Mangaka Hisashi Eguchi deletes his apology after being caught tracing

Stealing others' work by tracing photos is the worst sin a commercial artist can commit. This Saturday, within the manga community, veteran mangaka Hisashi Eguchi reignited the controversy by mysteriously deleting from his social media the public apology he had written after being caught blatantly copying photographs from the internet to make money.

Caught red-handed

The original drama exploded in late 2025. The artist drew a girl for a cultural festival in Japan, but internet otakus quickly realized that the image was an exact copy of a woman's photo on Instagram. Worst of all was the artist's nerve: he admitted that he first made the drawing, got paid for it, published it everywhere, and only then sent a message to the owner of the photo to ask for permission.

Is tracing photos stealing?

In the message he has now decided to delete, the artist tried to defend himself by saying that tracing photos is a very common technique among professionals and that people are exaggerating by calling it "theft" because, legally, doing so is not a crime. However, he did admit that using a real person's face and body without notifying them first is wrong and makes people feel uncomfortable, so he apologized and stated that he had already resolved the issues with his lawyers.

He regrets apologizing

The big mystery is that, without saying a single word, the artist removed all traces of that apology from his account this week. The community is very angry about how he is handling things and criticizes his attitude for three main reasons:

• Lack of respect: Deleting the apology makes it seem like he no longer cares about having used a girl's image without permission.
• Bad example: Being such a famous artist, he implies to newcomers that tracing other people's photos and selling them is perfectly fine.
• Total silence: By not coming forward to explain why he deleted the message overnight, fans feel he is simply running away from the problem to pretend it never happened.

Seeing that with current technology it is incredibly easy to take a photo from the internet and trace it to make quick money, do you think companies should stop hiring artists who use these shortcuts, or do you consider tracing to be a valid technique for working faster?