The original artwork of “Video Girl Ai” was stolen and sold online

Daily Shincho reports that manga artist Masakazu Katsura has lost possession of the original drawings of the late 90s Weekly Shonen Jump staple Video Girl Ai. The loss occurred during a move from one studio to another. Katsura seems to have an idea of who the culprit is after seeing his original art go up for auction online, and is filing a police report charging that person of theft. 

“All of these are original paintings that were stolen. They were taken away in the confusion when we moved studios last October,” said Katsura.

The classic ecchi manga series ran from 1989 to 1992. The manga’s 131 chapters were compiled into 15 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha, published between 1990 and 1993, and sold a total of 14 million copies. A live-action film released in 1991, and a live-action television drama called Den’ei Shōjo ran on TV Tokyo in 2018. 

Despite Katsura’s best efforts, the original art was lost in the studio change, and to his shock, he began seeing some of those pieces sold on the auction site Yahoo! Auctions, with each drawing being traded for “approximately 100,000 yen (643 United States dollars)  to several hundred thousand yen, with some even going for over 1 million yen. (6,424 United States Dollars)” according to Daily Shincho.

The publication goes on to estimate the total monetary loss in the article, stating, “There are about 2,500 original drawings across all 15 volumes. If each drawing costs 300,000 yen(1,931 United States dollars), the total damage amounts to 750 million yen. (4,828,569 United States dollars).”

“There’s no way I would have accidentally disposed of the original drawings for Video Girl Ai, which I’d put my life into. In fact, even before I started moving, I had put each volume in an envelope and stored them securely in a locker. I was lucky enough to have kept the original drawings for other major works, such as Wingman, in a different location, but I had kept all my other valuable items in the locker. 

I personally inspected each and every item that I sold to buyers, and I also told the waste disposal company, ‘Please do not throw away personal items such as watches and cameras, especially my original drawings.’ I even opened my locker and gave the moving company detailed instructions: ‘Please move these original drawings to the appropriate place in the warehouse.’ Of course, I never gave permission for the items I threw away to be sold to recycling companies,” added Katsura.

In a puzzling development that my litigious American mind can’t comprehend, Daily Shincho reported that the police station has “refused to accept the complaint.” Still, Katsura is represented by Nao Sakai, a lawyer, and is working to bring criminal charges forward.

“After carefully examining the information, we found that the company that was present at the move was likely to have been the one that committed the crime. We also discovered the existence of a secondhand goods dealer who was likely an accomplice of this company. Furthermore, when we requested information disclosure from the website through the bar association, we discovered that one of the accounts that had listed the stolen original drawings had actually been created by the secondhand goods dealer in question.”