Japanese game developer Konami has recently been holding special X follower campaigns to promote SOUND VOLTEX ∇ (Nabla), the latest entry in their long-running music arcade game series, released in December 2025. This time around, the campaign is centered on Konoha, the blood-thirsty redhead ruler of Volte Academy Middle School, who also got a new costume announced at the BEMANI PRO LEAGUE -SEASON 5- semifinals this month (Source: Game*Spark).
However, after mistakenly “aging up” the character in the video announcement (breaking canon of the franchise), Konami made a public apology, and was met with even more confusion from fans and passers-by alike who, through the announcement found out that the scantily clad sadistic vampiress was canonically (still) a middle-schooler for the first time.
The new promotional video for Konoha showcases her changing wardrobes from her usual vampire-nurse-inspired outfit to an even more revealing one. Her demeanor becomes more aggressive with the makeover, as she reenacts the sadistic “stomping” motion she does to the player in-game during their run. But despite being a “second year student” according to the series’ canon, in the video, she introduces herself as “Konoha, 3rd-year student at Volte Academy Middle School,”
Naturally, this led some fans to believe that she was maybe (finally) promoted to a 3rd year student, however, Konami soon made a public apology on X to clear up that Konoha is still a 2nd year middle school student. The somewhat strange apology took users, especially newcomers and those who didn’t dig too deep into the character’s background, by surprise, due to the obvious dissonance between the character’s appearance and lore. So, while her introduction as a “3rd year middle school student” was already shocking for some, the finishing blow came with the realization that she is actually younger and that Konami had “aged her up” by accident.
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