Adapted/largely stolen/condensed from https://rentry.co/v5vha. Edited it because I'm autistic.

Irodori Comics and On Takahashi

Irodori Comics and On Takahashi
Intro
DMCAs
Hypocrisy
Enshodo: Irodori Origins
A FAKKU detour
Retaliation

Intro

Been wondering why a gallery on E-Hentai suddenly became unavailable while you were reading it and clicked on the next page?
Been wondering why some of your favorited galleries on E-Hentai are unavailable?
Been wondering why thousands of galleries on E-Hentai have disappeared since 2019?
Been wondering why most of the stuff uploaded to E-Hentai is Korean or Chinese scanlations lately?
Been wondering who "On Takahashi" is?
Been wondering what "Irodori Comics" is?

People repeatedly ask the same questions, the intent of this large shitpost is to hopefully shed some light on the issue for those who might not know.

Given the massive scope of skullduggery by Takahashi this shouldn't be considered a definitive list. Consider it more of a crash course than a deep dive. There's more in the original version if you'd like a much bigger wall of words to read.

https://files.catbox.moe/0fniaj.jpg
This is a picture of Takahashi, it's from an unlisted video on YouTube that was uploaded many years ago.

Irodori Comics company details: https://files.catbox.moe/zhdawd.png
Irodori Comics is an English publishing company that legally translates Japanese indie comics (Doujinshi) into the English language. He registered the company in July 2019. They sometimes translate it into French and Spanish.
He has been selling his company's "official translations" on Fakkus store since 2019 and on his site via Shopify since December 2020.

He spreads disinformation against piracy, resorting to censorship and historical forgery.
He abhors fan translations/"scanlations" because according to him "it prevents official translations from happening" and "an illegal download is a lost sale".

Takahashi has caused irredeemable damage to the reputation of international publishers, especially English publishers, and nothing good will come from him and the companies (particularly Fakku) that constantly defend him.

This culture, community and industry would've never existed outside Japan in a world without fan scanlations to popularize it, and in such a world they would've never had any interest in it.

And of course, a gentle reminder that there's nothing wrong with legally translating someone's work and selling it. It's people/companies like Takahashi/Irodori and Jacob/Fakku that are the problem. Companies like 2D Market, Summer Salt, J18 and Denpasoft don't have this kind of reputation or sordid past(s) and I highly recommend you support them financially, by word of mouth and most importantly by shilling to artists instead.

DMCAs

What is the first thing Takahashi will do after an artist has handed over their copyright to him? Actual work like translating their titles, selling it and helping them earn more money? No, the first thing he will do is to spam copyright takedown notices to E-Hentai and have all of their English fan translated and Japanese RAW original non-parody works removed.

https://files.catbox.moe/9c5wye.jpg
E-Hentai, also known as "the Library of Alexandria for Hentai" has taken down (at the time of writing) ~2600 (~1500 original galleries) Japanese RAWs and English fan translations due to Irodori DMCAs alone since July 2019. His "official translations" only become available for purchase many months/years after they've been DMCAd if at all. So far, he has "officially translated" a fraction of their works, and as seen in the above picture, it's unlikely that he will "officially translate" all of their works if it's even a little difficult (i.e. not already digital).

https://files.catbox.moe/2g70jd.png
https://files.catbox.moe/94tqoj.png
Here's an example of how long it takes for him to sell his first "official translation" after an artist has handed over their copyright to him.
In April 2020, he acquired the copyright to all of Miyamota Issas original non-parody works and he immediately removed all of the artist's Japanese RAWs and English fan translations on E-Hentai.
He later tweeted on the same day that his first "official translation" for one of Issas works would be available for purchase in July 2020.
In February 2021, 8 months after his own deadline, it finally became available for purchase.
It took him 11 months, nearly one year, to "officially translate" and sell 1 of the many doujins he took down.

https://files.catbox.moe/luqgms.png
Takahashi has even issued DMCAs to E-Hentai to get rid of comics that were scanned and uploaded to the site in 2008 . This particular comic was released and sold in limited quantities by the artist at Comiket 63 in 2002 and it's probably been out-of-print since then because that artist is popular and if you know anything about Comiket, you'll know why that is. Coupled with the likely non-existence of a digital raw that means this doujin will never see the light of day again, at least in any popular capacity. Certainly not by Irodori in any case.

https://files.catbox.moe/57cv5m.jpg
Takahashi claims he can prove that piracy hurts sales but he refuses to provide evidence because he doesn't have any data to prove it. He first issues copyright takedowns to E-Hentai then many months/years later, if at all, his "official translation" becomes available for purchase. Not a single time did he "officially translate" something and sell it before nuking it off of E-Hentai.

