Nigel Ng (Uncle Roger) posted an update that the recent copyright strike from Toei Animation has officially been withdrawn for his ONE PIECE video. The update was made on September 5, the date that the video titled “Uncle Roger Review ONE PIECE Japanese Curry” was scheduled to be removed. The review video is now allowed to remain on the platform and currently has about 2.3 million views.
Nigel Ng also posted the same update on his Twitter and added his thanks to the YouTube team to which they responded with a friendly acknowledgment. No additional information was released regarding the dropped copyright strike from Toei. However, Nigel Ng mentioned a joke that the decision must have been related to MSG, one of the running gags of his Uncle Roger videos. Aside from ONE PIECE, Nigel Ng/Uncle Roger also previously made a cooking review video of Shokugeki no Soma: Food Wars!
If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch Nigel Ng/Uncle Roger’s ONE PIECE cooking review below:
This isn’t the first instance of anime copyright claims on YouTube by Toei. YouTubers Mark Fitzpatrick of Totally Not Mark and TeamFourStar, the group behind Dragon Ball Z Abridged received copyright claims from Toei in the past. In a similar situation, Suede‘s Pokémon Journey series received a copyright strike when Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions (Sho-Pro) filed a court complaint over their channel. There is no concept of fair use in Japanese law, which generally covers reviews in the West.
ONE PIECE is a manga by Eichiro Oda that follows Monkey D. Luffy in his quest to find the Pirate King’s greatest treasure. It is free to read on MANGA Plus while the anime is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Bilibili. Lastly, all the episodes of the live-action adaptation are now available on Netflix, and the scripts for season 2 are already ready!
Source: Nigel Ng’s YouTube
© Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha / Toei Animation