Two executives from a Tokyo-based manga and anime retailer company were arrested on suspicion of violating the copyright law of Japan. The suspects are accused of leaking Weekly Shonen Jump manga chapters ahead of their official release. [Thanks, NHK!]
Two people are accused of using a smartphone to take pictures of a Weekly Shonen Jump manga chapter and sharing them online five days prior to its release in March 2023. According to the police, the suspects partially denied the charges and claimed they did not share the images.
36-year-old Moussa Samir is one of the suspects arrested. His company, Japan Deal World, sells popular anime and manga goods and is based in Kita Ward, Tokyo. The suspects were arrested on January 2024 by the Kumamoto Prefectural Police and are currently in custody.
According to the ongoing police investigation, the suspects might have obtained the magazine early thanks to businesses that enable illegal advance sales of such goods, and they believe that there may have been other people involved in the case. Japan news agency NHK shared that the allegedly leaked manga images were translated into various languages and colored, in addition to their illegal early distribution on various social media sites.
This is not the first time that Shueisha and the Shonen Jump magazine experienced manga chapters or images leaking. In January 2023, details of then-unreleased JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 9, JOJOLands, appeared ahead of its release.
