A Legalistic Argument Against Guide books

As a case study we will be using Naruto databook 2 as an example

the cover and  the spine of the book lists the name Masashi Kishimoto (岸本斉史) with no qualifier with it , to find any qualifiers we have to turn to the back of the book

where in the second section it says Author Masashi Kishimoto , Copy Right Masashi Kishimoto 2005, and Publishing Person Kazuhiko Karashima and Publishing House Shueisha Inc

instead of arguing a normative definition of "author" as this whole back page is in a formal legal format we will just look for the Japanese Legal definitions

Copyright Research and Information center is a website the tracks and documents Copyright law including "Copyright Law of Japan"

The Copyright Law of Japan defines Author as

because of the definition of "work" the "creates a work" means "creates a creativity produced expression of thoughts or sentiments that falls with in ... etc etc basically everything" which ultimatum means any contribution to a work amounts to "creating a/the work" and therefore authorship

which seem straight forward but as always it is the little stuff in the fine print that make Law a profession

The fist section of the back page of the data book list a whole group of names with their job i.e. the work they did on the data book like "art direction" and the company they work for in parentheses after their names Like "(Fhrenheit)" meaning the data book fits the definition of a joint and derivative work

which in the technical definition makes them all " authors"

but

meaning a "joint derivative work" will not have all the "authors" of the work attributed authorship unless contractually obligated too refer to them as authors , in our case because they do not have to it might be the case that Shueisha Inc and Kazuhiko Karashima are contractually obligated to mention the the name of the person ,their Job , and the external company external to Shueisha Inc. that that person work for

in addition too and more damningly

meaning even if Masashi Kishimoto didn't put a single drop of ink to paper he could still put his name to a derivative work as "author" which it would be hard pressed to argue that the data books are not "derivative work" and as clause 2 states , it could even be the case that  Masashi Kishimoto may not know that his name is on data book 2 if it is the case that Shueisha Inc put his name on databook 2 in accordance with Masashi Kishimoto previous attribution scheme , which this is likely not the case here as there are "thank you" messages left in the data books to the people who actually worked on the data that are signed with hand made signatures by Kishimoto which would be hard to believe would make up a " fair practice" if them signatures were fake

and so to conclude the Legalese the data books can be best described as a Joint derivative work commissioned by  Kazuhiko Karashima and the company Shueisha Inc, contracting / employing 4 other companies to create a guide book in which they the companies employ their own employees to actually work on the book

which all this gives very weak basis for the use of the guide books , that we think should have any reasonable person second guessing the authoritativeness of the guide books if basing their use of them on name recognition alone or the word "author" or " Published By" , this critique doesn't just apply to these Guide books but to Guide book in general

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here is a more specific argument against the reliability of these "Shueisha " Guide books

"writer" like "art direction" is not define legally and is most likely a industry term and none of the jobs listed are intuitively close to "writer"

at the start of that first section it says " editing cooperation " and the first billing is not a person but "Caramel Mama" (キャラメル・ママ) a company that is prolific in its making of Guide books first starting way back in the day with creating the Dragon Ball guide books for Shueisha and other related material

and on their official website they state

"キャラメル・ママでは、キャラクターを活用したコンテンツ作成・運用支援を行っております。ライティング業務からSNSの運営まで幅広く対応可能です。

漫画・アニメなど、キャラクターを活用したコンテンツ企画でお困りごとがあればぜひお問い合わせください。"

"At Caramel Mama, we carry out content creation and operation support that makes use of characters ( English transliteration of the word "Character " meaning People or Persons and not symbols). We are able to handle a wide range of tasks, from writing work (English transliteration of the word "Writing" meaning exactly what we think as English speakers when we say writing or writer) to the management of SNS (websites) .

If you have any troubles regarding content planning that uses characters—such as manga or anime—please do not hesitate to contact us"

because of their own words we think it's very likely to be the case the actual writing , the actual pen to paper, and word chose of the data books is done by Caramel Mama , probably done so with extensive use of notes and fact sheets from Masashi Kishimoto himself and editorial team of Naruto manga

Caramel Mama is also in charge of many big series websites and are the ones responsible for the One Piece Vivre Cards , for all tense and porpoises an One Piece Guide Book doled out as trading Cards

to this date their are 532 unique Vivre Cards / "pages"

but more importantly Caramel Mama has a corrections page on the Official One Piece website (that they run) for the Vivre Cards

based on their internal numbering system they make ( 1568 / 532 = 2.95) nearly 3 mistakes per page

so even if you are fine with using the data books in spite of the fact when using the data books the specific words probably are not authentic to the series its self, but what ever words you pick out on any given page with the intent of auguring " well it says X " them selves might just be 1 of the 3 likely mistakes on that page