If you look at actual studies, you'll see that not a single well-established research firm can prove that piracy is harmful. To the contrary, it proves that piracy is harmless and boosts sales.
In 2014, the EU paid $428000 ($475508 in 2021) to the well-established Dutch research firm Ecorys and ordered them to research the effect that piracy had on sales of "copyrighted content". With a rich dataset, the study became 300+ pages long and the study concluded that there is no robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online piracy and it also mentioned that piracy increases sales for some industries.
You can find the study here https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-study/

And finally, isn't it curious that it's only E-Hentai that seems to get this treatment? You don't see Irodori or Fakku give this kind of treatment to shithouse scrapper/mirror sites like Nhentai that you'd imagine should be a bigger target. Hell Nhentai don't even allow user uploads and recently increased how long their scraper takes to pull galleries from E-Hentai so that it's harder to get them to scrape Irodori/Fakku licensed stuff. Really makes you think, doesn't it? /paranoia

Hypocrisy

On Takahashi is seemingly a man who has an irrational hatred for piracy, yet at the same time he's done paid work for pirate groups with paywalls to illegally translate stuff without permission from copyright holders. All while he owns a company that "legally" translates stuff and crusades against piracy.

https://files.catbox.moe/vmjv58.png
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According to Takahashi, fan translators (this includes typesetters and letterers) are the scum of the earth. He is attacking the people that gave life to the community. Keep in mind that this opportunist is making money off of an industry that would've been infinitely less profitable/viable in a world without piracy. The funny thing about this is that him, his employees and the employees at Fakku started out as so-called illegal translators.

Even though he hates piracy and is extremely vocal about it, he's been earning money on the side by working as an illegal translator for pirate groups with paywalls since 2017. It's very likely that he's been doing it for a much longer time but there's only proof of him doing it since 2017.
In 2018, he discovered Japanese indie comics and it led to him wanting to make his own English publishing company for it because it's popular and there's very little competition.

Instead of making his own English publishing company from the ground up, he decided to steal someone's company.
In 2019, he applied for a translation job at Enshodo, and some months later he staged a coup against the owner of Enshodo and stole his company to create Irodori Comics.

His Twitter activity shows that most of his rants against piracy began after he registered Irodori Comics and it seems to be the what he spends most of his time on, second to vandalizing E-Hentai of course.

https://files.catbox.moe/1tl4im.png
Of course modern "journalists" in the Anime community love to fellate Takahashi and Fakku, but they rarely report on their scandals and hypocrisy.

https://torrentfreak.com/manga-scanlation-and-the-curious-case-of-the-pirating-anti-piracy-advocate-200607
TorrentFreak is a publication dedicated to bringing the latest news about copyright, privacy, and everything related to filesharing.
TorrentFreak wrote an article about Takahashi's scandal in May 2020 where he was exposed as a hypocrite who makes extra money on the side with illegal activities (he got caught working as an illegal translator for pirate groups with paywalls since 2017 despite being an anti-piracy advocate).
TorrentFreak didn't write anything about Takahashi stealing Enshodo, but they included a link to the reddit thread that brought it up. They asked Takahashi about the reddit thread and he denied only one thing from it, which was a screenshot of one of his deleted tweets equating VPN users with terrorists and pedophiles (he denies he tweeted that).
https://twitter.com/imocx_/status/1265731861361426432
https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/gsyhr4/antipiracy_advocate_got_caught_working_for_piracy/
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/gtego8/mangadoujinshi_antipiracy_advocate_got_caught/

Enshodo: Irodori Origins

https://archived.moe/h/thread/5782979/#5784139
https://files.catbox.moe/9nw0jq.png
Fakkus CEO, Jacob Grady, had a very scripted AMA on /h/ in May 2020 that most people found out about after it was already over. The only useful information that he gave away is that he confirmed there was a "split" at Enshodo which led to the creation of Irodori. Calling it a "split" is laughable considering Takahashi stole the company by launching a coup against the owner of it.

A few weeks after that AMA was over, insiders who worked at Enshodo revealed a lot more information about the "split" on /h/.

Takahashi worked as a translator at Enshodo for a few months until he made Irodori Comics.
For those of you who don't know what Enshodo was, it was another company that also provided legal translations of Doujins into English.

