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INTEREST: Bandai Namco Denies Idolish 7 Plagiarism Allegations


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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5521
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 1:32 pm Reply with quote
Yeah...this is WAAAY too obvious. Reminds me of the No Game, No Life author's tracing issues. They can deny it all the way, but anyone with a working pair of eyes can see this is BS. I feel awful for the original artists.
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+ 光



Joined: 22 Mar 2016
Posts: 226
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 1:38 pm Reply with quote
This is bad publicity for Idolish7. I feel bad for the singers and the non-designer staff involved.
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Alabaster Spectrum



Joined: 02 Sep 2015
Posts: 528
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 1:49 pm Reply with quote
How exactly does this work when you basically run a monopoly on idol franchises and own the rights to the ones where the allegations are being made and demonstrated. It's not like they can sue themselves so it basically is more like repackaging and re-purposing. Still a lack of originality but hardly surprising when the industry is pumping these franchises out.
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 2:00 pm Reply with quote
While the poses are remarkably similar and they certainly need to be more creative with that going forward, I'd have to agree with their lawyer in that having it in the same pose, even nearly exactly, does not constitute plagiarism. It would be one thing if the designs were quite close as well, but that is definitely not the case. And while the company can't sue themself, I imagine the original artist(s) could sue the supposed copycats, if they had a case or the inclination.

Last edited by zrnzle500 on Mon Sep 12, 2016 2:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Citizen Klaus



Joined: 08 Nov 2010
Posts: 32
Location: Duluth, MN
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 2:02 pm Reply with quote
Alabaster Spectrum wrote:
How exactly does this work when you basically run a monopoly on idol franchises and own the rights to the ones where the allegations are being made and demonstrated. It's not like they can sue themselves so it basically is more like repackaging and re-purposing. Still a lack of originality but hardly surprising when the industry is pumping these franchises out.


Agreed. Given that Bandai Namco owns both the Idolm@ster and Idolish 7, I find it hard to believe that any of this is either accidental or even considered a terribly big deal within the company. The artists for both games might even have used the same master pose references, if the company keeps a library of them on hand.
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RahviTheColorful



Joined: 12 Nov 2015
Posts: 27
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 2:20 pm Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:
While the poses are remarkably similar and they certainly need to be more creative with that going forward, I'd have to agree with their lawyer in that having it in the same pose, even nearly exactly, does not constitute plagiarism. It would be one thing if the designs were quite close as well, but that is definitely not the case. And while the company can't sue themself, I imagine the original artist(s) could sue the supposed copycats, if they had a case or the inclination.


I agree. If two characters that have close proportions (which they will have considering the similar art styles all of these idol franchises use) are drawn on the same pose, they are inevitably going to look similar. It's not very different from having two photos of two different people with similar body types in very similar generic poses look the same (which happens all the time).
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samuelp
Industry Insider


Joined: 25 Nov 2007
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Location: San Antonio, USA
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 2:24 pm Reply with quote
Citizen Klaus wrote:
Alabaster Spectrum wrote:
How exactly does this work when you basically run a monopoly on idol franchises and own the rights to the ones where the allegations are being made and demonstrated. It's not like they can sue themselves so it basically is more like repackaging and re-purposing. Still a lack of originality but hardly surprising when the industry is pumping these franchises out.


Agreed. Given that Bandai Namco owns both the Idolm@ster and Idolish 7, I find it hard to believe that any of this is either accidental or even considered a terribly big deal within the company. The artists for both games might even have used the same master pose references, if the company keeps a library of them on hand.

Bandai Namco like any large conglomerate has a ton of smaller studios working for it, and I'm sure that the people/companies working on idolish and the idolmaster teams have little interaction with each other.
In fact it would be quite possible for the parent company to sue its own sub company or the mobile game company it has under contract to produce the game. Not that it would accomplish much but it's possible.
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CheezcakeMe





PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 3:46 pm Reply with quote
I'm going to guess that all the artists were using the same reference, they probably have a collection of of photo reference of what they consider the "best" stock poses for these types of games that the company gives their artists. I would call the artists lazy, but not plagiarists. I mean there's this thing called the internet...
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casualfan



Joined: 24 Jul 2012
Posts: 333
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 4:03 pm Reply with quote
Some of them are definitely traced, but many of them just look similar. It seems as the allegation comes out the fans just pick any images that look similar and claim those are traced as well.
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SpeckTech



Joined: 31 Dec 2014
Posts: 195
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 7:11 pm Reply with quote
You can't copyright a pose so I don't really see this gaining any legal traction.

Most of the poses look like regular stock poses to me.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 8:17 pm Reply with quote
Totally unfortunate that the accusations of plagiarism are being brought up. Sad With so many characters having similar references, similarities between multiple characters are bound to happen. Here's hoping that they'll try a bit harder for originality for future shows.
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AnimeLordLuis



Joined: 27 Jan 2015
Posts: 1626
Location: The Borderlands of Pandora
PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:16 pm Reply with quote
Male idols are a ripoff of their original Female idol counterpart to begin with so this really doesn't surprise me. Rolling Eyes
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13540
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:46 am Reply with quote
I find this ironic when Bandai sometimes goes after people for copyright infringement. I like seeing stories like these when the alleged perp is copyright maximalist (namely Disney).
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Zunda-mochi



Joined: 19 Aug 2016
Posts: 36
Location: めっちゃうるさい東京都
PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 8:41 am Reply with quote
It's funny that I don't play any of these games, due to lacking a smartphone, but I just noticed that there is ONE character that isn't from the Idolish7 series but from another Idol-themed game called 'Ensemble Stars' (the sixth image showing a character with the light-blue haired character and blue uniform named 'Shino Hajime')...

As for the poses... Either a theme like Idols have a limited amount of poses you can come up with and you have to reach into the Stock Photos, or the crunch time on a deadline to release a games' card image forces people to cut corners and go to this
And, even though I'm an amateur artist and I can tell that the poses are a little too similar to each other, but unless we actually have the artists themselves admit to the 'referencing' and copying or something, there isn't much that can be done. Which, of course is unlikely given the possibility of being under company contract on not saying ANYTHING bad about the work you're hired to do.
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SquadmemberRitsu



Joined: 26 Jan 2012
Posts: 1391
PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 8:41 am Reply with quote
Some of them are just random generic poses so I can forgive them for that. But the art is pretty bad and there are a lot of poses that look really unnatural. As if they were copied from another piece of art that may or may not have been someone of the opposite gender. So to be totally honest I wouldn't put it past them.


AnimeLordLuis wrote:
Male idols are a ripoff of their original Female idol counterpart to begin with so this really doesn't surprise me. Rolling Eyes
Yeah, girl idol stuff just doesn't appeal to girls all that much. Unless your idol series happens to rhyme with 'Shove Clive' that is. Apparently the easiest way to appeal to fujoshi is to rip the soul out of a girl idol's body and stick it in a gross lanky guy with bright red hair.
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