NIJISANJI star Fulgur Ovid spoke out on his genmate Yugo Asuma’s graduation. The Noctyx quartet promises to keep together in his legacy, while asking people to give both NIJISANJI’s VTubers and their fans space to “grieve” his departure.
Yugo Asuma’s shock graduation on December 14 sent waves through NIJISANJI and its English fanbase.
It was the first departure from the VTuber agency’s English branch, with ANYCOLOR citing “many aspects of his activities and behavior as a Liver could not be accepted as a company” in their statement.
The nature of the news devastated fans of Yugo Asuma, Noctyx, and NIJISANJI more broadly, but none felt the pain more than his genmates. There was an outpouring of support on social media for the remaining four members, including Fulgur Ovid.
He was one of the first to speak up on Asuma’s graduation. With the rest of his genmates on holiday, entirely unplanned, he opened up to fans about the future of the group within NIJISANJI EN.
“We’re devastated about Yugo’s graduation,” he said. “We are all going to miss Yugo Asuma, and the fact that he is not a part of Noctyx anymore is really f**king devastating.
“Everyone in the community is hurting right now. Whether you were a Yuguy, a fan of Noctyx, a fan of NIJISANJI EN, or just a fan of NIJISANJI — this is a big moment for everyone.”
Fulgur mentioned fans will deal with the news in their own way: either with anger at the decision, sadness at the loss, or otherwise. He said he had felt “touched” by the outpouring of support from everyone in the community, but especially other NIJISANJI EN members.
The group knew about Yugo Asuma’s graduation before the December 14 announcement. However they didn’t know when the news would be dropped, and the suddenness of it blindsided the rest of Noctyx.
“We have known about this for a little while,” Fulgur continued. “We had no idea when it was going to come. We had pretty much no time to prepare for the fact that it was dropping on Wednesday night.
“The other three members of Noctyx, who are currently on holiday, did not plan their holidays to avoid this. I did not plan this zatsu to talk about this. This is just terrible timing, and that’s why you noticed so many NIJISANJI Livers who had things scheduled for around the time needed a break because it suddenly hit so hard.
“A lot of us haven’t been sleeping properly, we’ve been feeling sick, the stress has been getting to us. But it was a surprise when it was announced, and we’re just doing our best to get through this and move forward.”
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Instead of being split apart by the news though, Fulgur has assured fans Yugo’s departure has, in some way, brought the remaining four closer together.
They will miss some big milestones. Much like Tsukumo Sana’s graduation from Hololive earlier this year, Noctyx will not have a full five to celebrate their first anniversary in February 2023. They will miss all of the future collabs that were in the making, and one of their close friends.
Knowing that time is short in this industry has only resolved them to cherish those moments even more, and give fans the full Noctyx experience even without Yugo’s presence.
“Technically, Noctyx have been together for a full year already. Two months before we started streaming, we were already with each other everyday in Discord calls, trying to calm each other down about the fact we were going to be NIJISANJI Livers, trying to help each other through that stress, trying to guide each other through what kind of content creation we would do.
“I do want to reassure the fans that want to see Noctyx that we will still be together. This isn’t going to scare us away from spending time with each other.
“We miss Yugo too. But at the same time, we are going to be Noctyx. We were given other options. Me, Uki [Violeta], Alban [Knox], and Sonny [Brisko] could not see ourselves as anything else other than members of NIJISANJI’s Wave 5, Noctyx. There was no way we wanted to change that.
“We’re not going to stop spending time with each other just because we’ve lost someone. We’re still going to be Noctyx with the four of us. If anything, this has brought us closer together. For the last amount of time, we’ve essentially been back in Discord every day like we were pre-debut because we’ve been so f**king stressed and trying to carry this and talking about what we do as we go forward.
“We want to keep streaming together, we still care about each other so much, and we still are all very much caring about Yugo.”
Fulgur had one last message for his DJ genmate: no matter what, he will always be a part of Noctyx, and they’ll be cheering him on no matter where he goes.
“Yugo is moving forward, Yugo is going to find something else to do, and Yugo is an incredibly talented person. In the last year we’ve seen Yugo grow so much as a content creator, as a streamer, as a DJ — just in English, just in how they handle themselves.
“We’re all just wishing Yugo well and hope he has a wonderful future, and we’re going to do our best to continue our story.”