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I made this livejournal as a place where people can discuss the manga plagiarism and copyright issue.
What sparked my interest in this issue was the recent apology of BL (or yaoi) mangaka Youka Nitta. She was accused of copying magazine ads and was apparently hounded into apologizing and leaving the field. Nitta is an amazing talent and she will be successful in whatever she chooses to do from here on out. The people who paid the price for the accusations against Nitta were her fans, who will now be deprived of a great work.
The stunning thing about Nitta's apology is that she is one of the more creative and original mangaka in the BL field! She puts the work into developing interesting plots for long, well-written stories. She strives to break the mold in numerous ways. While you can still spot the occasional cliche, they aren't as frequent as those found in other manga, especially in the cliche-plagued BL genre. Moreover, given the setting of the stories she told (usually glamorous and fashionable) it enriched the reader's experience to see references to high fashion, including visual composition that quotes fashion ad.
Unlike lesser artists, Nitta did not simply plagiarize the work of others because she was lazy. She pursued the course to tell her story in the best way. Moreover she quoted from other media, which would commonly be regarded as a derivative gesture (not illegal, but something that should evoke comment and discussion). While she quoted the whole context of well-known fashion photos, she made the important change of turning women into men! That completely changes the message. What made me angry about this whole case was that a mob of bloggers who had obviously never read Nitta's work and had no sense of context decided to repeat the accusation of plagiarism until Nitta was forced to apologize and define herself as guilty.
Plagiarism is rampant in manga. By plagiarism, I mean when one manga artist traces the work of another manga artist in order to cut corners and save time. When Takashima settled her lawsuit against Kayono after attracting a lot of public fuss that was aimed against yaoi more than her, Takashima's fans were justifiably outraged. When one manga artist copies the layouts of another, it's essentially selling someone else's work as your own, and that should raise a lot of concern in the mangaka community.
Supposedly Nitta was forced to apologize and resign because Japanese publishers are somehow more concerned about copyright than anyone else. I don't buy that for a second. Because of the Nitta case, I read a lot of manga to try to get a sense of what the norms were. What I found was an amazing amount of everyone copying everyone else. Certain plots, such as the debt-to-yakuza, became obvious memes. Cliches were rife, but had they become cliches because of copying some interesting original? I couldn't tell what derived from what. Many panel compositions looked similar. I'm not sure about tracings of whole pages though (which is what made Kayono egregious, since manga amounts to a page-composition based art).
Perhaps the mangakas I surveyed were also tracing photos, but I wouldn't be able to recognize it if they were. And even if I did recognize some reference, I would probably regard it as clever - because importing ideas from other fields would provide some welcome relief from the vastly inbred semi-plagiarism that SEEMS TO BE THE NORM!
As for Nitta, all I can do is wring my hands and scream WHYYYYYYYY???!!!!!! Why did the people with the anti-plagiarism agenda have to pick on one of the few people with talent, who actually showed some creativity, who was doing a service for so many fans? On the spectrum of questionable approaches, Nitta should have been considered on the low end of the scale.
Who was behind the attack on Nitta? Was it photographers who want to make an example of someone? Was it a lawyer who wants to make money off a lawsuit? Was it a case of bloggers who are always looking for sensational news actively inventing the sensational news? In any case, the accusations against Nitta were only noticed because she was relatively well-known, and so the people who had an agenda stampeded at the first accusation, not bothering with their own research or understanding the context. To me, such utter disregard for the effect their misplaced accusations would have on Nitta's career or the happiness of Nitta's fans is a crime in itself.
I now open the floor to discussion of this issue. I welcome comments from anyone passing by, but for the time being I'll moderate the comments to prevent spam and pointless flames.
Update: This web site has great examples of copyright/plagiarism issues in manga. It's worth mentioning that these are only cases where someone made a fuss - there are probably many more examples to be had, to the extent of calling it common practice.
What sparked my interest in this issue was the recent apology of BL (or yaoi) mangaka Youka Nitta. She was accused of copying magazine ads and was apparently hounded into apologizing and leaving the field. Nitta is an amazing talent and she will be successful in whatever she chooses to do from here on out. The people who paid the price for the accusations against Nitta were her fans, who will now be deprived of a great work.
The stunning thing about Nitta's apology is that she is one of the more creative and original mangaka in the BL field! She puts the work into developing interesting plots for long, well-written stories. She strives to break the mold in numerous ways. While you can still spot the occasional cliche, they aren't as frequent as those found in other manga, especially in the cliche-plagued BL genre. Moreover, given the setting of the stories she told (usually glamorous and fashionable) it enriched the reader's experience to see references to high fashion, including visual composition that quotes fashion ad.
Unlike lesser artists, Nitta did not simply plagiarize the work of others because she was lazy. She pursued the course to tell her story in the best way. Moreover she quoted from other media, which would commonly be regarded as a derivative gesture (not illegal, but something that should evoke comment and discussion). While she quoted the whole context of well-known fashion photos, she made the important change of turning women into men! That completely changes the message. What made me angry about this whole case was that a mob of bloggers who had obviously never read Nitta's work and had no sense of context decided to repeat the accusation of plagiarism until Nitta was forced to apologize and define herself as guilty.
Plagiarism is rampant in manga. By plagiarism, I mean when one manga artist traces the work of another manga artist in order to cut corners and save time. When Takashima settled her lawsuit against Kayono after attracting a lot of public fuss that was aimed against yaoi more than her, Takashima's fans were justifiably outraged. When one manga artist copies the layouts of another, it's essentially selling someone else's work as your own, and that should raise a lot of concern in the mangaka community.
Supposedly Nitta was forced to apologize and resign because Japanese publishers are somehow more concerned about copyright than anyone else. I don't buy that for a second. Because of the Nitta case, I read a lot of manga to try to get a sense of what the norms were. What I found was an amazing amount of everyone copying everyone else. Certain plots, such as the debt-to-yakuza, became obvious memes. Cliches were rife, but had they become cliches because of copying some interesting original? I couldn't tell what derived from what. Many panel compositions looked similar. I'm not sure about tracings of whole pages though (which is what made Kayono egregious, since manga amounts to a page-composition based art).
Perhaps the mangakas I surveyed were also tracing photos, but I wouldn't be able to recognize it if they were. And even if I did recognize some reference, I would probably regard it as clever - because importing ideas from other fields would provide some welcome relief from the vastly inbred semi-plagiarism that SEEMS TO BE THE NORM!
As for Nitta, all I can do is wring my hands and scream WHYYYYYYYY???!!!!!! Why did the people with the anti-plagiarism agenda have to pick on one of the few people with talent, who actually showed some creativity, who was doing a service for so many fans? On the spectrum of questionable approaches, Nitta should have been considered on the low end of the scale.
Who was behind the attack on Nitta? Was it photographers who want to make an example of someone? Was it a lawyer who wants to make money off a lawsuit? Was it a case of bloggers who are always looking for sensational news actively inventing the sensational news? In any case, the accusations against Nitta were only noticed because she was relatively well-known, and so the people who had an agenda stampeded at the first accusation, not bothering with their own research or understanding the context. To me, such utter disregard for the effect their misplaced accusations would have on Nitta's career or the happiness of Nitta's fans is a crime in itself.
I now open the floor to discussion of this issue. I welcome comments from anyone passing by, but for the time being I'll moderate the comments to prevent spam and pointless flames.
Update: This web site has great examples of copyright/plagiarism issues in manga. It's worth mentioning that these are only cases where someone made a fuss - there are probably many more examples to be had, to the extent of calling it common practice.