One Piece Editor Accidentally Clicked On Pirated Manga Site, Says Publisher

[Anna Kushina (櫛名アンナ)]

To mark One Piece reaching 1,000 chapters, there was YouTube live-stream earlier this week with the staff at the Weekly Jump offices. The editor of One Piece showed his smartphone screen. On it, viewers could see his browsing history. Oh dear.

Most of it was rather pedestrian—Yahoo! Japan, One Piece sites, etc.—but one entry was for a hentai pirated manga site. The issue isn’t the hentai part (I mean, really, whatever, who cares), but rather that the pirated bit. This wasn’t a site filled with sexy scallywags and swashbucklers. Rather, as mainstream Japanese news site J-Cast points out, it hosts illegally uploaded comics.

What makes this so awkward is that in Japan One Piece’s Luffy appears in an anti-piracy manga campaign along with other famous manga characters, telling people to “Stop kaizokuban” or “Stop bootlegs.”

In light of One Piece publisher Shueisha’s anti-piracy stance, J-Cast reached out to the company and asked why the editor’s browser history included this particular illicit entry. The publisher checked with the editor and explained that he “accidentally” clicked on the link while surfing the internet. “He did not search for this site and download any illegal things,” added Shueisha.

Moreover, the publisher severely warned the editor for using his own private device during the live stream and apologized to readers for causing any trouble.

The live stream has since been removed from YouTube.