Masakazu Arai steps down from Shibuya Scramble Stories project

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Masakazu Arai is no longer acting in Shibuya Scramble Stories. Both Arai and the game’s director, Jiro Ishii, have confirmed his exit.

Originally, Masakazu Arai was going to be one of the lead actors in Jiro Ishii’s new live-action adventure game, alongside Fumio Kitagami. This project was funded through crowdfunding and announced in late May of last year, building on the success of 428: Shibuya Scramble.

Last April’s new trailer revealed the project’s name, Shibuya Scramble Stories, and a list of five playable characters. Only Fumio Kitagami made the list of main characters; Masakazu Arai was included only as a supporting character.

The original Japanese tweets and our English translations are provided below for your review.

Masakazu Arai’s statement

昨日お伝えした内容に、一部誤解が生じ、混乱を招いてしまい申し訳ありません。
改めてご説明申し上げます。

— あらい正和 (@officeforza) June 15, 2026

I sincerely apologize to all our fans and supporters for having to share this disappointing news.

I sincerely apologize for the lack of clarity in my explanation yesterday, June 14th, which led to some confusion. I’d like to clarify things now.

Last March, Mr. Kitagami and I were offered the chance to be the main stars of a project, and we launched crowdfunding to make it happen. Being a “star” meant we’d be the central focus of the story, prominently featured on all promotional materials like posters, and listed first in the credits.

I found out in March that other actors were cast in the lead roles, but I wasn’t completely removed from the project. I can’t share the specifics right now, but I asked the director and producers if they could develop the story around those two leads, as I’d originally envisioned when we first started fundraising. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible, so I requested to withdraw from the cast, and my request was approved on June 10th.

Look, things just weren’t working out with the director and the team making the game. We had different visions for where it should go, and honestly, it was starting to cause problems for everyone who believed in us. I’m really sorry to all of you who were supporting us – I feel terrible that it came to this.

Jiro Ishii’s statement

We regret to inform you that we will not be able to feature Masakazu Arai in our project. We engaged in extensive discussions and made numerous adjustments regarding both contractual terms and production aspects, hoping to include him as a main playable character. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach an agreement.

— イシイジロウ (@jiro_ishii) June 15, 2026

I am hereby informing about seeing off the appearance of Mr. Masakazu Arai.

We worked diligently up to the last moment, negotiating and making changes to ensure Mr. Arai would be a playable character in the game.

Ultimately, we couldn’t come to an agreement with him regarding our terms and how we make our products, so he decided to leave.

I sincerely apologize, especially to Mr. Arai and all of our fans, for this disappointing outcome.

I’ll be sharing a full explanation of what happened and how we see things soon. Could you please hold off on discussing this until then?

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2026-06-15 15:57