Overview
- Shogakukan confirmed that creators with past sexual-offense convictions worked on MangaONE under different names, including the series Seisou no Shinrishi and Jojin Kamen.
- Seisou no Shinrishi’s writer, Hachitsuba Itsuki, previously received a 2020 conviction that ended his Weekly Shonen Jump run, and updates on the MangaONE series are paused from March 2 after the decision to rehire him under a new pen name was disclosed.
- Jojin Kamen’s author, credited as Ichiro Ichi, was fined in 2020 over a violation of the child prostitution and pornography law and was ordered by the Sapporo District Court on February 20 to pay 11 million yen in damages.
- Shogakukan says it moved the probe from an internal team to a newly formed independent committee to review author hiring processes and human-rights awareness, with an apology for insufficient victim consideration.
- Creators have begun pulling or stopping works on MangaONE over lost confidence in the publisher, and Shogakukan postponed the March 3 Shogakukan Manga Award ceremony.