Trying to connect with young people using anime is always a risky move for politicians, and this time it went terribly wrong. Ami Fujibayashi, a candidate for the Japanese Communist Party for the Shinagawa district assembly in Tokyo, thought it would be a good idea to introduce Party Commu, a fictional anime-style idol group designed to support her campaign. However, the initiative turned into an instant disaster when the community detected massive hypocrisy and unauthorized use of artificial intelligence.

The group was presented with an aesthetic reminiscent of franchises like The Idolmaster, showing five girls, one of whom carried a volume of Capital by Karl Marx. The reaction on social media was swift, reminding people that the party itself has been harshly criticizing the moe aesthetic and female characters in short outfits in anime and manga for years, calling such content an inappropriate commercialization of the female body.

In addition to the charge of hypocrisy, several users with a keen eye noticed odd details in the illustration, such as distorted shoe laces and inconsistent anatomical proportions. Although the work was credited to artist Michiyo, the features revealed the use of generative AI. The situation quickly escalated because the Japanese Communist Party maintains an official public stance against AI tools that train on creators’ works without their consent.

Following the wave of negative comments, artist Michiyo published a public apology confirming that she indeed used artificial intelligence to create the image. She explained that she tried to base the outfits on the candidate’s real clothes and customize the faces, but admitted she had become too accustomed to using AI assistance for backgrounds. Michiyo acknowledged that these tools violate copyright by feeding on thousands of works without permission, deeply apologizing for her lack of judgment and promising that all future work for the party will be done entirely by hand.

After the clarification and regret expressed by the illustrator, the original post featuring the members of Party Commu was permanently deleted from social media, leaving the campaign without musical material or additional visual advancements.

About the Japanese Communist Party

The Japanese Communist Party is one of the country’s most established political organizations. In recent years, its representatives have maintained a fairly rigid stance on regulating pop culture, often opposing illustrations or tourism collaborations that use anime aesthetics, considering them hypersexualized. This precedent made the launch of a computer-generated idol group a highly discussed topic within Japan’s otaku culture landscape.

Do you think politicians should stay away from anime, or was this just a poor campaign management?