Dengeki Prize Winner Guilty of Simmonsing

Award-winning illustrator Shirokitsune has been found guilty of first degree Simmonsing by 2ch’s Plagiarism Police.

The artist in question, responsible for illustrating a number of magazines and doujinshi, was found to have freely helped himself to art from various manga and Pixiv profiles.

As is the custom with such shameless types, he splashes “unauthorised reproduction of modification of these works is forbidden” around his (now defunct) homepage.

Some of the comparison images used to ascertain his guilt:

Notably, he won a coveted Commendation in the Dengeki Taisho awards, a prestigious set of awards which includes tens of thousands of dollars in prize money.

Top illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, renowned for his work on the Final Fantasy series, is said to have singled out Shirokitsune’s work for high praise.

Once the plagiarism came to light, the CEO of publisher ASCII Media Works himself publicly apologised and revoked the honour.

2ch for its part actively hounded the wicked plagiarist, forcing him to close homepage, Pixiv and all; his current status is unknown save for the fact that he is obviously keeping a low profile.

Nonetheless he is unrepentant, apologising whilst saying he intends to “keep practicing and continue” his demi-artistic activities in future, but carefully avoiding mention of what it is he actually did and stressing that it “has no connection to my commercially published work.”