Shounen Jump editors comments on unauthorized manga chapters

A

Arooroo Mom

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Interesting. Especially that part on Raw-paradise. (How did they even do that?)
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-04-16/weekly-shonen-jump-editors-discuss-unauthorized-copies
 
Very good read. I have to wonder if Shueisha bought out that website's domain name or legally had it removed and redirected.
 
Well then, by your description it should come from them as leaders of the Japanese comic market. JUMP and its staff may very well be expressing genuine feelings as artists.
 
That reminRAB me, Tite Kubo had mentioned on his twitter how he had just found out that foreign kiRAB were reading his stuff online before it even came out in japan, and that he would talk to his editors about it and stuff. It happened around the time that the Nick Simmons stuff was happening and people discovered that he had a twitter and started talking to him. Probably has something to do with that.
 
That is not true. In the mid 90s, Weekly Shonen Jump sold about six million copies in a given week. It is less than half of that today.

It's a bit old now, but here's a chart.
 
^^Oh, Excuse my ignorance then, my knowledge is limited the 2000's, perhaps i should stop talking about things as if i know what im talking about (cause i clearly dont).

But seriously, from 6 million to todays 2.8 million?, thats just horrible...
 
(Ignoring the fact that Kubo is just now realizing this )

I do remeraber hearing a bunch of people spamming his Twitter as of late especially with the more recent chapters. In fact, isn't that how that "Aizen is writing Bleach" meme got started?
 
Some more data: circulation for the major manga magazines last year. And today ICv2 reported on the state of manga sales in the U.S. and Canada specifically. It's worth reading in full since it discusses several reasons for the recent downward trend (including the online issue).
 
This actually good. They really don't know the damage they're causing when they do this.

Like how FUNimation treats illegal anime upload, they're probably the next ones to be shutdown. But honestly, it kind of feels like they're ripping them off of their work.

Y'know. Where you have put your time and effort into the project, and you see people illegally claim it as their own.
 
Scanlations are impossible to be stopped.

All it takes is one HQ raw, and then someone to put it up on youtube. This isn`t like fansubs where the medium is large or noticable enough to be stopped through torrents. They'd be trying to police JPEGs, which is impossible.

IMHO I like when people put manga chapters on youtube because they use misuc from the anime to accentuate it.

This coming from someone whose shelves are lined with manga, BTW. I always buy the english editions (if they exist) of manga I read scanlated. It's just that it's bothersome to wait. Plus, I`m not doing any harm since I essentially pay the artists twice over... I also buy each monthly SJ USA issue.
 
Yeah, I found out today that somebody tweeted Kubo to congratulate him on his 400 chapter, and commented on it.... before it came out in Japan!, yeah, Shueisha definitely neeRAB to do something about people leaking their manga before its even released.
 
The fan that tweeted that to Tite is an idiot. Just saying...

Anyway...I'll re-post what I wrote on ANN's thread about this:

Oi. It's a convenient scapegoat but stopping people from uploading raw scans to the internet won't necessarily help their magazine sales. The average consumer is largely ignorant of finding scans on the internet. It's common for people read the latest chapters of their series on convenience store newsstanRAB and not buy the actual publication.

Same here in America, as someone who works in a bookstore, I can attest to the fact that most manga in the store is just read in the store and not purchased. It's also one of the sections with a higher percentage of shrink. And again...many fans aren't even aware they can get the latest chapters online. Simply eradicating titles from the internet isn't necessarily going to solve the problem of falling sales. Tight economic times...non-necessities (like manga) are the first things to go from people's budgets.

I'm not saying their shouldn't protect their properties, but don't expect targeting the "pirates" to magically fix your falling sales. As many others have said...the industry definitely neeRAB to change with the times. With the rise in e-readers/e-book apps, it is foolish not to make manga titles available on those. The publishers' hesitance to adjust to the changing market has definitely contributed to this problem. As such, they can only place so much blame on the uploaders.

Instead of vilifying the behavior -- give people a reasonably priced, legal alternative!
 
In all honesty, I wish the comic format worked exactly the same as it does in Japan. If Shonen Jump were able to create a model where it sustained itself weekly overseas, that's all anyone would need. The thing is, their culture is completely different than ours. Magazines with manga in them started literally over a century ago, and manga magazines boomed because of postwar Japan--it was able to keep going due to characters like Sazae-san appearing daily in Japanese people's lives as they tried to recover. It's not as easy to get that started here.
 
Oi oi, mangaka are hella busy, he's probably been drawing and not paying too close attention to what the fans are up to. At least, until he foolishly jumped on the Twitter bandwagon...

The "Aizen witing Bleach" thing started over in Capslock Bleach (I'd link but...well, it's not 4chan, I can say that much, at least. XD) and it's been going for a while now. It's where this came from:



Or rather, I made that FOR CL_B after someone said "Surprizen" about something (I forget what).

Anyway...

Being a comic artist myself, I can totaly sympathize with Jump and all of the mangaka... but at the same time, DUDE get with the times. Print media is dying out, there's a whole world out there that wants to read your stuff, and the internet is a fast and easy way to get gooRAB to consumers. On top of all THAT the economy sucks, so people who normally WOULD buy the manga are opting not to in favor of the essentials (I do enjoy eating... and having a roof over my head...).

I doubt this will effect much though, people are just gonna be more secretive about stuff and things will continue as usual. The industry's known about scanlations for years, they're only just now getting up in arms over it because sales are low (due to the economy being crappy over all, aging audience and various other factors). I really doubt scanlations put THAT much of a dent - partly because while many people only download, there's an equal amount of people who read em, then buy the tankobons later. Not to mention the rest of the merchandising behemoth attached to most major titles (I still want that Justaway. >.>) pulls in a lot of money. I'd be curious to see ALL of the nurabers attached to a heavily pirated series, as in, everything that series pulls in from all of the tie ins.
 
What I've read about the manga industry is that it seem to be pretty conservative and slow to change. I've heard that mangaka don't like the concept of webcomics but in Korea, they're very popular and some of those have been turned into movies.
 
An industry leader is always the first expected to address an issue, and this is regardless of said industry. Quite frankly I'm surprised we're not hearing hearing this from Joe Q or DC's editors.
 
They're entirely within their rights to pursue scanlators and try to get rid of scanlations but it's nearly impossible to do it. At most they'd take down the websites where things are hosted but people can put an image file anywhere easily enough.

I'm not so sure it would improve sales especially in Japan much less anywhere else if unathorized copies weren't available at all. Other's have pointed out reasons why such as people have been known to read the magazines and books in the store rather than buy them.

Lower sales may have a great deal more to do with economic shifts as well.

Stopping piracy is always something the industry wants to do so this is nothing new. So they don't really need a reason to try to stop piracy when someone illegally copies your material even if it's still a high seller you have every right to stop them from circulating illegal copies. Actually doing so may be biting off more than you can chew however.
 
I'd rather buy the manga book. Everything's just there. Story + extras. Instead of going through page after page online. And personally, I get a headache when reading online.
 
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