ODD No., maker of the Lovelive idol app, went bust owing ¥10.7bn it never earned back

ODD No., a Tokyo company known for the interactive animation game app Link! Like! Lovelive! — built around virtual teen idols — began bankruptcy proceedings in August 2026, with law firm Iinuma & Partners serving as trustee. Tokyo Shoko Research put its liabilities at ¥10.7 billion (about $67.2 million), among Japan's biggest bankruptcies of the year by money owed.

The app had attracted a 'considerable' number of users, but heavy development costs prevented the company from ever becoming profitable, Tokyo Shoko said in an August 13 report; company representatives were not available to comment. The failure landed in a grim market: Japanese corporate failures in the first half of 2026 rose 7% year-on-year to 5,346, the most since 2013, with information-services bankruptcies up 18.5% to 166 as artificial intelligence rapidly changed the industry.

ODD No.'s collapse followed the July failure of Osaka payment processor Zentoshin; Tokyo Shoko researcher Hiroki Sakurai said bankruptcies were expected to stay high as worker shortages and rising prices persisted. The material records no buyer or relaunch for the app.

Bankruptcy with ¥10.7 billion (about $67.2 million) in liabilities — one of Japan's biggest failures of 2026.

Audience pull without unit economics is just a burn rate: 'considerable' users never covered the app's heavy development costs.

The interactive-animation format compounds the problem — every content cycle demands production spending before any revenue lands.

It failed into a hard market: 2026's 12-year-high bankruptcy wave offered no patient creditor for a loss-making app maker.

Audience pull without unit economics is just a burn rate: 'considerable' users mean nothing if each content cycle's production cost lands before its revenue does.

Bankruptcy proceedings began in August 2026 with ¥10.7 billion in liabilities; no sale or relaunch was recorded in the material.