Doraemon: The Final Chapter

It’s not uncommon for Japan’s amateur manga artists to create works of fan fiction starring their favorite characters from mainstream comics. The owners of copyrights usually look the other way in such cases, even allowing fan fiction comics to be sold on a limited scale at markets and in small comic stores. However, a recent news story reveals that authors of such work should be careful not to sell too many copies:

Tajima T. Yasue, the man who created an unauthorized last installment of “Doraemon,” the popular manga that features a blue cat robot and its friend, Nobita, has admitted to his misdeed and paid a fee to the publisher and the original author’s production company.

In the final story, Nobita, the boy protagonist, grows up to become a top robot engineer 35 years later and revives “Doraemon,” who has become frozen in place because his batteries have run down.

The 37-year-old former manga artist who penned the 20-page booklet in 2005, titled “Doraemon: Saishuwa” (Doraemon: The last installment), apologized to Shogakukan Inc., which published the original manga series, and also to author Fujiko F. Fujio’s production company, according to Shogakukan officials. Fujiko, creator of “Doraemon,” died in 1996.

The production of altered manga is common among fans. But more than 13,000 copies of the “Doraemon” booklet have been sold, earning a tidy sum for the man who no longer makes his living drawing cartoons.

The publisher and the production company had warned him that his unauthorized work violated their copyright to the “Doraemon” comic.

“It’s fine that fans make altered versions of manga for fun among themselves,” said Zensho Ito, president of Fujiko-pro, Fujiko’s cartoon production company in Tokyo. “But the booklet in question went beyond the limits.”

As the TV news report shows, copies of the unauthorized comic book are now selling for huge sums on auction sites. Apparently quite a few people want to own one of these famous bootlegs…