Neverness to Everness, the urban-fantasy gacha title from Hotta Studio, drew sharp criticism within days of its global launch over visible signs of generative AI in in-game art and short cartoon clips. The dispute centers on whether specific posters, billboards, and animated cutscenes were produced with image and video generators, and whether that contradicts an earlier promise from the studio about how AI would be used.
Quick answer: Players have identified several in-game assets, most notably a short cartoon-style character video and an anime-styled poster closely resembling a frame from Weathering with You, that show clear hallmarks of generative AI. Hotta has not issued a launch-day statement on these specific assets, and its earlier position was that AI would not touch core assets or character portraits, only atmospheric reference work.
The primary entity: Neverness to Everness and its AI claims
Neverness to Everness (NTE) is a free-to-play action gacha game in which the player takes the role of an Appraiser investigating supernatural anomalies in a modern city. The visual style leans heavily on anime aesthetics, with dense urban set dressing such as posters, signage, billboards, and short animated ads scattered through the open world. Several of these background assets, plus at least one foregrounded cartoon clip, are what triggered the dispute.
The accusations are not about the playable characters' 3D models or main story cinematics. They focus on 2D art and short videos used as world dressing and minor presentations, where artifacts typical of current image and video models are easier to spot.
What players actually found in the game
Three categories of assets are at the center of the complaints.
- A short in-game cartoon video introducing a character named Giovanni de Vogel, with shifting facial features, inconsistent hair, and a misshapen cat in frame. Viewers point to the unstable details across frames as a signature of current AI video generation.
- A poster visible in the city that closely matches a well-known shot from the animated film Weathering with You, with the appearance of having been passed through an image-to-image AI pass rather than redrawn.
- Various background billboards and storefront ads that show soft, melted text, malformed hands or faces, and other typical generative-AI tells. Some of these were already present in the beta build.
Beyond these confirmed visual issues, some players have also questioned whether earlier character key art for figures such as Mint and Nanally was AI-assisted at the concept stage. That claim is contested and has not been confirmed by the studio.
Hotta's prior position on AI
In a developer interview before launch, the team addressed AI use directly. The stated position was that core assets and character portraits would not use AI, and that AI would be used mainly for atmospheric rendering tests, early reference gathering, and trial-and-error work that human artists would later replace.
The friction now is over how that promise maps to what shipped. Critics argue that an in-world cartoon video presented during gameplay, and posters placed prominently along player routes, are not "atmospheric reference" work and qualify as shipped assets. Defenders argue that these are background dressing rather than core assets or character portraits, and therefore fall inside the original carve-out.
Beta versus launch: what changed
Players who tested the beta have reported that some AI-looking ads and posters present during testing were swapped out before launch, but not all of them. A portion of the disputed material survived into the live build, which is what re-ignited the discussion when the global release went wide.
| Asset type | Status at launch |
|---|---|
| Playable character 3D models | No credible AI claims |
| Main story cutscenes | No credible AI claims |
| Character portraits | Studio states no AI is used |
| City billboards and posters | Some appear AI-generated; some beta assets were replaced, others remain |
| Short in-world cartoon video (Giovanni de Vogel clip) | Widely identified as generative AI |
| Weathering with You-style poster | Widely identified as an AI pass over the original anime frame |
Sponsorship and creator fallout
The controversy has also affected creator partnerships. VTuber Ironmouse ended her sponsorship with the game after going public about it, saying she had asked the marketing team to confirm there was no AI in the title before agreeing, was assured there was none, and then encountered the AI assets herself in the live build. Other streamers, including Miss Meep Sheep, publicly stated they would uninstall after seeing the same content on stream.
Not every creator has dropped the game. Some have kept playing while flagging the AI material as a problem they want patched out, framing the issue as a quality and trust complaint rather than a reason to abandon the title outright.
How to identify the disputed assets yourself
Step 1: Watch for the in-world cartoon-style introduction clip featuring Giovanni de Vogel. The giveaways are inconsistent facial geometry between cuts, unstable hair shapes, and a cat figure with malformed proportions.
Step 2: Inspect city posters and billboards while exploring on foot. Look for soft or unreadable text, fingers that merge or vanish, and brushwork that shifts texture mid-stroke. These are the most common AI tells in 2D background art.
Step 3: Compare the disputed anime-style poster to the relevant shot from Weathering with You. The composition, lighting direction, and silhouettes line up closely, with surface details degraded in a way consistent with an image-to-image conversion.
What is and is not confirmed
Confirmed: at least one short animated clip and several pieces of background 2D art in the launch build show generative-AI characteristics that are visible without enhancement. Confirmed: the studio's pre-launch position was that core assets and portraits would not use AI, with AI limited to early-stage reference work.
Not confirmed: that any playable character's final design or portrait was generated by AI. Not confirmed: that the studio has lied outright, since the dispute hinges on how broadly "core assets" is defined. Not confirmed: any official launch-window statement from Hotta directly addressing the specific Giovanni de Vogel clip or the Weathering with You-style poster. No official patch date for removing the disputed assets has been announced.
Where the situation stands
The pattern so far follows the studio's beta-to-launch behavior: some flagged assets get replaced over time, while others slip through. Players who care about AI provenance in shipped art have a concrete list of items to point to, and the studio has a stated bar (no AI in core assets or character portraits) that it can be measured against. Whether the remaining disputed assets are removed in a future patch is the next question, and there is no confirmed timeline for that work.