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Manga Plus Service Publishes Daisuke Miyata's Rugby Rumble Manga Using AI Company as Letterer
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) website describes Orange Inc. as follows:
Orange has achieved a 90% cut in the process and cost of manga localization through AI. This system makes it possible to localize dozens of times more than before. We are creating an epoch-making localization/globalization of Japanese manga.
The company was founded in April 2021, and announced in July it had raised US$1.8 million. The company is also involved in the social media localization of the Neko Oji: The Guy that got Reincarnated as a Cat manga.
Mei Amaki (Mugen Creations LLC.) is translating the Rugby Rumble manga.
After the manga debuted in English and there was a backlash on social media about the quality of the lettering, MANGA Plus released a new version of the first chapter on Saturday, with the typesetting changed, and Amaki is now also credited as letterer and editor alongside Orange Inc. and Media Do.
The manga debuted on MANGA Plus on September 28, and its second chapter will release on October 5. The manga launched in Japan on the Shonen Jump+ service on September 29.
Regarding the use of AI in art in Japan, TBS News Dig reported in May that around 94% of Japanese creators were "concerned that AI could have harmful effects such as rights infringement," according to an Arts Workers Japan survey of around 25,000 creators.
Japanese content websites DLsite, Ci-en, pixiv FANBOX, and Fantia had all banned or restricted AI-generated content on their platforms in May. A new manga based on Osamu Tezuka's classic Black Jack series is launching this fall and is being co-produced by AI based on the chatbot ChatGPT-4.
In the United States, part of the reason for recent strikes from the Writers Guild of America and The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) labor unions is to ask for protections against and limitation on those industries' use of AI.
Sources: Manga Plus, The Beat
