Dengeki Pulls “Totally Copied” Baka to Test Rip Off Novel
- Categories: Japan, News
- Date: Jun 9, 2010 13:28 JST
- Tags: Baka to Test to Shokanju, Copyright, Dengeki, Famitsu, Light Novels, Plagiarism
Major publisher Dengeki have apologised and withdrawn all copies of a light novel which 2ch discovered plagiarised “Baka to Test” in the most egregious manner imaginable, reproducing entire passages with minor changes in wording and even copying the author’s postscript address to readers.
Denegki’s “Ore to Kanojo ga Maoh to Yuusha de Seitokaichou,” the debut title of “author” Joh Aikawa, is the novel at fault, being accused primarily of Simmonsing Famitsu’s “Baka to Test to Shokanjuu.”
2ch discovered the similarities and launched an investigation, soon uncovering evidence of massive plagiarism from Baka to Test and other light novels such as Ladies vs Butlers, with many sections being lifted almost verbatim, even down to the author’s greeting, and others have minor changes in wording in order to fit them into the story.
Far from being a tawdry mishmash with a fringe following, the book actually made it to the final stages of the 16th Dengeki Novel Prize – Dengeki’s judges apparently did not suspect a thing. Initial Amazon reviews were fairly favourable and sales healthy. Even whilst doubts were being raised about its content, it retained a substantial fanbase, although even these soon had to recognise the inevitable.
2ch provides a comprehensive comparison, although new instances are still being discovered and just what the book took from other works remains largely uninvestigated:
An example of the sort of thing encountered (unfortunately plagiarism does not translate well), from the actual afterwords of the two books:
Baka to Test:
Greetings to everyone kind enough to pick up this book.
This work was awarded the editorial special prize of the 8th Entame Awards, so it’s become sort of a debut for Kenji Inoue, as I’m called. I hope things go well.
As it is my debut, of course, it’s my first published book.
Ore to Kanojo:
Greetings to everyone.
This work went to the last stage of the 16th Dengeki Novel Prize, so it’s become sort of a debut for Joh Aikawa.
As it is my debut, of course, it’s my first published work.
Unlike cases involving references, visual similarities or traces, with text the chances of such similarities naturally occurring are infinitesimally small – shameless plagiarism is the only explanation.
Dengeki issued the usual platitudinous apology, the content of which is to formulaic to bear repeating, begging the afflicted author, Famitsu and fans of the work for forgiveness. The author is said to admit to “consulting” several passages.
A frantic recall of all copies of the work has also ensued – just how many of the 45,000 copies printed remained unsold is not clear, but bizarrely unrecalled copies began cropping up in auctions soon after, selling for significantly more than retail price despite being nothing more than a hodgepodge of copied passages.
Such cases seem normally to be resolved discretely without settlement, although publishers might by now find themselves better served by making a conspicuous example of offenders in order to dissuade imitators – presumably a large number of which remain undetected.
Dengeki for their part are becoming notorious for publishing and awarding prizes to plagiarised works – whilst they have been scrupulous in groveling and begging for forgiveness as is the Japanese custom, they seem yet to have actually worked out how to prevent the incidents occurring in the first place – so much so that some have begun to wonder about them.
On the other hand, the existence of such a publisher will be welcomed by others as a rare employment opportunity.
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Musaigen no Phantom World Relentlessly Cute
Dragon Quest Stage Event Highly Promising
Project X Zone 2 Trailer Hits Hard
Kagura Ero-Figure Extremely Tentacular
Monmusu BD “Bigger With Every Release!”
MLP Futanari: “Bronies Weirder Than Ever…”
Blade & Soul Launch Unexpectedly Voluptuous
Nisemonogatari Pachinko Machine Unveiled
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“Abusive” Breast-Groping Fundraiser Molested by Petition
Hanayo Koizumi’s Birthday Highly Revered
Toyota Prius CM Goes Full KanColle Mode
Usamimi Anette-san Micro-Bikini Figure
Busty Hotaru Cosplay Delightfully Delectable
Adorable Ati Cosplay by Kaieda Kai Kemonomimi Chaos
Momo Velia Deviluke Cosplay Bursting With Bridal Beauty
Skimpy Sonico Cosplay Barely Contained
Kumiko & Reina Cosplay Hardly Blows At All
Skimpy Elf Bikini Cosplay by Saku Supremely Sexy
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Delectable Dizzy Cosplay by Lechat
Dark Elf Cosplay by Non Very Dark Indeed
Titillating Tamako Cosplay Perfectly Pink
Maybe he should have called his book a dojinshi.
all this plagiarism stuff to me is just a load of crap. I mean, sure, its horrible to copy someone elses' work and sell it off as your own. But people go so far as to say there is plagiarism if a few lines were reused and re-arranged?
