Plagiarism Scandal

have you looked at the side by side comparison? what's your take now?

chainsaw man op was considered fine because it's just an op, not part of the main story and most importantly EVERYONE KNOWS its a reference. this and that are a different case.
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i know referencing others is normal, its totally fine!! but what's not fine is HEAVILY REFERENCING other's work panels to panels and commercialising it. you comparing this issue to those pose reference books is a different matters altogether. go look at the side by side comparison, shinonome literally copied from the panels structure to the composition.
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"It’s normal as long as the final work is different enough" its not normal if what was copied is a whole panel(s). look at the burger, even the cheese melt is the same. should've stayed quiet if you haven't even see the comparison.

"hey i bought this comic recently and i recognized they copied a whole page from yours, but it's fine because the final work and art style are different, right?" try saying this to your artist friend who makes and sells comics

I’m speaking as somebody who does just that. They’re telling two completely different stories and about food fetishes. It’s REALLY not that deep.

Cheese melt it’s a BURGER in a comic about getting your dick hard watching people eat. It’s so genuinely not that deep. Maybe instead we should complain about all the garbage smut and poor plot lines being monetized. If I found out my friend was jerking it to me in the bathroom while I was sitting in the living room eating idc if I was into them before I’m not now because that’s sooo rude and borderline sexual assault. Masturbating around people without their consent is gross and traumatizing. Maybe we should complain about all the normalized rape in comics instead of copied burger drawings. That’s honestly the least of the problems in an industry and country where child abuse material is still legal and thriving under publication lol

HAHAHAHA I JUST LOOKED UP THE IMAGES. That’s not plagiarism. The page layouts are different, there’s definitely similarity and I’d believe it’s been referenced if the artist admitted it but it’s transformative enough that it’s not plagiarism. You can’t trademark a dude holding a burger. They aren’t even posed the same, one dude uses both hands and has a different expression. You can’t own the right to a person biting into a cheeseburger and the cheese being stringy or the side view of a cutlet. Overall, there are enough differences that there’s nothing legally going to happen to the artist. Saying all of this, AS an artist who has worked in galleries and studios where the artists I worked for traced images from books or their own pictures. Ultimately the final pieces were different and transformative enough. If you trace 3 chickens from pictures you don’t own, change up the style, give them your own background, you’re fine. It’s all these young digital artists that have no clue how actual fine artists have been operating for centuries. Wait until you hear most big artists don’t even draw their own stuff or make their own pieces, their studio assistants do. Go watch a documentary and work in the industry. Hell, an artist I worked for only did the painting, I drew everything for him digitally and then we had a machine draw it on the paper and canvas.

That’s it’s not plagiarism. You can’t trade mark a man holding or biting into a burger. They change of the backgrounds, have different panel layout, with some being very similar but the overall page different in composition, they’re posed different just from similar angles. One dude holds the burger with two hands and a demure expression and the other has a wide open mouth and holds it one handed. You can’t own an angle or the side view of a cutlet. It’s poor taste to not change some things up a little more or put them in a different order, but ultimately this has to be a case of public opinion because they’re not gonna win a legal case. I worked in the art industry in different roles, including studio assistant. Most famous artists don’t even make their own work. They all have different work flows but tracing from images is very common and having your studio assistants actually draw, sculpt, paint, or assemble the piece is a common and widespread practice. I drew for my boss and had to trace whatever images he brought, many were his own and some were from different publications. As long as it’s arguably transformative enough, nobody can do anything about it. This is one of those cases. Different character, different panels, different stories, different poses from the same angles, different expressions, different faces, different art styles, different page layouts. YES they are very similar in some panels and do look heavily referenced. Poor taste? Certainly. But nothing is gonna happen to the artist legally. The publication just dropped them because it’s bad optics and they can’t trust that the artist wouldn’t break copyright law in the future since they just showed how bad they are at it. I’d drop them too

Chainsaw man op is commercialized. It’s a published work. But like I said it’s ultimately transformative enough because they didn’t copy the story and it’s just short clips. Same can be said for a manga with pages with a few very similar panels. The whole pages aren’t copied, just some panels clearly very heavily referenced. If the overall page has a different composition, which they do, it will be fine (but tacky). You cant trademark a man holding or biting a burger from a certain angle. In one referenced panel they are both dudes, different style, upward angle, holding a burger. But they have different poses (one hand vs 2), different backgrounds, and different expressions. You can’t legally say it’s copied even if they look really similar because it would not be hard for it to be a coincidence because there’s only so many ways and angles to draw a man eating a burger or even just a burger for that matter. (That’s a common argument for these things).

I looked up the images, they’re different enough. Go look at my other replies if you want, I’m too lazy to explain it all again. I’m speaking as somebody who has worked in the art industry and knows what goes on in studios. Lot of referencing and even tracing. The final work just has to be different enough. At the end of the day, time is money and artists get paid very little in illustration for very time consuming work. People always want more and newer work to look at for seconds vs the hours it takes to make. Many of the most successful artists know how to make the most in the shortest amount of time. Or they remake the same works over and over again with slight changes. The artists that try to maintain 100% “originality” are lying to you (also very common practice) or burn out or are not as successful monetarily. OR, most commonly, not caught. Art is still under capitalism and used to be all patronage. I do agree this artist did a poor job of transforming the work enough for it to not be noticeable but there’s a difference between public opinion/bad optics and copyright laws.

The mangaka literally admitted fault and their publishing company recognized it as such. Meshinuma is also not the only series they “took reference” from though it is the most “referenced”

Not to mention…it’s not transformative lmao? Just drawing it in their own style doesn’t negate the fact that they copied almost verbatim the panel composition and contents. Sure you can’t copyright a burger scene but maybe consider that for some fucking reason the burger makeup is the same? Why does it have the same type of layer makeup. Why is the cheese in the same fucking place. And the page after that. Why are things proceeding in the literal same panel order. In another scene that referenced a different manga the black haired character has his hand under the food and then wipes his chin IN THE EXACT SAME MANNER as a page from a different manga.
“As long as it’s transformative enough” isn’t applicable in this situation where it’s clear that for whatever reason the mangaka couldn’t think of their own scenes

https://x.com/d9yyg0vgr226224/status/1725311697324474853?s=61 has a more succinct side-by-side with some other scenes that were clearly lifted from either Meshinuma or Okada-kun no Danran Gohan