Masami Kurumada (車田正美), the manga artist behind global hits like Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac) and Ring ni Kakero, revealed at a press conference that a former manager embezzled approximately 4.6 billion yen from him over a six-year period.
According to Kurumada, the former manager had him establish three copyright management companies, then quietly set up similarly named companies of his own. Licensing fees from figures, trading cards, and other merchandise, along with company funds, were redirected into these lookalike companies between 2018 and 2024. Some of the embezzled money was reportedly invested in cryptocurrency. The scheme came to light after the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau flagged irregularities during a tax review.
“Embezzlement cases like this happen sometimes, you hear about them in the news,” Kurumada said at the press conference, according to the report. “But I never imagined there could be someone like that in the anime and manga world. I’ve been in this industry for more than 50 years.” He added that he had been unaware the licensing income involved tens of billions of yen.
The case drew attention on Japanese television when TBS announcer Shinichiro Azumi discussed it on the morning show THE TIME, on the same day it aired. Azumi praised Kurumada’s demeanor at the press conference, telling viewers, “You can really feel his character coming through, so please watch the press conference all the way to the end.” The report notes Kurumada said any recovered funds should go in full to people in need.
Who is Masami Kurumada?
Masami Kurumada is a veteran Japanese manga artist whose career spans more than five decades. He is best known for creating Ring ni Kakero, a boxing manga that launched in the 1970s, and Saint Seiya, the mystical action series following young warriors known as Saints who battle in bronze, silver, and gold zodiac armor. First serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump in the 1980s, Saint Seiya became a global franchise spanning anime adaptations, films, video games, and one of the best-selling toy lines in Bandai’s history.
Author’s Comment
Fifty years in the manga business and this is the first time he’s run into a real villain — that line alone tells you everything about how sheltered Kurumada’s world usually is. I love that his instinct, even after getting robbed of billions of yen, was to say the money should go to people who actually need it. That’s not naivety, that’s just a genuinely decent guy getting reminded that decency isn’t universal. And of course it’s an announcer, not a tabloid, doing the sympathetic reporting here — Japan loves turning a fraud case into a character study of the victim. Somewhere a former manager is very quietly not doing a press conference of his own.