I never understood what was wrong with people turning pictures in google search into 2d artworks either. Its a goddamn picture! Its like having 2 people draw a scenery from the same spot at the same angle, and then saying that one copied the other!
I don't give a damn about reworked sentences that someone used as a reference! It had its own story. It had its own fanbase. It deserved to live! If people liked it, then thats all that matters! And don't even mention the word "originality". It doesn't exist in this world anymore. All that matters is whether people were able to enjoy it!
"And don't even mention the word "originality". It doesn't exist in this world anymore. All that matters is whether people were able to enjoy it!"
So much like Stephenie Meyer's bullshit, the greatest shit in history called Twilight copying the concept of Vampires vs Werewolves from the Underworld series and then mishmashing it with stupid romance from random TV drama series. Yet no one dares to point at her face the fact that she copied from something due to her massive fame. Annoying indeed.
Immitation is flattery..
-John Kramer, SAW 5
The more I hear about 2ch's obsessivenesses, stupidities and blatant harassments, the more I hate them. Don't they realize that all art is a rehash of what's gone before? It's a form of hidden compliment in my opinion, that the copier has thought that this particular piece of art was worthy of emulating, plagiarising, simmonzing, whatever. If you watch any piece of fiction, it's almost guaranteed that it's been done before.
It does really look the same.
Ore to Kanojo ga Maoh to Yuusha de Seitokaichou = Unofficial Baka to Test "spin-off"
H2SO4
I'm surprised people cared. They don't normally give a rat's ass about the other billion uninspired and insipid clones happen. I guess the line between plagiarism and "homage" is simply thinner than it used to be.. now we only get angry if the story is a literal copy.
there are only 6 stories in the world anyways... dad said so.
Says something about the moe pushers. Moe series are so interchangeable it's become hard to tell when someone is actually plagiarizing.
Seriously, 2ch can be the FBI already
...i cant read that dumbasses...
"they seem yet to have actually worked out how to prevent the incidents occurring in the first place – so much so that some have begun to wonder about them."
Just publish in 2ch before printing them for sale.
Problem solved
now my question is... are the stories the same?
The guy copied several titles, so obviously the story is a mix of other works. Nothing new here, but just editing some works is rather cheeky...
If it was released within the past two or three years, then it will have the same exact story as every other series released in the past two or three years.
Originality has died in this industry.
Sad truth is sad.
I think Ore to Kanojo is a pretty cool guy, eh simmons popular works and doesn't afraid of anything.
i hate all the shit with plagiarism. especially when its in art. mainly because you cant fucking ever say that its a trace unless the guy confesses.
there are only so many things that you can draw, and here is the kicker, you see something realy hot, a year or so later you draw what you think is realy hot, forgetting the original picture, and you are accused of pauperism.
im fucking amazed that no one had tried to copyright a position a character is in as there own and no one can ever draw it that way again.
if you have ever been in school, had to go through an online plegerisim detector on a 10 page report or story, my heart goes out to you because i had to re write papers for fucking days so nothing came up on the detector. i mean seriously, there have to be millions of things written every year, page long things, and unless you invent your own words and language, everything that can ever be expressed has been expressed, and there for everything is plegerisim in some shape or form.
who is to say this guy was inspired by the books and decided to write one, but woops, the books were still on his mind and he wrote thing similar. i mean they have just pointed out sentances, and paragraphs here, not chapters.
here,
i took a shit
i just took a dump
i just went to the bathroom and droped a duce.
all thsoe are saying the same thing and expressing the same thing and if used in different books are simmilar.
that author greating too, its so fucking generic.
hello book buyers
inane facts
my debut work,
there anyone that use that formula again will have plegerised.
spell checker isnt working for some reason, so excuse some of the poor spelling.
and yes, i have been burnt by people accused me of plagiarism in the past, and i never did, but will anyone ever believe you if you say you, the accused, didn't? the moment you are accused, no one will trust you.
