Mangaka of Doraemon - Last Episode Apologizes to Shogakukan and Fujiko Production

Earlier this year, Shogakukan announced that Doraemon - Last Episode, a fan-made conclusion to Fujiko F. Fujio's Doraemon manga, infringed Shogakukan's copyright to Doraemon.

On May 29th, Shogakukan announced that the 37-year-old amateur mangaka apologized to Shogakukan and Fujiko Production, and swore that such things will never happen again. Also, the mangaka admitted to his gaining of illegal profits from the work, and paid back a portion of his sales.

Although the creation of doujinshi based on popular manga titles is nothing new, in this case the doujinshi in question has sold over 13,000 copies. Shogakukan and Fujiko Production regarded this is an significant infringement of their copyright and warned the doujin mangaka.

The "Last Episode" doujin is influenced by a text on the internet from around 1998. In fall of 2005, this doujin mangaka created a 20-page doujinshi under the pen name "Tajima T. Yasue." The doujinshi was sold at a doujin shop in Akihabara and via internet for around 500 yen. Fans praised this doujinshi's fine story as the rightful "last episode" and that the artwork is very similar to Fujiko's art. This doujinshi was seen being traded on internet auctions for 5,000 yen and more.

Shogakukan did not reveal how much the mangaka paid. The artist has also published several tankoubons as a professional mangaka. To this day, Doraemon remains incomplete because its mangaka Fujiko F. Fujio passed away in 1996. Today's new Doraemon manga and animations are created by the staff of Fujiko Production, who were trained by Fujiko himself.

Yoshiyuki Ito, the president of Fujiko production remarked, "A manga that is created base on Fujiko's manga world should not be modified and sold by anyone else. We can approve the making of doujinshi among doujin circles. However, in this case the issue was in a whole other level."

Source: Asahi Shimbun