Over 700,000 illegal anime and manga files deleted by the Japanese government’s ‘Manga-Anime Guardians’

With some of Japan’s most well-known anime and manga titles officially participating and over 1 million members worldwide, the Japanese government has released new information on the achievements of their new anti-piracy campaign called the Manga-Anime Guardians (MAG), a joint project by the government’s Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), and several of Japan’s most well-known animation studios and publishers.

.,mn

According to CODA’s press release, 447,096 illegal manga files from 577 titles and 264,601 anime files from 90 titles were all deleted thanks to the campaign, which is targeting various online manga reading sites, video streaming sites, and torrent sites . All in all, the campaign has deleted 711,697 illegal anime and manga files so far, and they promise to keep going.

Over 700,000 illegal anime and manga files deleted by the Japanese government’s ‘Manga-Anime Guardians’

cgfhf

During this weekend’s Anime Japan 2015 event at the Tokyo Big Sight, MAG will be conducting a press conference and they will be releasing new information about their campaign and the fight against anime and manga piracy. SKE48 member Rena Matsui will be a special guest at their press conference.

MAG was created to help spread information and stop people from buying pirated anime and manga products, not only in Japan where piracy is still widespread, but also in North America, where many of the anime goods are considered fakes. For more information, you can also visit the official M.A.G. anti-piracy website. It is available in both Japanese and English.

 

37 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

      • then the manga companies could hire those translators and sell the translated products overseas look at crunchyroll they got rights to translate it before it came out in japan and released both the english subtitles at the same time as the release in Japan. it could be done for manga as well as other anime series.

        • and most of the time the translators just put it through google translate and copy and paste it. which is why fansubbers and stuff will always have the best translations.

  1. Luous, we would if we could. Most of the so called, “illegal” sites are actually the only way to get those manga in English. Japan DIDN’T release almost any English version of manga, only the most popular one get translated, all the rest get ignored.

  2. Say what you want… but what I’m interested at is usually a niche manga that has 0% chance of getting translated to English using official means (I’m not even living in English speaking country… damn) what are people like me gonna do?

      • That’s easy for you to say. Many of us live in countries where they barely teach english. Get out of your bubble.

      • your point is dumb and heres why

        1. i wouldnt know about obscure manga if it werent for illegal manga sites, there is literally no way for me to learn about them otherwise, so even if i knew japanese, that would only help me read about things i already know of, and id still need to buy the manga online, probably on amazon, wait a few weeks for shipping and then read them

        2. some manga while not obscure are impossible to find in stores, even on amazon, specifically old manga, am i just supposed to say “welp, too bad, guess i can only read things released in the past few years”? no, thats dumb, if i cant find something in a store im obviously going to find a way to read/watch it online

  3. The whole Manga-Anime Guardians campaign is pretty insulting to actual English-speaking fans, from claiming pirates make money (scanlation groups sure don’t!) to saying piracy is stifling artists’ creativity (I don’t even know where to start here). But personally, the worst part was the illustration, which is literally 100% shounen characters. I mean, seriously?

    • There are numerous websites earning over $20,000 a month, it doesn’t take much detective work to find that out. Yeah, those sites don’t give any of that money to the scanlation groups, but that’s the kind of people they are. A lot of those sites have large percentages of Japanese users (because of the raws they upload). It is taking money away from the people who created it and giving it to those who didn’t, and if it isn’t stopped it will lead to a decline in standards or eventually the end of certain titles. Publishers are struggling all over the world, piracy hits them much harder than the music or movie industry who have alternative ways of making money rather than direct sales. If people hadn’t got greedy and started distributing manga on an industrial scale, which ultimately damages the industry, then the Japanese publishers would have continued to turn a blind eye to scanlation. They are just protecting their jobs.

      • let the anime industry count up exactly how much the advertisement equivalent to the internet’s impact would have cost them and just how many yen they would have had to spend to create the immense international following anime has profited from or are we supposed to ignore the industries steady growth since the onset of internet distribution which netted the anime industry billions of yen in additional sales over the last couple decades. BECAUSE THEY CAN’T make anyone believe the joke of a distribution system they have would have EVER brought in the same amount of sales they profited and grew from.

