Interest
Kodoku no Gourmet Show to Offer Soundtrack Minus Copyright Restrictions
posted on by Ko Ransom
Manga author Masayuki Kusumi, who together with Jiro Taniguchi created the Kodoku no Gourmet (Solitary Gourmet) manga, announced on his Twitter account that the soundtrack for the live-action adaptation of the manga series would not be registered with Japan's JASRAC copyright collection society, and that the soundtrack would be "copyright-free." He then went on to state that users may do whatever they wish with the soundtrack, including upload them to YouTube, use it in their own videos or advertisements, and so on, but that he would be happy if those who do use the soundtrack send him an email when they do.
A DVD boxset of the live-action Kodoku no Gourmet series was released on May 16. Fusosha's Weekly Spa! magazine and its other publications have been serializing the manga on an irregular basis since 1994. Only one book volume has been compiled so far, but its various editions have sold over 200,000 copies.
Kusumi also wrote Hana no Zubora-Meshi, another cuisine manga that was nominated for the 2011 Manga Taisho (Cartoon Grand Prize) award. Hana no Zubora-Meshi ranked as the #1 manga for female readers in the survey from the recently published Kono Manga ga Sugoi! 2012 guidebook.
Fanfare / Ponent Mon has published such Taniguchi works as The Walking Man, The Ice Wanderer, and A Distant Neighborhood in English, and these three particular titles have been nominated for America's Eisner Awards. Viz also published his Benkei in New York manga. A live-action film adaptation of A Distant Neighborhood (Harukana Machi e/Quartier Lointain) was produced in Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany in 2010, and Taniguchi is planning a new historical manga set in Meiji-era Japan.
[Via Hachima Kikō]
