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The story
News that Shingo Kurumada, creator of the manga Saint Seiya, has filed suit against a former accountant in Tokyo District Court over an alleged ¥4.6 billion embezzlement became a hot topic on 5ch. Rather than the sheer size of the damages, what really stunned posters was that Saint Seiya is still raking in massive sums from figure sales and licensing royalties alone, long after the series ended its run. The thread branched into chatter about the “scale of money” involved with famous manga artists and celebrities, bringing up Eikichi Yazawa’s debt-repayment saga and comparisons to Eiichiro Oda’s annual income, along with posts claiming to know how the embezzlement was actually discovered.
Manga artist Shingo Kurumada victim of ¥4.6 billion embezzlement — sues former accounting staff at Tokyo District Court
Source: jiji.com / Original article here
What people said
The Gold Saint figures are still selling like crazy even now
They can live off licensing fees alone
Even now there's a new spinoff manga or game collab basically every year, the cash register just keeps ringing
Pachinko money is no joke
Fist of the North Star still out-earns One Piece and Yu-Gi-Oh because of it
It was actually ¥3.5 billion
Exaggerating the debt to make the story sound more impressive is so lame
https://kurumadapro.com/_asset/img/history/201112141635_19331.jpg
Because he's a Cancer
At least being a running joke is something
The real tragedy is Aphrodite of Pisces
Cancer got a huge redemption arc in Soul of Gold
Yeah, the eternal punching-bag sign
He's the ideal boss though, so it's fine
Lol they actually tried to sneak Ophiuchus in there
Makes sense Hirako (Eiichiro Oda's nickname) can basically goof off instead of drawing
Well that's a given at Saint Seiya's level, but
these days even obscure manga can make decent money thanks to digital manga sites
Even then nobody noticed for a while, until one day at a meal with a client, someone asked, "Hey, isn't sensei's real name ~?" and said the name of the guy who'd been embezzling. When he asked "why do you say that," they explained that was the name on the payment account — and that's apparently how it all came out.
Very "old-school guy who never checks his bank statements" of him
Honestly if I had ¥10 billion I wouldn't bother checking my account either
Oda-sensei's annual income is roughly ¥5 billion, after all
Most of the money comes from outside the manga itself
He was massive at his peak, and this is the residual payoff from that
At its peak it was as huge as Captain Tsubasa or Fist of the North Star
And on top of that, Seiya is huge overseas too
Don't underestimate a series that was once top-class in Jump
Though yeah, the pachinko adaptation is a big part of it
The real moneymaker for Saint Seiya is the Saint Cloth Myth figure line
It sells like crazy overseas
Why did this become so popular?
It's straight-up talent-and-bloodline supremacism
Like 98% of Jump manga run on bloodline supremacism
Bleach and Rurouni Kenshin are about the only ones with normal-ish origins
Because the characters and moves are just cool
Because up through the Gold Saints arc there was actually variety in how things played out
Like the whole "strike a pose while unleashing your finishing move and the enemy goes flying" composition
More than Seiya, it's actually Ring ni Kakero
Ring ni Kakero is what created the format for Jump battle manga
Ring ni Kakero, now that's nostalgic.
Hit setting 6 once and pulled 13,000 coins.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
According to the report, Shingo Kurumada has filed a damages suit against former accounting staff at the Tokyo District Court over the alleged embezzlement, and the actual details of how it happened and the exact amounts will be contested in the upcoming trial. It’s worth noting that the posts in the thread describing the embezzlement scheme are secondhand accounts, not facts established in court. What actually drove the discussion wasn’t the embezzlement itself so much as astonishment that Saint Seiya is still earning money today, with posters repeatedly bringing up the scale of income from licensed goods like figures and from pachinko adaptations. Meanwhile, opinions were split on just how historically influential the series was as a Jump title, with comparisons to Ring ni Kakero, and no single consensus was reached.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Manga artist Shingo Kurumada victim of ¥4.6 billion embezzlement.”
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