.

The uproar about underage drinking when she's a year off is odd. Especially when this is the same production company that gave us Choujin Sentai Jetman in 1991. Gai smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and sexually harassing women isn't exactly role model material regardless of the actor/character's age. I get that the character is meant to be hedonistic and not the ideal hero given the story of Jetman, but still the excuse of underage drinking getting Maya fired is dubious at best. It does seem more like a coverup for a bigger issue. Some saying it's from an alleged affair while others saying Japan's new nationalist PM caused the studio to swerve towards racial purity by firing a mixed Japanese-Filipino actress. It's truly a chaotic and unfortunate situation.

What are you talking about? There's a shitton of racism and discrimination there too. Shit, Ghandi was a racist back in his day. If racism wasn't a real thing in Japan, why would there be countless examples of Japanese media tackling the theme? I follow a news site that talks about Japan and it always brings up stuff like conspiracy theories that the guy who who Shinzo Abe was a foreigner. In fact, the term Gaijin is a derogatory term, the proper term would be Gaikokujin. I'm not gonna assume you're saying that out if maliciousness, but it's important to understand shitty people who look down on their fellow people for whatever arbitrary reason like that exist worldwide

I'm sorry, I didn't word it correctly, I meant that I don't see "racism" as a reason someone got fired, unless it was on a particularly vile level (like murder or something). I am aware of the issues and such, but I was referring to the business model and not the issue itself, so I apologize if I was unclear.

I'm not happy about any of this either, but I also don't want to spend too much time blaming a foreign company on how it deals with issues I only understand from my side of the pond, nor to speculate on whether there's some heinous plot behind the scenes. I initially didn't even want to talk about this since a lot of people are going nuts over this, and I really don't like discussing drama.

Sorry ignore my comment.

I'm sorry for quoting this but:

1.) 1991 is not the 2020s. Expectations, depictions and idealizations change in media along side social norms. There's a reason you'd see characters on shows made for younger ages partake in that sort of thing then while now they normally don't. Things change, media adapts to it.

2.) Gai is a fictional character in the series who is of-age. Maya is an actress who plays a character and, despite being a year off, is still legally underaged. One can do it cause they're a character depicted on-screen. The other cannot because they're the actual person in the actual world where actual regulations exist. It's not the same thing in the slightest.

And I don't buy all the insistence that it's a cover-up or it's ulterior motives because Toei is an evil company with lightning going off over their facilities like a villain's lair. Based on everything we know, at the very least, it was an avoidable situation that falls on her for not being more careful and her agency for not looking after her better. Toei's just doing their job as contract holders and now gotta splice/reshoot what they can as a result.

But this is also an important message, one that's best learned from a young age. I mean, I understand that everyone has the right to make mistakes and a second chance is the right approach, but in reality, not everyone gets that chance. And it's best to avoid situations involving drunk driving and aggressive behavior. Especially since sometimes people get away with it.
However, as they wrote, alcohol is just a reason. But if we focus only on that, then Imamori should have been punished. Not by firing, but a fine certainly wouldn't have hurt.

she ruined everything herself.