Vtuber Momosuzu Nene is in hot water, after she was reportedly caught tracing a professional mangaka’s art for her birthday illustration postcard.

The art in question comes from the mangaka Namori, who is the artist for YuruYuri. A plagiarism bot on Twitter put the two images side by side, showcasing the similarities between the works (the traced character is on the rightmost of Namori’s piece).

The illustration is no longer part of the birthday goods on the Hololive merch website, and Cover Corp had also issued a statement regarding the situation.

“We have conducted an internal check of the illustrations created by our talent Momosuzu Nene and found that some of the illustrations were traced”, they said. “We apologize to the parties concerned and have issued a strict warning to the talent in question”.

“We will also strengthen our material checking system. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused”.

Momosuzu Nene herself issued an apology over Twitter for the whole tracing fiasco, saying the following:

“It is true that when I draw illustrations, I sometimes think of my favorite artists and their works, which is what happened with the content here. I regret that my thinking was naive”, she said. “I am truly sorry”.

What adds to the confusion is that Namori herself was actually part of the birthday celebrations in an official capacity- the mangaka had designed the key illustration for the celebration, which is being sold as a rubber mat.