No Game No Life Artist Accused of Tracing

There is no doubt that 2014 was an amazing year for anime. A lot of the most famous titles in the anime industry had just begun airing. These shows included “Fate Stay Night” by UBW, “Akame ga Kill!”, “Tokyo Ghoul” and “Seven Deadly Sins”. All of these series have gained a massive amount of traction and remain as some of the most-watched and profitable and franchises in 2020.

However, 2014 “exposed” a hit anime by the Twitter username, rotiflride. Rotiflride at the time had created a huge rumor amongst the anime community against the light novelist Yuu Kamiya. Whilst his Twitter has now been terminated for violating the terms of service, they had originally posted photos “exposing” the author of “No Game No Life” (NGNL for short) for copying the poses of other artists. These photos began to cause some controversy and the allegations were considered true by many western anime watchers who were not familiar with the situation. So just how legitimate were these claims? Why has there still been no season 2 despite it being six years since the first season?

Despite NGNL being such a hit anime in 2014, not many people took notice in rotiflride’s Twitter. When I asked Richie (a fan of the franchise) if he heard of these allegations, he simply responded “no”. Most of the misinformation had actually been spread by word of mouth and forum pages rather than definitive evidence. Examples of this misinformation include multiple forums and even articles stating that the novelists had apologized for tracing the art and paid money to the respective owners. However, this simply does not seem like the case. None of the sources that claimed this had cited the alleged websites and artists that Yuu Kamiya copied from. It seems that rotiflride’s accusations as a whole seemed to be fraudulent and fake.

Here are some examples of what rotiflride posted to their Twitter account (Illustrations on the right are Yuu Kamiya’s):

 It is unclear whether or not these drawings were either referenced or traced as Yuu Kamiya has not addressed the controversy whatsoever.

Max Nagel is an artist from 10th grade. I wanted his opinion on whether or not this would be considered plagiarism because art is something passionate about. “These look more like a heavy reference rather than traced. When you draw art you oftentimes use reference photos when drawing. If the character you are drawing is entirely from the reference, it is fine. This is because if the anatomy of your character allows the pose, then it is not unique and therefore cannot be copywritten.”

Even though the poses appear copied and traced, these types of poses appear everywhere in manga and light novels. If Yuu Kamiya is accused of tracing then so should all of these other artists that used the same exact pose.

However, there still remains a question. Why has season 2 of the anime not been announced yet, despite it being such a hit anime in both Japan and the west? We can only speculate, but it seems like the problem is rooted in the animation studio who was responsible for creating an anime adaptation. Studio Madhouse staff (Not to be confused with Yuu Kamiya) had formally apologized for plagiarizing background art for the anime. Commonly, when businesses and people mess up this bad in the industry, the Japanese populous looks down upon their work.

All we can do at the moment is speculate. So, what do you think about this situation? Did Yuu Kamiya really trace his drawings? What are the chances of us getting a second season? Let us know in the comments below.