      • first of all these people would not be able to pirate anime and/or manga if it wasn’t for this scanlators and subbers. If I hadn’t bought my first anime cd pirated I would not be able to know that this industry exist, in short without these piracy majority of the online readers would get into this industry and they would not be able to get money from this people. ughh not a native english speaker so I am having a hard time explaining. Anyways these piracy gave the anime/manga industry worldwide advertising now there millions if not billions of people craving anime/manga now we just need some kind of paid site or some youtube clone for anime/manga that is official and have tons of titles and this problem would be solve.

        • hey anon, that is something very clever and if the japanese governement do that, it will be very profitable. very nice project and it will solve the problem very easily and create so many translation jobs in their country

          • That my friend will never happen they don’t like anime to be popular to the world only want it for themselves. 😀
            just like every game they make won’t allow people from other countries to join

  4. That’s all nice, but expand your distribution then. I barely get any manga in my country, and the only anime I ever get are Dragon ball and Naruto reruns. Most of the people pirating this stuff are guys and girls that can’t get to it legaly, or that would be f#@#@!@ expencive for average person here.

    • I agree with you, although I have purchased the originals of some of my favorite manga to support the artist and imported them over, some people don’t have the opportunity and the truth is, these originals will never make it to english releases. So sadly the only way we’re getting them, is through scanlating groups that charge nothing for their translations. So in real terms neither the artist gets money for the translations nor the scanlating group’s getting it. So that in itself is a lot of money hanging in the air and truth be told, japan is blind. Because they keep thinking we only want their Gokus, their Ichigos and Narutos. Which is utterly wrong.

  5. Hmm, I don’t believe this perception is actually correct though, Arc. It’s easy for us to assume that anime/manga are “super popular!” being inside the fandom, but the sales speak for themselves. Even incredibly popular series like Naruto only manage to reach half the sales of Japan despite being in 35 overseas countries and many different languages. Lesser known titles aren’t going to get anywhere near that kind of exposure.
    And when you mean “the west” … do you mean primarily English-language editions and/or the US?
    Because Naruto at it’s peak was doing around 50k sales per volume in English as per BookScan. That is a mere ~5% of the Japanese sales numbers. It’s seen a steady decline and around 23k/volume now. Even Attack on Titan Vol 1 in 2014 only managed 55k sales, the later volumes show an average of 25k/volume.
    Popular but lesser titles such as Blue Exorcist and Deadman Wonderland pulled 7800 in sales. Durarara, Black Butler, and Bleach at 3600 sales per volume.
    France is actually a much better focus of their attention. French-language editions of Naruto sell around 250k/volume, for example.
    So English is hardly more than a drop in the bucket really. France is bar far the most popular country for manga sales outside of Japan, so even if we factored in UK, Australia, Canada, etc. it wouldn’t affect the numbers in an appreciable way.

    • the moment a series is licensed it receives advertisement income like any other aired show would. so being aired in 35 countries means a lot of advertisement dollars going to the licencee its them who profit from a pitiful purchase price which starves the artists and its them who whine and cry about how much they are losing even though they do not want to spend 60% of the gross to advertise the product so the series go out with more word of mouth and INTERNET promotion which they get for free then cry because the DVD’s they produce don’t sell because 90% of the potential buyers can’t find them localy to buy them

      • to summarize: the anime distribution industry is a laughing stock and the lack of sales is self inflicted because a pack of incompetents run it and they deflect the blame of their incompetence to the pirate sites because its easy to calculate fictitious sales figures they are losing to piracy and hide the fact they wouldn’t have even reached the current sales they enjoy generated by those very sites and not by the horrible distribution system they themselves created.

  6. How about you guys make it more available in every country then we can stop being pirates!!!! i had to wait for 5 years before i saw a hellsing OVA. also all the stores are putting real high price on anything that has to do with manga and anime they just blame

    “shipping rates is high so we have to take alot for that item or dvd”

    Also we wont wait 1-2 years to see one of these epic movies cause you dont have the contacts or the decency to realese them in european or american cinemas!!!

  7. Really, over 700,000 anime manga files deleted? No, even if their website is offline, the content remain online. Stupid expression to get more attention.

