NetEase Otome Game 'Timeflow Painter' Collab with ChaCha Sunflower Seeds Goes Nuclear — Male Lead's Jacket Spotted with Nazi Swastika Pattern, Official Accounts Go Full Delete Mode (Except Bilibili)

What's it like to faceplant on the very day you announce a collab? NetEase's otome game Timeflow Painter (时空中的绘旅人) just dropped a promo with ChaCha Sunflower Seeds (洽洽瓜子), only for players to spot something horrifying that same evening — a Nazi swastika (卐) embedded in one of the male leads' supposedly 'Chinese-style' jacket pattern. Cultural confidence? More like cultural catastrophe.

Looking at the close-up evidence players dug up, this isn't some subtle easter egg buried in the background — the swatika is sitting front and center on the jacket, bold as brass. One top-voted commenter pointed out: 'Neither 卐 (right-facing) nor 卍 (left-facing) should be used — they're associated with Nazism and religious symbolism.' Another roasted the design choice hard: 'Did these artists really need to go out of their way to be edgy? A simple X or cross pattern would've looked perfectly fine, but no, they just had to pick the most controversial symbol possible.'

If the leak is accurate, the situation gets even worse — the merchandise might already be printed, meaning the entire production run could be headed for the shredder. This isn't just a single artist's screw-up; it's a total chain-of-custody failure from artist to QA to merch production.

In response to the firestorm, both Timeflow Painter and ChaCha executed what can only be described as a textbook 'cover-up' operation: the collab PV was hidden or deleted on Weibo, and promotional materials on Taobao, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin were systematically scrubbed. But eagle-eyed players quickly noticed that the Bilibili versions were completely untouched — community jokes suggested they 'probably forgot the password.' Over on Taobao, the promo images were Photoshopped with new patterns, but players had already screenshotted the originals for posterity.

As if one scandal weren't enough, players digging through the artwork also spotted another male lead with hands that look suspiciously AI-generated — warped finger proportions that don't match any recognizable human anatomy. One commenter nailed the dilemma perfectly: 'It's the same male lead. His hands look off too — I initially just thought the artist was bad. But if this is AI, it's checkmate. They can't blame outsourcing, and admitting to AI use would just invite a whole different wave of backlash.'

Multiple commenters noted that the game's art pipeline heavily relies on outsourced illustrators, with in-house artists mainly handling style unification and final touches. But outsourcing doesn't mean a free pass — as one reply hammered home: 'Outsourced or not, shouldn't there be a review process? This same male lead was already caught up in a plagiarism scandal over card art accessories not long ago, and stock photo watermarks left uncleared in final game assets isn't even a first-time offense.' Another commenter drew a sharp analogy: 'If you buy a defective product off Taobao, do you blame the seller or personally go track down the factory?'

Some bystanders floated a theory that the artist may have used a brush pack with swastika-like motifs and accidentally flipped the orientation. But most players aren't buying it — as one pointed out, the distinction between clockwise and counterclockwise swastikas 'is common knowledge you'd pick up just by visiting a temple.' The real issue isn't the mistake itself; it's that all three checkpoints — artist, QA, and operations — apparently rubber-stamped this with their eyes closed.

As of this writing, neither the Timeflow Painter official account nor ChaCha has issued any public statement. However, the controversy has already hit Weibo's trending topics, and the Taobao team's hasty Photoshop cover-up has been archived by screenshot-happy netizens. One commenter perhaps best captured the absurdity of the whole debacle: 'Every time something like this happens, I have to wonder — do they literally not have a review process, or is there some kind of perverse thrill in subtly displaying this stuff in front of a mass audience?' Given the game's track record of art controversies — plagiarism, stock watermarks, suspected AI — this Swastika-gate almost certainly won't be the last.