However, if reading a pirated version of Manga A from Author B published by Company C turns you into an otaku who later goes out and buys Manga D from Author E published by Company F, that’s not doing anything for the parties on the victim side of the piracy. To be fair, that is sometimes (though not always) how things shake out. The logic behind the “piracy increases the number of manga fans” justification is that pirated manga makes it easier for a new fan to get into the hobby, and once their fandom takes root they’ll start supporting the industry by buying legitimate releases and merchandise.
The mention of assistants is particularly thought-provoking. “Do pirates think manga is made by a person with talent who just has an idea pop into their head, then draws it up with no effort at all?…Manga is a result of the creators using years of their lives and taking on the risk of going into the red so that they can pay their assistants.” It’s not just the individual author whose livelihood can be adversely affected by piracy, as Gino808 points out elsewhere in the threads. I often hear people say that they pirate manga because they want to spread recognition of it, but that’s tatemae” Gino808 says, referring to the custom of saying one thing while actually thinking another. Recently manga creator Gino808, author/artist of "Yukionna to Kani wo Kurau" (“Devouring a Snow Woman and Crab”) and "Doteibanashi" (“Virgin Story”), took to Twitter to add a few of their thoughts on the subject.
Further complicating the situation is that unlike stealing physical media, pirating anime/manga doesn’t inflict immediate direct harm on the rightful owner, and the accounting gets even murkier when enthusiastic pirates boast that their actions are increasing interest in the medium, and thus boosting demand for future content. It likely has something to do with the hobby being overwhelmingly youth-oriented, and many teen or young adult otaku’s desire for content far outstripping their earning power and ability to pay for it. In the modern, digitally connected age, you’d be hard-pressed to find an otaku who’s never read a single chapter or watched a single episode that was illegally posted online. To say that the relationship between anime/manga fans and piracy is a complicated one is an understatement.
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