Whether you are a superhero fan, an appreciator of animation, or just someone with an ear to the ground in the business world, Warner Brothers have been undergoing quite a purge as of late. Unfortunately, another addition to the list of questionable choices has affected the anime community, with a DMCA targeted at the animation forum Sakugabooru.
Sakugabooru is a website centered around showcasing clips of animation, primarily from Japanese anime, but also including some animation from China, Korea, and beyond. The clips in question are stripped of audio to stress the visual component and - if possible - the names of the animators that worked on the cut are attributed to it among the tags. On August 16, Reddit and Twitter posts were abuzz about the removal of approximately 536 posts, including key animation, storyboards, and other illustrations, all from one show. The show in question was none other than Mob Psycho 100, the critically acclaimed hit from Studio Bones, produced by Warner Brothers Japan.
What This Means & Why It Matters
Every trace of Mob Psycho 100 is gone from the website and though some URLs still link to the pages of individual clips, there is naught but the tags, the comments, and a message of deletion. Among these tags are the names of the animators, but they can't serve a purpose without showing what the animators accomplished. Sakuga as a community is built around an appreciation and understanding of the animation process and thereby encouraging a more enriched discourse about the finer points of the medium. No matter where the animation is from or what style, sakuga is about spotlighting individual animators and their styles.
Over the last decade or so, this community has grown as Japanese animators themselves have become more vocal on social media platforms. Animators talk about the industry more and share what shows and episodes they work on. Before this surge in communication, fans had to rely on commentaries, interviews, or art books from Japan, all of which had to be translated if it wasn't localized officially. Now it's far easier to credit animators.
Not to mention, certain animators like Bahi JD or Yutaka Nakamura have become celebrities, with the latter having pioneered his own style of destruction animation (the YutaPon cube). Those among the Web Generation (Webgen) of younger animators are entering the industry far more vocal and eager to share their involvement than previous generations of talent.
The removal of Mob Psycho is disheartening to many because it was such a titanic property within the sakuga community that has now been stripped away. The fact that there were over 500 clips at all within just 24 total episodes across two seasons is astounding. Even 2009's Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood - a series with more than double the number of episodes and acclaimed animation quality - only has 250 clips on the website. The significance of this series in anime history shouldn't be ignored, but it is merely a smaller part of the larger problem. The key animators that worked on those 536 posts are now without the easiest accessible method on the internet of being properly credited for their work. And no matter the series, that would - and should - be considered a tragedy.
Why Did It Happen?
The sad truth, as hard as it might be to admit, is that quite a lot of the series was readily visible on this free website, so much in fact that a recurring sentiment in comments was to "just post the whole show." Sakuga can often be simplified to describe how animation goes from being at a baseline of quality to suddenly being amazing during important scenes. Animation as a medium can sometimes be very cheap, and maneuvering time constraints and other limitations are all part of making anime great. Sometimes it means that cheap looking shows suddenly look amazing when a talented fellow directs an episode or a superb animator works on the newest episode's big fight.
Other times, it simply means that a project's overall animation direction resulted in a visually consistent whole that sometimes or frequently went above and beyond. All of this is thanks in large part to skilled individual animators. And Mob Psycho's direction was great enough that quite a lot of it was deemed sakuga.
Because of this, it's not at all surprising that the suits at Warner Brothers perceived this abundance of visual appreciation to be an infringement of copyright. From this, a discussion of copyright law and fair use is inevitable, and it's uncertain if the website has plans to fight the takedown or if nothing else can be done.
"Fair Use" tends to prioritize whether something is "transformative," and there has been some debate if the removal of sound from the clips is transformative enough. At that point, they aren't too different from GIFs posted anywhere else online. As it is, the resolution of these MP4 files isn't often much higher than 480p, though the clarity can still be quite pleasing to the eye at full screen, as is the goal.
What's Next?
Whether it is fair use or not will vary from person to person, but even if Sakugabooru is agreed to not be fair use, it doesn't address the larger problem that facilitated its existence: lack of credit. Either new resources and sites need to be created that tow the same legal gray area, or the animation industry has to find a better way to recognize and appreciate its talent.
Believe it or not, this isn't the first time that this has happened. In 2021, fans noticed that all traces of Hunter x Hunter (2011) disappeared from Sakugabooru as well. A forum post stated that they were removed for a reason that couldn't be disclosed, but that people should "check the page again in a few months." Keep in mind this was 12 months ago and there has been no update.
The future of this website is as yet uncertain, but should this become a trend, it would likely be received as a damaging one that would hurt one of the core tenants of sakuga: recognition. On a bright note, one Twitter user compiled a thread of Mob Psycho clips that were posted by the account Random Sakuga, as seen below
It's hardly a perfect solution; a dense thread of clips on a website with no archive function, but it's better than the clips being completely gone, and the posts within the thread credit the artists. With the third season of Mob Psycho 100 coming quickly, sites like Twitter and Reddit will be essential in putting a name to each frame when it airs on October 6.
Source: Sakugabooru