#act-age

"Ichi The Witch (Madan no Ichi)" manga vol 4 cover by Shiro Usazaki (Act-Age) & Nishi Osamu (Iruma-kun)

For those of you not aware, the Japanese publisher Shogakukan, known for publishing manga magazines such as Shonen Sunday, CoroCoro, Ciao, and the MangaOne app, is currently in hot water for covering for two different pedophiles working on manga.

The first pedophile was the writer for Joujin Kamen, Ichiro Hajime, a penname of Shouichi Yamamoto, who, back in 2020, while working as a teacher, was accused of sexually assaulting one of his students and indicted on charges. It was revealed that an editor for MangaOne was involved in the court settlements, eventually buying the victim's silence. Yamamoto was working on another manga, Daten Sakuksen, at the time, which went on hiatus shortly before he was arrested, and then later removed from MangaOne. He would continue to self-publish the title. At some point afterwards, Yamamoto would work under the penname of Ichiro Hajime for his most-recent manga.

Shogakukan responded, removing Joujin Kamen from MangaOne, suspending further publication of books, acknowledging that Ichiro Hajime and Shouichi Yamamoto were the same person, and attempting to apologize for the fallout, claiming that they should have never rehired him. It should also be noted that the artist for Joujin Kamen, Eri Tsuruyoshi, was not made aware of Hajime's crimes, and feels deeply betrayed.

Many manga artists whose works are published on MangaOne were outraged at the revelations, and requested their titles be removed, including but not limited to: Kaeru Mizuho (Magical Girl Dandelion), Sumito Ogawa (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!), and Ryuhei Tamura (Cosmos). It should be noted that most of these titles are primarily published elsewhere, usually manga magazines and other apps, so the removal of these titles from MangaOne does not necessarily indicate they are ceasing publication outright.

If that wasn't bad enough, a few days later, likely to come clean now that the floodgates were opened, Shogakukan and MangaOne issued a joint statement revealing that Miki Yatsunami, the writer for Seisou no Shinrishi, was actually a penname for Tatsuya Matsuki, the writer for Act-Age.

You may recall that Act-Age was a fairly popular manga that was serialized under Weekly Shonen Jump. In 2020, Matsuki was arrested for inappropriately touching two middle school girls, leading to the cancelation of the manga. Apparently, after serving his sentence, Matsuki was allowed to work under Shogakukan and write for them. For the time being, Seisou no Shinrishi is suspended as the investigation continues. In contrast to the situation with Joujin Kamen, Kaoru Yukihira, the artist for Seisou no Shinrishi, was made aware that Matsuki would be joining them as writer from the start.

That is a bit of a hyperbole, but four years later, I still haven't forgiven the man who created one of the best things I've ever read ruining the very thing he created.