一般社団法人ABJ | STOP! 海賊版「ありがとう、君の漫画愛。」 | 2022
From director Kodama to Vaundy: how skipping the ad agency opened a door / ABJ "Thank You for Loving Manga"
I cried so hard it hurt. That was my first reaction, and it still is.
The problem
In 2021, losses from pirated manga topped roughly 1 trillion yen, the worst on record. In 2022 that figure dropped to about 506.9 billion yen, but the situation remains serious. This campaign was born out of that context, to thank readers who choose legitimate versions and to encourage pirate-site users to change their behavior.
The insight
The fact that director Yuichi Kodama reached out to Vaundy directly says it all. Someone at a publisher teamed up with Kodama, and that connection led straight to Vaundy — a structure that really smells like an era where you don't need an ad agency anymore.
The idea
Vaundy wrote lyrics using lines of dialogue from manga, weaving together memorable scenes from 61 different titles into an original music video. He's said that out of a huge pool of candidate phrases, he tried to carry the passion of each work straight into the song. Getting 61 works across different publishers to come together like this is honestly kind of insane.
What happened
There was also an auto-reply campaign on Twitter, where various characters would reply with words of thanks. I couldn't confirm any concrete numbers, but there's no doubt it got people talking.
Afterthought
If you have a strong idea and can gather a team capable of pulling it off reliably, it seems like things can actually come together these days. That's a really great sign. As for the project itself? I cried so hard it hurt (this is the second time I've said that).
