Much like anime, Japanese manga has been battling piracy for years, and it’s been a tough, seemingly unending fight. Even so, in the last couple of years, major manga publishers have intensified their efforts to curb manga piracy, and it has been somewhat successful. Most recently, Shueisha, the publisher of Shonen Jump, even cracked down on manga leakers on X, which has been an ongoing effort for well over a year.
Another major win earlier this year was the takedown of Bato, a major hub hosting pirated manga, manhwa, webtoons, and even manhua. Even as recently as November 2025, Shueisha, Kodansha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa won a lawsuit against CloudFlare for providing its services to manga piracy sites. All that said, while publishers continue to celebrate these wins, the same can hardly be said for the readers, and one of Shonen Jump’s biggest creators just spoke up about it.
Dr. Stone’s Artist Exposes the Harsh Truth About Manga Piracy
(And Fans Agree With Him)
Boichi, the artist behind Dr. Stone, the One Piece Ace novel, and the creator of Sun Ken-Rock and The Marshall King, recently shared his thoughts on piracy online through a recent series of posts on his official X account. Boichi himself described this as poking the hornet’s nest but chose to speak out anyway, and surprisingly, his words have resonated with readers and fans everywhere.
Anime Censorship Hits New High as Proposed U.S. Law Would Make Watching Some Shows Illegal
The censorship of anime and manga has grown in the U.S., and a new Texas Senate bill may make certain anime outright illegal.
In particular, in a recent post, Boichi pointed out that a huge reason piracy continues to persist is the lack of infrastructure and availability. And, as such, Boichi claimed that readers who pirate manga aren’t the enemy, but rather a potential future audience waiting to be properly catered to. The exact post reads:
Pirated manga readers are not our opponents.
They are our future audience.
They are proof that demand already exists.
Besides this powerful statement, the post also points out the lack of a proper publishing system in many parts of the world. Despite its popularity and rising demand, and the growing number of aspiring mangaka, the availability of manga globally is still poor. Lack of publishing infrastructure also drives up prices, which again pushes readers towards digital services or the piracy route instead. This is the very reason why Kodansha’s recent expansion into India and their initiative to launch local publishing operations was widely celebrated, as it would bring down prices greatly.
“Once official digital services exist in each country, they can generate tax revenue, and governments can more seriously address piracy. At that point, creators and aspiring manga artists can also demand proper enforcement and protection.
Most importantly, it would create opportunities for local aspiring manga artists. And those opportunities would, in turn, strengthen the global industry as a whole.
When a country’s manga ecosystem develops properly, it becomes a cultural export industry. From a government perspective, piracy then becomes something that can and should be actively addressed.
The first people to pay for legitimate manga services will, in many cases, be the very readers who once relied on piracy. They are not enemies of the industry—they are its earliest supporters in waiting.”
At the same time, however, Boichi rightly claims that the future of manga rests on digital services and that each country needs to develop proper digital reading services with fair pricing. He uses South Korea and the booming webtoon industry as an example, pointing out how, when proper services were introduced, fans were more than willing to pay for them, and the same could be achieved with Japanese manga as well.
Manga’s Biggest Enemy Isn’t Piracy But Accessibility
All in all, Boichi’s words hit home for many readers, and it’s evidently because he’s painfully right about every single thing he said. Piracy has always exposed the lack of accessibility when it comes to manga, and instead of addressing the root cause, publishers like Kodansha and Shueisha have continued to tirelessly take down piracy sites, even as more continue to pop up right after.
The harsh truth is that outside of Japan and North America, manga availability is quite poor. Popular reading services like Manga Plus weren’t even available in many parts of the world until very recently. Furthermore, popular shonen titles are the only ones easily available digitally. Other genres such as shoujo, josei, and seinen are still largely unavailable to read on demand digitally.
Outside of the few mainstream romance and shoujo titles available on K-manga, there exists no dedicated shoujo manga app, leaving fans with no way to read their favorite series other than buying manga volumes, the price of which is only driven up by the lack of publishing infrastructure. The problem only gets worse with old out-of-print shoujo manga series, which have become lost media since the last piracy sites preserving them, like Bato, were taken down.
The same complaints even hold up for seinen manga as popular as Berserk, with Hakusensha overall lagging behind the most in terms of providing digital manga services. That said, hopefully, with creators like Boichi now speaking out, major manga publishers will begin making efforts towards accessibility and providing better services in addition to targeting piracy.
- TV Show(s)
-
One Piece, Naruto, Naruto: Shippuden, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Bleach, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Jujutsu Kaisen, Hunter x Hunter, Hunter x Hunter, JoJo Bizarre Adventure, Death Note, Yu Yu Hakusho: Eizou Hakusho, Black Clover, Dr. Stone, Haikyuu!!, The Promised Neverland, Food Wars!: Shokugeki No Soma, Kuroko’s Basketball, Tokyo Ghoul, Toriko