Ask John: Is Plagiarism Common in Manga?

Question:
I’ve noticed that several images in the Ikkitousen/Battle Vixens manga have been copied from Oh Great’s Tenjho Tenge and Himiko-den. These are generally images of voluptuous women in little or no clothing. I won’t dispute that Oh Great draws that kind of thing better than most, but is this legal in Japan? If so, is it common? I was very surprised by this.

Answer:
Flagrant, extensive plagiarism is a universal violation of copyright law. Like most countries, Japan has copyright laws protecting the work of creators and artists, but punishment for copyright violations in Japan seems to be rather arbitrarily enforced. Sometimes plagiarism seems to be immediately quashed. In other cases it seems to be tolerated or ignored.

Last year manga artist Yuki Suetsugu admitted to having copied illustrations by manga artist Takehiko Inoue. Almost immediately, publisher Kodansha recalled all of Suetsugu’s work and stopped publishing new volumes of the artist’s manga. Ironically, shortly later Takehiko Inoue was publicly accused of copying photographs of NBA basketball players for his Slam Dunk manga. That accusation was seemingly largely ignored because artists have used real people, places, and things as models for illustrations for as long as drawn art itself has existed.

Although Yuki Suetsugu was severely punished for copying isolated images from another artist’s work, Yuji Shiozaki has seemingly suffered no repercussions at all over seemingly doing the exact same thing: copying singular images from the work of Oh Great! The difference in public reaction may have been caused by Yuki Suetsugu admitting wrongdoing while, as far as I know, Shiozaki has never addressed the accusations. Or the difference in public reaction may have to do with the public recognizing that Ikkitousen is obviously influenced by Tenjho Tenge and therefore excusing the “creative borrowing.”

While I’m familiar with these two instances, I’m sure that it’s relatively common for manga artists to unconsciously or even intentionally copy the work of other artists. There are so many manga artists in Japan that it’s probably impossible for them not to influence and inspire each other, and not every Japanese artist is skilled enough to draw everything he or she wishes to, without outside help.

Extensive plagiarism reveals a lack of talent, creativity, and respect. Occasional, isolated instances of copying art within a larger original work are technically no less ethical, but may be easier to forgive or overlook in context as just unconscious coincidence, or an embarrassing necessity for an artist to overcome personal artistic weakness and convey his or her ideal vision. A small handful of copied illustrations mixed in with thousands of original drawings, relatively isn’t a severe crime, which may be why readers and consumers forgive certain artists for occasional copying.