>>86473828In all artistic media where corpos touch, the primary deciding factor between "Independent Artist" and "Corporate Artist" is "Who owns the rights".
If you own everything you create, then you're an indie. You could have a team on payroll that operates as a company, but if you can walk out on them with little to no risk to your own IP, so long as you settled obligations, you're indie.
If somebody else owns everything you do, and you're just a talent bringing the art to life, you're corpo.
Everyone in vshojo owns their own IP and could reasonably leave at any time. We've seen this happen multiple times. They were, and are, indies with a company as a support structure.
Yuri didn't walk out of Phase Connect with her IP, despite walking in with it. She was corpo.
>What about the ones leaving Idol? Don't they technically own their IP?Talents like Rin are in a weird in-between state where they have a stake in their IP, but don't completely own it until November 2025. However, I believe this is an exception that helps to prove the rule: The thing in contention between the talent being fully independent, and the company having say over the talent, is the IP itself. Another interesting related piece of information is that there were legitimate concerns over whether GIN Penrose, the character played by Rin's IRL mother, was considered part and parcel with the Rin Penrose IP, or if Brave could pull a fast one. Idol clarified to Rin later that they considered the two bundled, but the fact that it was a question at all should help draw the lines a bit clearer.
