Tokyo Police charged a 34-year-old Shibuya woman for selling bootleg cakes of the popular Demon Slayer franchise on Tuesday.
The woman began selling the cakes in 2019, decorating them with various cast members from the manga and anime series. The patisserie acknowledged being aware of the laws she was breaking, saying, “I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t think I’d be able to sell ordinary cakes,” in her public statement.
The cakes were sold through the woman’s Instagram account. Customers would send her images of the characters or artwork they wanted to be replicated and were charged anywhere from ¥13,000 to ¥15,000 (roughly $114 to $132 USD) per cake. In the two years that she was active, the woman sold hundreds of cakes and earned an estimated ¥6.5 million ($57,100 USD).
Unlike with smaller scale derivative works such as doujinshi and fan art, the woman’s efforts went on too long and were much too prosperous to be ignored by the rights holders. The sale of fan works is typically tolerated in Japan so long as it’s done within moderation, which was not the case here.
Koyoharu Gotouge’s Demon Slayer manga ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 2016 to 2020, amassing 23 collected volumes. Gotouge has earned a number of awards for the series, most recently winning the Japan Cartoonists Association Award and Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize. Viz Media publishes the manga in English.
Ufotable produces the anime adaptation, with the first season having aired during the Spring 2019 season. The anime’s popularity inspired a 2020 film adaptation, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, which was a massive success in Japan and overseas. The second season is currently airing and the series alongside the film can be streamed on Crunchyroll and Funimation.
Source: Sora24