The sad story of Mr. Osomatsu travels westward.
Earlier today, Crunchyroll announced that they pulled the first episode of Mr. Osomatsu (Osomatsu-san) from their streaming platform. The episode was removed today, at 10:00AM Eastern.
Crunchyroll is the 22nd platform that will yank the episode. Last week, the official Mr. Osomatsu website announced that the show’s first episode would not be released on DVD or Blu-Ray. In addition, all 21 Japanese streaming providers would be pulling the episode on November 12, at midnight.
On October 29, TV Tokyo’s Yūichi Takahashi apologized for Mr. Osomatsu‘s third episode, which contains a lewd parody of children’s character Anpanman, in a press conference.
As we reported at the time, Japan’s copyright law lacks a specific parody provision, meaning that spoofs and satire of copyrighted works are not protected speech. Rather, creators have three moral rights: Divulgence, Authorship, and Integrity.
Because of this, parodic works are treated as infringing works, due to a violation of the Integrity clause. Because of this, all parodic works require creator consent.
Mr. Osomatsu is based on the late Fujio Akatsuka’s manga of the same name. The series is being directed by Yoichi Fujita at Studio Pierrot. Naoyuki Asano is providing character designs, while Shū Matsubara handles series composition. The show kicked off on October 5, as a celebration of what would be Akatsuka’s 80th birthday.
Source: Crunchyroll
