Forum:Bleach plagiarised

I am sure most of you have heard by now but for those who haven't. Nick Simmons, the son of Gene Simmons, has been accused of plagiarising Bleach in his comic: Incarnate. On his twitter account, Kubo made the following twits (credit for translation goes to Maaru of FLOL) regarding the matter.

なんか、昨日の夜から今朝にかけて、すごい数の海外のファンから「アメリカにBLEACHの真似をしてるマンガがある！」的な返信が入ってた. で、サイト見たら英語よくわかんないけど、どうも「ジーン・シモンズの息子のニック・シモンズが描いてるマンガだ」みたいなことが描いてあった.

Actually, from last night til this morning, a huge number of foreign fans were saying "This American manga is ripping off Bleach!" or something like that. Well, I looked at the site, but I can't really read English, and it's a manga made by Gene Simmons' son.

正直似てるかどうかより、ジーン・シモンズの息子が漫画家ってことのほうが気になる…

Actually, whether it's plagiarism or not, I'm more worried about the fact that Gene Simmon's son is a mangaka.

For more information on this and on how Bleach has been plagiarised, please go here. Thank you. Tinni  (Talk)  11:19, February 25, 2010 (UTC)

Are you serious? Is this guy really that shallow? I mean, ripping of Bleach and other anime is enough...but ripping off DeviantArt artists?! You've got to be fucking kidding me! Maggosh 12:11, February 25, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, he apparently is I have seen his wiki page, I have seen the various forums. The detail in which he blatantly ripped off Bleach as well as other manga is just ridiculous. It goes far beyond mere coincidence, this stuff is spot on tracing over work clearly done by others. Its sad to find that talent is not always genetic. Sometimes people are just really messed up. There is no doubt that Nick Simmons has committed plagiarism and Kubo should sue the the hell of him. Supposedly Viz Media has taken notice as well and stating something to the effect that they are looking into the situation. Salubri (Talk)  12:37, February 25, 2010 (UTC)

Viz media through their twitter account released the information that they have a team on the matter. The publishers of Incarnate have also stopped all further work on the series. As Salubri said, it is actually stunning how much ripping off has gone on. He didn't just steal character art but he essentially stole the characters as well. The Kenpachi looking character actually has Kenpachi's personality as well! In a page of the Incarnate comic I saw, another character (the protagonist?) actually said in reference to the Kenpachi character "he's a monster". The Orihime looking character too is a total rip-off of Orihime. She even has Orihime's defining characteristic of empathy. Not only that, some of Orihime-clone's lines come directly from Orihime as well. It's actually so blatant that I am surprised he thought he could get away with it. Tinni  (Talk)  12:50, February 25, 2010 (UTC)

Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach, one of the mangas specifically named, has made a Twitter post twice on the situation, first to comment on the number of people outside of Japan commenting on the accusations and later to note that he is more interested in Gene Simmons's son being a comic creator than he is in whether any of his work was actually copied. Salubri (Talk)  18:42, February 26, 2010 (UTC)