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Pirate Kings: online manga smuggling gives publishers a hard time

2021-10-10T10:07:37.522Z


A legal and free offer is being developed to fight against the illicit digital sharing of Japanese comics and their cobbled together translations before their time.


Manga is on the rise in France.

Already very fond of Japanese comics, the country has increased tenfold since last year its appetite for this literature to the point of becoming one of the largest global consumers behind Japan as well as the leading market in Europe.

Carried like historical series like

One Piece

or by dazzlingly successful novelties like

Demon Slayer

,

this happy dynamic is however accompanied by a cloud of dark reverberations: that of digital piracy.

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Even more than for other entertainment products, such as movies or series, one of the driving forces behind illegal online manga viewing is the gap between the publication of titles in Japan and in the rest of the world. A delay due to the foreign translation which is only done after the Japanese publication and which is characterized by a gap of

"6 to 12 months"

, according to the manga editorial director at Glénat, Satoko Inaba, consulted by AFP. A frustrating gap for foreign readers eager to continue reading, but not reading Japanese.

However, for many years now, communities of enthusiasts have organized themselves online to offer their own amateur translation. Entire manga published in Japan but still not found in their own homes can then be found online, on specialized sites. A digital subculture of

"fandubs"

(amateur animated subtitles) and

"fanscans",

or "

scan-trad

»(Amateur translation of manga), with their currents and their codes, therefore swarms in the Japanese-loving corners of the Internet, and offer their tinkered translations - with more or less skill - in the eyes of the curious and to the great displeasure of those who have it. -rights.

After having been content for a long time to play cat and mouse with pirates, by closing the sites concerned, publishers have now been seeking, for a few years now, to develop their legal digital offer to better capture this connected and impatient audience.

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Privateers of the legal digital offer

Well aware of the importance of the French market and of the shortfall generated by the pirating of its works, the Japanese publishing house Shueisha - publisher of

One Piece

,

Dragon Ball

, and historical leader of the market - thus launched at the end September the French version of its Manga Plus application. Launched in 2019, the application provides free, legal and simultaneous access to the first and last chapters of a selection of manga for a limited time. These chapters are then immediately available in French, thanks to the involvement of Shueisha's partner editors, such as Glénat or Kazé. Speed ​​that comes at a cost.

"We recruited an editor"

, for example mentioned to AFP the marketing director for France of Crunchyroll - the parent company of Kazé - Jérôme Manceau.

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If the selection of manga available in the French version of Manga Plus is still quite small - only 8 titles (including the very popular

One Piece

or

My Hero Academia, as

well as the new

Undead Unluck

and

Kaiju N ° 8

) against 118 in its version English -, the offer should develop over time.

French publishers also intend to find their way there, by using their flash translation within their own legal digital offer, like the Glénat Manga Max platform.

We hope that the development of legal offerings like Manga Plus will convert readers from pirate manga sites to legal offers.

Japanese publisher Shueisha

The cornerstone of its model, the free Manga Plus is one of the main reasons for the success of the application, which has some 5 million monthly active users. As Shueisha explains, the purpose of this appeal is precisely to make the product coveted by readers of pirated content immediately accessible online. And, if possible, "

convert readers by making them go from pirate manga sites to legal offers

", hopes the publishing house questioned by AFP.

“For us, it is an advertising showcase

, also echoed Satoko Inaba, for the case of manga published by Glénat.

If a person who was only interested in

One Piece

, manages to take an interest in another title thanks to this showcase, that means that it worked for us ”.

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Is this legal and free offer paying off against online manga piracy? Yes, Shueisha believes. If, by its own admission, the loss of profits linked to piracy is

"impossible to quantify"

, the millions of visitors of the application nibble at least a part of the traditional audience of the pirate sites.

"Since the launch of Manga Plus, there have been several examples of large sites offering manga illegally that have stopped publishing updates

," said the editor to AFP.

There are also web services that have banned their users from posting links to pirated versions of the series available on the app. ”

The physical sales of manga have multiplied during the lockdowns and successive curfews.

According to the GfK institute, more than 28 million manga were sold in France between January and August 2021, against some 20 million for the rest of the comics.

"We are in a market which is doubled almost every year

, summarized for AFP Jérôme Manceau.

It is an exceptional period for us, it has never been seen ”

.

A momentum which could still increase, if the legal cannonade of the editors were to manage to sink, or at least to start, the smoothly led boat of manga pirates and Japanese buccaneers.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-10-10

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