  8. If they want downsize of the fans then come at us MAG.First they should promote their products more-outside Japan and rls more of their products in English WITH reasonable price coz BD’s in Japan costs fortune…do they don’t realize that by doing it that way 90% that enjoys anime&manga will turn back on them due to low possibility to watch/read their products as they do now?And just be honest…most ppl do not steal when it comes to manga they do the translation to English for FREE.As for anime oh well,we do have crunchyroll but..as for me and many others one should give GREAT quality stuff but they don’t so to boast the sales,again,prices should be lower with great quality of video,manga given.Then we can talk.Doing the opposite will just ruin everything dumbasses.

  9. I would be happy to buy it if I could get the brand new shonen jump or other book here in America without being 7 months behind and not paying 20 bucks for shipping from Japan if I go that route. Or if a box set from a 13 episode anime didn’t cost 100+ for a newer one. Or if some of the stuff actually got licensed here in America – some of the stuff I like isn’t here, will never be here and I can’t afford 300+ to import DVD’s and purchase a region free DVD player – which is still technically illegal. But also almost 10 dollars for a manga is a bit steep considering how cheap it is to purchase it in Japan. I get that it has to go through several steps to be sold in America but THAT’S why people don’t/can’t buy it. Trying to buy all of something like Fairy Tail or Naruto would be several months rent for some people. Normal people simply cannot afford 10 bucks a book of manga and can’t get the current volume and sure as hell can’t afford 200 bucks or more on box sets of anime plus the cost of shipping plus buying a region free dvd player or even buying the western licensed stuff because it’s probably way more expensive and your favorite one might not even be available.
    Don’t get me wrong, I support it when I can, I buy merchandise directly from official manufacturers, I sub to legitimate streaming websites when I can and I buy manga when I can afford it. But I do enjoy eating food so I’m not gonna break the bank because they think every anime is sacred and deserves to be bought with gold.

  10. Well, in a way, i pretty much agreed that they should do this campaign considering some really good anime couldn’t get second season probably cuz they thought that people wouldn’t like it? But heck, millions of us downloading it and really enjoying it but it’s unfortunate for the producers.

    • sorry but that entire line of reasoning is false.
      no second season is decided on by any international sales they only poll Japanese interests to decide if another season will happen.

  11. Will this help the artists? Who knows?
    The point is, how did they achieve this? Didn’t they by any chance threaten the websites and their providers with lawsuits if they won’t remove their content? Because if they did, that’s blackmail.
    Which in my eyes puts people working for MAG, CODA, etc. in the same moral category as common criminals.
    I think the actual problem is the existence of “laws” which legitimate the use of force against non-vitcim crime. And no, studios are not victims – it’s their responsibility to adapt their business practices to changing market conditions.

  12. Some “volunteer” scanlator team work faster and BETTER than the official scanlator(as if they have). Some “volunteer” translator team work faster and BETTER than the official translator(as if they have). Just for the sake of english-speaking anime/manga fans. As if anime/manga would be success if there isn’t any other fans outside Japan. I don’t know if the producer of anime or the author of manga agree as well as MAG because some of their anime/manga really booming in some country outside Japan. I’m just saying

  13. I’d like to see them do something to the private anime/manga trackers. Hell, even the public ones. Piratebay has been up forever and that’s with all the US companies and government going after them, so how do these guys expect to even do anything….
    I just hope mangafox/reader/batoto stay up so I don’t need to change to different sites on my manga app.

  14. IN europe a manga cost 7 euro each , 6k yen in japan , but 50 to 60 bath in thailand , anime prize also vary between country. The probleme that they are trying to solve can be easily solve by actively translate all the manga themselve and distribute via their own reader website for english speaker country ( at the very least) , they can take time to delete million of file and torrent but more will be up , and tbh this project is only aiming at popular worldwide serie , which i don’t really care about ( except onepiece but i buy op) the rest isn’t appealing to me and i only watch the anime and read manga of “those” so not popular serie. so get rekt.

  15. For my case, living in SEA region is quite hard getting the latest releases via bookstores. Most of them released a few months after the raw comes out. If this keeps up, I think they will be in serious trouble.

  16. i live @ turkey and like other muslim counties there is no way mainstream channels buy animes. many animes simply ignore religions. yes my country is sucks. turkish translators doing this job because we love animes manga and their culture. now some idiots fighting for moooore money….. gz they did great job. they have no diffirence fucking radikal islamics. why because they use islam for gain money…. same shit.