50-year-old Japanese man arrested for selling naked Love Live! anime pillow covers

Investigators say multi-year operation earned him millions of yen.

Some mainstream anime franchises are perfectly willing to openly acknowledge that fans have sexual fantasies about their favorite characters. Heck, One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda has given fans explicit permission to have explicit thoughts about his series’ shapely pirates, which explains how these figures got green-lit.

However, Love Live! generally tries to take the high road in such matters. Sure, the people in charge of the high school idol franchise know that some fans are thinking steamy thoughts when they look at its teen songstresses, but for the most part, said fans are going to have to use their imagination to get their heavy-breathing jollies, since the series official art and merch keeps things pretty chaste (occasional giant inflatable panty shot notwithstanding).

So if you’re going to sell bootleg huggy pillow covers with drawings of naked Love Live! girls on them, you’re asking for trouble. On September 12, officers from the Ibaraki Prefectural Police arrested a 50-year-old man from Chiba Prefecture’s Ishikawa City on suspicion of copyright violation. Investigators say the man, who has a regular white-collar day job, sold a naked Love Live! Sunshine!! character huggy pillow cover via an Internet auction on May 2, part of a continued pattern of online sales of the covers that stretch back three years and have netted the man some three million yen (US$27,800).

▼ The Love Live! Sunshine!! girls (with their clothes on)

The man has denied the charges, and while investigators don’t believe him, they also don’t think that he was the one producing the prurient pillow covers, and are currently trying to track down their original supplier, in hopes of cutting off the flow of illegal goods at its source. Meanwhile, fans desperate to see the Love Live! girls without any clothes on will just have to keep their fingers crossed for another video game glitch like this one.

Source: The Sankei News via Livedoor News via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
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