Kadokawa Apologizes After Using Character Design Reference Without Permission for Pitch-Black Infatuation Manga
The editorial department of Kadokawa's Young Ace magazine apologized last week for unauthorized use of Ieri Komen's character designs for some characters in Kei Natsumi's manga adaptation of Rokakoen's Pitch-Black Infatuation (Shikkoku no Bojō) novel. The editorial department stated that, normally, permissions are acquired before the serialization of the manga even begins. However, this time, the character designs were used without permission. The Young Ace editorial department took full responsibility for the mistake, with neither the original creator Rokakoen nor the manga creator Kei Natsumi bearing any responsibility. The department also apologized to Ieri Komen.
The Young Ace editorial department provided the timeline to explain how it made the mistake. Kei Natsumi's pre-production on the Pitch-Black Infatuation manga begin in August 2025. The Young Ace editorial department communicated with the Kadokawa Horror Bunko editorial department (which publishes both of Rokakoen's original Festival of Heresies and Pitch-Black Infatuation novels), saying that it would like permission to use Ieri Komen's character designs from their manga adaptation of Festival of Heresies. It specifically wanted to use the characters Rumi Sasaki and Yukiyoshi Aoyama, who appear in both stories (Pitch-Black Infatuation is set in the same world as Festival of Heresies). The Young Ace editorial department said that it then received a reply from the Kadokawa Horror Bunko editorial department, with the latter saying that "It's probably also fine to use original character designs." The Young Ace editorial department then spoke with Kei Natsumi, moving forward with using Ieri Komen's character designs as reference, with the reply from Kadokawa Horror Bunko remaining vague, and still without permission from Ieri Komen.
After Kadokawa published the first compiled book volume of the Pitch-Black Infatuation manga, Ieri Komen contacted the Young Ace editorial department and determined that aside from the two earlier mentioned character designs, the Pitch-Black Infatuation manga had also used character designs for two other characters (Ishigami and Emi Shimamoto), as well as a background location.
Rokakoen published the Festival of Heresies (Itan no Shukusai) novel in May 2021, and the Pitch-Black Infatuation novel in February 2022, both under Kadokawa Horror Bunko. Yen Press published both novels in English in November 2024 and August 2025, respectively.
Komen launched the manga adaptation of Festival of Heresies in Kadokawa's Comic Walker website in July 2023, and ended it with the second volume in November 2025.
Natsumi launched the manga adaptation of Pitch-Black Infatuation in Young Ace on March 4. Kadokawa released the manga's first volume on August 4.
Source: Web Ace
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