Grand Jump serialised gourmet manga “Dashi Master” is the latest manga to fall victim to the temptations of Google Images, with the publishers suspending its publication after its author was accused of tracing a significant number of images.
As might be expected, it was the mysteriously thorough investigation by online plagiarism police which was the manga’s undoing:
The editors say the manga’s publication has been indefinitely suspended “whilst the facts are confirmed,” leaving open the possibility of both a return and a humiliating full cancellation.
Online there is the usual wonderment at how anyone finds them out:
“Plagiarism?”
“It’s a trace…”
“You just can’t be this blatant about it.”
“Surely everyone always used to trace ingredients?”
“I don’t get what the problem is here?”
“There is no problem, if you take the photographs yourself. The copyright on those photographs belongs to the people who took them, you can’t just use them in a commercial manga.”
“Never heard of it. This could be good advertising.”
“How did they find this out?”
“Manga reading is serious business to some people.”
“I have to wonder about this. The people who find this stuff out are either dedicated, or connected behind the scenes. And suspending him like that seems strangely harsh.”
“Every time these come up I am left wondering just who finds them out.”
“In the aspiring mangaka threads there are scores of these people. They’re all desperately scrutinising the winners of every award to find traces of foul play.”
“Sounds more like they want to become trace detectives than actual mangaka.”
“That they spend their time doing something like that is the reason they’ll remain ‘aspiring’ the whole of their lives.”
“Why don’t the editors provide these materials for them?”
“It’s not that bad? Do they really have to take them all themselves?”
“Right. All themselves. Otherwise it is a derivative work of the photographer’s. Everyone illustrating operates under these conditions.”
“I bet he thought nobody would every rumble him.”
“How did he find these images?”
“Google Images – if you search for ‘Jinhua ham,’ those pigs are in the first set of results.”
“Haha. If that’s all he did, he was asking to get busted.”
“Honestly, mangaka are always doing this stuff. Hiroaki Samura said in an interview that ‘as I don’t have a PC, I gather material using image searching from my cell phone.'”
“I doubt the actual readers care about any of this.”
I don’t give a s♥♥t. It looks good.
How do they even make these connections…
Plagiarism ?
I can understand some chan people have nothing better to do, but for publisher to suspend the manga because of that “plagiarism” ?
That’s one fucking retarded publisher …
Japanese are strange when it comes to such things as intellectual property. It seems they think every content someone created somewhere must be protected to its fullest so far as to not being allowed as the slightest source of inspiration.
Tracing is nothing new in Manga, even in art.
I brought a Manga drawing technics books, Manga artist Ikegami Ryōichi has teaching us to trace photos for manga drawing, and he is also using this in his manga.
Simply, if it is not tracing someone drawing, I don’t see a problem in there.