Want to know what happened to Enshodo? Want to know why Irodoris website used to be so similar to Enshodos website? Want to know why ALL of the artists working for Irodori Comics in its first two months previously worked for Enshodo? Want to know why Enshodos vice president and other founder went over to Irodori Comics?

We need to start from the beginning.
It first began with two guys called Tech aka Jeff and EdMX aka Edsel Eyes aka Eduardo Reyes. They started out as a pirate scanlation group a decade ago. Their first group was called "Genesis Translation" and they got paid by people to translate copyrighted works without permission from the copyright holders. They changed the name of their group to "gTeam", and once more to "Phoenix Syndicate" aka PSYN.
At some point, they decided to start a legal translation company after seeing Fakkus success.

In 2016, Jeff, EdMX and two others registered a company called "Shikimaya".
With this company, they started translating doujins working directly with the artists/copyright holders.
Fakku prepped up Shikimaya by informing artists from their own lineup to join them.

This is where things become interesting. Kana Ueno enters the picture for the first time. She approached Tech and wanted to "help" his company. Tech tried to convince the other three and told them "she knows how to run the company and bring in more money". That's what she told him to say to the other three.

EdMX said nothing and the two unnamed said no because they had no idea who she is and they believed it'd be a dangerous move to let her make any decisions because no one has heard of her before.
Tech ignored the two unnamed and brought in Kana, let her run the company and she told Tech to kick out the two unnamed which he did.
Kana was the primary contact for artists at Shikimaya/Enshodo.
One of the stipulations of Shikimaya/Enshodo getting her 'help' was that she would have a say in everything. She told Tech to change the name of the company so that the two unnamed who he had forced out would never see any profit for the company that they helped to found.
The new name of the company became Enshodo, and the new owners were Tech, EdMX and Kana.
Tech got himself into massive debts because someone had to pay for Kana's salary and the company bills.

In 2019, Takahashi applied for a translation job at Enshodo and got hired.
It is believed that Kana and Takahashi knew each other and this was part of their grand plan.
Tech started issuing more and more copyright takedown notices to E-Hentai after Takahashi became an employee at Enshodo.
Tech went after English fan translations instead of Japanese RAWs, and this did not sit very well with Takahashi because he wanted to get rid of both.
Some months later, he started plotting with Kana and EdMX to kick out Tech. They weren’t happy how the owner of Enshodo was running things, and since they couldn’t get him to relinquish control to them, they decided to kick him out by launching a coup against him.
They started emailing artists in secret, mostly false rumors about him, accused him of scamming artists and having ties to the mafia in Japan. The reason Takahashi framed it as a Yakuza issue was because of a huge Yakuza scare in the Japanese entertainment industry at the time, maximizing the fears of the Japanese publishers and artists just so that he could get his way and steal Tech's company.
Takahashi told those artists to wait until the event Anime Expo was over because Tech paid a lot of money to have Enshodo's booth there. This was to inflict as much damage to Tech as possible.

On 23 July, 2020, Takahashi registered his company.
One week and some days later, that's early August 2020, their plan sprung into action and many artists quit at once and this is when Tech found out about their coup to kick him out.
EdMX took down Enshodo's website and changed Enshodo's slogan from "The way Doujinshi are meant to be enjoyed" to "The way Doujinsih are not meant to be enjoyed".
Takahashi scared the artists away from Enshodo and had them run straight into his own arms. Mission accomplished.
Tech had no choice but to close Enshodo. Stuck with a massive debt, which he's still paying for today.
On August 29 2019, Takahashi blackmailed Tech and forced him to tweet "I'm closing Enshodo because of my health issues, check out Irodori Comics".

Jacob calling this a "split" is a bit humorous, don't you think?
Jacob and rest of the staff at Fakku knew about the coup before it happened.

A FAKKU detour

Fakku have been a vehement supporter of On Takahashi in words but also as a storefront, so it should come as no surprise that they've got a sordid past in their own right.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070112073445/http://www.fakku.net/AAH/news/show_archives.php?archive=1165206048&subaction=list-archive&
Some people don't know this but Fakku started out as a pirate site, meaning that Jacob never originally licensed/had the rights to anything and only hosted pirated material.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061221225735/http://www.fakku.net/AAH/main.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20061221224723/http://www.fakku.net/AAH/games.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20061221230043/http://www.fakku.net/AAH/videos.php
Fakku didn't start with a massive meaningful community, so Jacob had to largely leech/scrape content from E-Hentai and other public providers (E-Hentai certainly didn't have the games/videos they were hosting at the time). Eventually more fan translators that were friendly to Jacob started uploading to Fakku directly and a fan-lation community that included Doujins/Manga and Anime, all pirated of course, sprouted up but I digress. Jacob also advertised Fakku on E-Hentai by spamming links in their comment fields and telling fan translators on his friendlist to add Fakku watermarks to the pages.

