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Manga Award Revoked Due to Mardock Scramble Plagiarism

Square Enix has revoked its special prize from the 18th Square Enix Manga Prize awards after an investigation this week demonstrated that the winner had plagiarized Tow Ubukata's novelette Mardock Scramble 104.

Square Enix had awarded the prize to Daiki Matsuura for "Compliance -Zettai Hō Rei Toshi-," a one-shot manga he sent to the company for the competition. Square Enix published the one-shot in its August issue of Monthly Shonen Gangan on Tuesday. Readers of the magazine pointed out to Square Enix that the one-shot had plagiarized Ubukata's work.

Hayakawa Publishing, which published Ubukata's book, released a statement on its website on Friday, noting that Square Enix had posted an apology notice on Monthly Shonen Gangan's official website the day before. The statement noted that the apology notice will also be published in the September issue of Monthly Shonen Gangan, on sale on August 12. Hayakawa Publishing thanked the readers who brought this to its attention.

The apology notice from Monthly Shonen Gangan's editorial department said that after it received the information from readers about the possible plagiarism, it conducted an investigation and found "several points of similarity" between Matsuura's work and Ubukata's.

The editorial department wrote that in the future it would give new creators training and guidance, and the editorial department would do as much as it could to prevent something like this from happening again.

Matsuura himself posted an apology notice on Square Enix's website, explaining that he was "in a hurry to make [his] debut as a manga creator."

Viz Media's Haikasoru imprint released Mardock Scramble 104 in English in the iBook Store for Apple devices such as the iPad and iPhone.

Sources: MSN News Japan, Yahoo! Japan