Yeah, it does make me wonder. A few things they are the same phrases. It's not unheard of to have that happen. Others are grasping at "HE USED THE SAME TWO WORDS, GET HIM!" I wouldn't be surprised if all they did was run comparisons on a multitude of text files and tell it to highlight all parts that were the same. Seriously, we have comparisons of phrases like "The weather is nice" being in two texts.
I can't explain the afterword but because of its highly generic format I wouldn't be surprised if it was basically a form letter that an editor filled the blanks with different phrases.
Substantial research and conclusions need to be drawn as to the length of the so called "copying," not the kneejerk reaction that we have so far. If large chunks of plot, characters, etc are actually copied then show it, not compare scattered phrases and words.
sadly, weather he did it or not, his carrear is all but over because of the accusation
Good artists copy and great artists steal. -Steve Jobs
Picasso originated that phrase, unless you're implying Steve Jobs is a great artist.
it's simmonsing
Monkeys on typewriters, just monkeys on typewriters...
This guy has balls. He copies from hugely popular light novels (his competitors) and expects to get away with it?
Nice.
true say. but the author should of scraped it and turn it into a parody instead
Were it just the afterword, it could well be just an inside joke to anyone who happens to notice, I've done things like that before. But with that many examples, it seems to be a bit more...
what if it is really a coincident.
then he better get a new idea.. because his idea already taken by other author.. be more creative, it's easier said than done.
I only bothered to read the "服を脱で..." comparisons , but then again, stripping is such a common concept these days...
In this world, creativity was influenced by many other elements. One of it is from the works of others. A lot of artist, designer, writers, etc could be call "thief" if we stick to the rule "be more creative".
It's a lot less similar if you can actually read what the highlights are. I can't believe I wasted time even looking through the whole thing.
Huh? If it was a coincidence then you already can't do anything about it :/
"be more creative"? I'm sure he thought he was being seriously creative, not knowing that what he was typing down looked exactly like sumthin already written before.
IF it was a coincidence that is~
It does look the same.
the same it really does look
O'rly?
You know.....2ch is like America's version of FBI, except they only investigate game,anime and idol related stuff, hell they work as good as the FBI, go 2ch xD!
Blatant copy is blatant.
I'm just gonna ride on the fact that you're close to the top to post this, but why hasn't Artefact called out Brian Ashcraft on Kotaku? Every single on of his posts is just copy and pasted from Sankaku with almost no real additional commentary. I know he links back most of the time, but how does Artefact feel about some hackjob who makes significantly more money than this site by just basically feeding SC's RSS feed through one of Gawker's many blogs-as-news sites?
At least you aren't accusing me of being Brian Ashcraft as some have.
Knowing both the salaries of writers and the income of this site I'd be surprised if what you are saying there is correct.
Obvious copy is... Oh wait, some people didn't notice.
It's actually surprising how well it fared and how long it took for somebody to notice.
It does look the same, really.
Look the same, it does really.
schaut es wirklich gleich aus?
It really does look the same, really.
ARTEFACT, DELETE THIS MADNESSS ABOVE!!!
No you
don't delete it, its the same.
Welcome to 4ch
delete it, it's all the same >.<
hmmm... really?
YARLY
isn't it the same?
yes
４ｃｈにようこそ
It's just one quite mad person downvoting. A tad pathetic, really.
Really, we need a combo breaker; although it's the same without one.
Rain of votedown, first time for me to see this much ><
Welcome from 4ch
From 4ch, welcome
OMAETACHI BAKA!??!?!
Oh really?
It does really look the same, really.
really, it does look the same.
It does really look the same, really
Does it really look really the same?
It's the same.
Really looks the same, doesn't it?
not rly
Really, it really does really look really the same. Really. I think.
the same, it does look really
It does really look the same, sure.
does it look really the same?