Scanlation Group OP Scans Goes Offline Following Arrests by Japanese Police

Dave Aubrey
·2 min read

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The world of early manga translations was shaken this weekend when Japanese police confirmed the arrest of two people suspected to be leaking Shonen Jump online.

Reputable Twitter manga commentator sandman has been watching the situation closely, and has translated sources to provide the most accurate order of events.

Sandman and other sources report that two foreign nationals based in the Kumamoto Prefecture had been regularly purchasing early copies of Shonen Jump from stores that have broken street date, and then posted the images on social networks, including Twitter.

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Shueisha, the Shonen Jump publisher, has commented, as translated by sandman: "The fact that works are being read for free has resulted in a situation where the authors are not receiving fair profit. We believe that taking pictures of manga works without permission and leaking them on SNS constitutes an infringement of copyright, and we ask that such behavior be stopped. It is an unforgivable act that could shake the very structure of the industry itself.”

Eagle-eyed manga readers believe they’ve identified exactly which scanlation group was targeted by Japanese police, though as of right now there is only circumstantial evidence, no conclusive proof.

What we do know is that controversial scanlation group OP Scans went offline very soon after this news broke, with the group’s official website and another affiliated website being brought offline entirely. Fans of the group also reported that the OP Scans Discord channel was also hastily closed.

This could, of course, all be a coincidence, or perhaps the OP Scans owners simply decided that police interest was a good time to halt operations. However, the OP Scans logo and watermark can be seen in a picture of confiscated materials released by Kumamoto Prefectural Police, via sandman.

We’ll have more information on this situation as it unfolds.