Broadcaster Rages over Unwanted Loli Mascot Chidejika

An “image character”, or mascot, for promoting digital terrestrial broadcasting has infuriated the very broadcaster it was supposed to promote after it was first turned into a loli by eager fans, and then began to be illustrated in a sexually explicit manner.

The broadcaster is vowing to put a stop to the lolified mascot by suing the fan artists into oblivion for copyright infringement.

The problem started with the creation of their character, 地デジカ / Chidijika, whose name is a rather weak pun on the identically pronounced phrase “地デジ化”, “change to digital.”

The original design, a swimsuit wearing freak deer:

The character almost immediately attracted the tender attentions of artists, who seeing it as insufficiently moe, turned it into a loli.

Fans of the character demanded answers: “If this is a character to promote awareness of digital TV, you should be happy it is being picked up like this and posted on blogs, shouldn’t you!?”

To which came the reply: “We do have control over the character, but as with other such characters we cannot abide unauthorised usage and so there is a copyright issue here.”

They then vowed legal action against offending sites, probably fearing for the image of their “normal” character once it had been turned into a sukumizu wearing loli, or in some cases a homosexual furry icon.

Soon after, the story, and loli art, were picked up from 2ch by one of Japan’s largest and most popular informal news sites, Itai News. There are already many hundreds of Chidejika illustrations populating the likes of Pixiv…

Via Itai News.

Considering the level of attention this fracas has brought to a character who otherwise might be lucky to grace a few marketing pamphlets, we have to wonder if this really a marketing blunder and not some marketing brilliance instead…

A fine set of example images: