Dragon Quest is a massive franchise, made up of a countless number of different pieces and parts. There isn’t just the massive series of successful video games; there are manga, anime, toys, and novels. There’s even a gorgeous new CG animated film titled Dragon Quest Your Story. While the film was met with some rough criticism due to a strange final-act twist, the movie and its production company are likely to meet more criticism and scrutiny soon. According to the novelist behind the official Dragon Quest V novel, the film used her work and characters without her consent, and now she’s seeking legal recourse.
Dragon Quest V novel author Saori Kumi initially expressed her concerns over this issue the day the film opened in Japan. She filed a civil lawsuit with the Saku branch of the Nagano District Court way back on August 2nd. Now, though, she’s filed criminal complaints with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office and Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department against the production committee responsible for Dragon Quest Your Story, the first-ever 3D CG film adaptation in the franchise. Her filing on December 5th includes criminal complaints not just against the production committee, but many related companies and individuals as well. Saori Kumi issued a statement concerning her complaints shortly after filing the lawsuit.
According to her official statement, Kumi alleged that the production committee for the anime film not only used her work without permission, but altered and changed it, violating the strict copyright laws of Japan as well as the Unfair Competition Prevention Act. She went on to further accuse the production committee of fraud, breach of trust, and even corporate embezzlement. She went on to criticize TOHO and Square Enix, who are both listed with production credits on the film, as well as the director of the film, Takashi Yamazaki.
Kumi elaborated that the producers of the film used her novel character Ryuka, the protagonist of the story, as well as the name “Ryukeirom el kel Granvania” without her permission. These names aren’t lifted directly from the original game; in the Dragon Quest V game that Dragon Quest Your Story loosely adapts, the protagonist is simply named “Hero” and is given no official title. However, in the film, his name is Ryuka, just as it was in Saori Kumi’s novel.
According to her, the use of her characters in the film Dragon Quest Your Story directly goes against the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters and Cool Japan Strategy Promotion Council’s fundamental beliefs of appropriately compensating creators for their work and helping facilitate the sharing and multi-use of broad creative rights within a larger franchise.
Since Dragon Quest Your Story has yet to ship on home video, there isn’t a concrete and reliable way to note the number of times ideas and names from Saori Kumi’s novel appear in the film. Because of this, she instead used the official novelization of the film, which was published on August 2nd by Mirei Miyamoto, to count the appearances of her characters and ideas. According to Kumi, there were 487 uses of the character name “Ryuka,” and among those instances, she counted 53 of them which were “highly likely” to have been used in the dialogue of the film. According to the novelist, certain promotional materials for the film even used the phrase “the protagonist’s name is the novel version’s Ryuka.”
Kumi expressed the fact that at least four people she’s talked to said they thought the film was a straight adaptation of her own novel, because of the fact that it used the protagonist named Ryuka. According to the novelist, some of her fans also reported the film’s violation of Japan’s Act Against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations.
Kumi clarified that she does not believe these actions are an accident, or a case of miscommunication or misunderstanding. She firmly believes that the production committee intentionally used her character without her express permission in order to make the marketing for Dragon Quest Your Story even stronger. She believes that this was the sole reason she was ignored as a creator, and that these decisions led to the confusion of countless fans. She also believes that if this case of alleged misuse of work is ignored, it could cause further damage to the industry in the future.
The Dragon Quest V novel trilogy by Saori Kumi was released in 1994. Each book was roughly 300 pages in length, with numerous illustrations interspersed throughout each novel. The illustrations were drawn by Mutsumi Inomata, who went on to become the character designer for Bandai Namco’s Tales series of video games.
Dragon Quest Your Story opened in Japanese theaters on August 2nd, with an official novelization released the same day. The story of the film is based on the Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride game’s story. Yuji Horii, the original creator of the Dragon Quest franchise at Enix, is credited as the original story creator and overall supervisor of the film. Takashi Yamazaki is the chief director and scriptwriter, and previously worked on the live-action Parasyte and Space Battleship Yamato films. Makoto Hanafusa and Ryuichi Yagi are also credited as directors on the film. The music for the film is composed by the game franchise’s composer, Koichi Sugiyama.