https://files.catbox.moe/4bjib5.jpg
Fakku also had an illegal store when it was a pirate site to further profit off of IPs they didn't own.

https://files.catbox.moe/2vn72b.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/drxx8u.png
https://files.catbox.moe/lpxk73.png
https://files.catbox.moe/wkdbat.png
On 19 June, 2014, Wanimagazine noticed that Fakku was a very popular site with a large and growing userbase from different countries and they offered Jacob a deal to legally work with them which he gladly accepted. This is when Fakku entered a partnership with Wanimagazine and began to legally translate their magazine chapters into English. Tenboro/E-Hentai received the same offer but refused to compromise the integrity of the site, while Jacob had no such reservations. Jacob continued to host unlicensed works despite working with Wanimagaizine because he wanted to boost Fakkus site traffic as much as possible and he stopped doing it in 2015 when people called him out for it.

https://files.catbox.moe/l28t3d.png
I wonder who could be behind putting more pressure on E-H after one party refused the deal and the other accepted?

https://forums.E-Hentai.org/index.php?s=b44dc7d9bb0071dc232e601e5810aa3c&showtopic=240088
Fakku had a short AMA on E-Hentais forum on 24 July, 2020. People asked them about Takahashis scandal and a few other things related to Takahashi, and you can probably figure out what type of response people got from Fakku. YQII and Daiz said the usual that you'd expect anyone from Fakku to say. They feigned complete ignorance and they want to sweep his scandals under the rug and and pretend it never happened.

The reason Fakku is playing dumb is because Fakku takes a 30% cut of each sale that a publisher earns when using their store which is why he refuses to lift a finger against Irodori. If you lurk in #sadpanda on Rizon look back through your logs and you'll see Daiz himself say it on Aug 27. Amusingly, Jacob will sometimes try to lecture people on ethics and morals when he himself lacks it.

https://files.catbox.moe/o9e8ua.png
https://files.catbox.moe/z1jcws.png
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https://files.catbox.moe/lpxk73.png
And finally, as of late Fakku has been playing the Irodori game with DMCAs. As of writing Fakku is responsible for ~2200 DMCAs against E-Hentai, and that's not including claims from Wanimagazine or the Wanipocalypse. Once upon a time they were lenient to fan translations. Used to be one of the few good things you could say about Fakku, that they'd only DMCA a rare few and their own translations. Not so anymore, Fakku is just as quick and unreasonable with the DMCA hammer now and deserve the same condemnation as Irodori for it.

Retaliation

There are several ways to hurt their businesses.

Perhaps most importantly, don't give Irodori/Fakku a single dime. Not even if they're stuck at a tollbooth and they really need it.

DO NOT BUY ARTISTS WORKS ON FAKKU/IRODORI COMICS STORES.

If the artists western releases are affected negatively because they associated with Takahashi and Jacob it'll discourage others from making the same mistake. Inform them that Takahashi and Irodori/Jacob and Fakku are the reason you can't support their western releases. Let them know about the pairs sordid pasts and active participation in the piracy scene. Let them know if they cease their relationship with Takahashi and Irodori/Jacob and Fakku you're more than willing to support their western releases, but only if and when they do so.

If you must support artists/circles affiliated with Fakku/Irodori in the west, buy the JP release and pirate the English/western one. This way they still get paid and you get the content.

Encourage artists to use crowdfunding sites for English language/foreign releases. Crowdfunding sites take a 5% cut or less, whereas Fakku/Irodori take significantly more and they would still be in control of their IP. At the very least encourage them to switch to more reputable publishers like like 2D Market, Summer Salt, J18 and Denpasoft.

Make some noise. Take this to social media, let people know. Silence and neutrality is an invitation to continue unabated.

Another but a much more tedious way is to create your own English publishing company, this route requires a decent amount of money to make upfront payments to artists for their copyright (how else will you sway them to your side?) and you'll need experience (fan translators). This is why Fakku, Irodori and most publishers out there hate fan translators and piracy, because it's how they started and they don't want anyone to do the same since it threatens their precious little hegemony.