Interest

Toei Animation Copyright Strikes YouTuber “Uncle Roger”

Comedian and YouTuber Nigel Ng is perhaps most well known for his character “Uncle Roger”—a stereotypical Southeast Asian uncle who reacts to the terrible cooking practices of people attempting to make traditional Asian foods.

This past week, Ng posted his newest video: Uncle Roger Review ONE PIECE Japanese Curry. In the video, Uncle Roger watches the cooking scenes from “A Recipe Handed Down! Sanji, the Iron Man of Curry!” episode 133 of the One Piece anime. The episode follows Taijo, a probationary chef working for the Marines, and his attempt to make a curry dinner for the Marine Captains—with a little help from Sanji.

The cooking process shown in the anime is highly detailed and authentic—and Uncle Roger does a great job of making this point among his various jokes about what he is seeing. Of course, the highly complementary nature of this video did nothing to assuage Toei Animation from issuing Ng a copyright strike over his use of One Piece footage in the video.

In a comment on his YouTube community page, Ng posted a screenshot of the strike with the following message:

Haiyaaa Uncle Roger got copyright striked and YouTube is removing my latest weejio (One Piece review) from the platform in 5 days… If you haven't watched it yet, go watch and share it now before it's gone 😢

Of course, this is far from the first time Toei has issued copyright strikes to popular Western-based YouTubers. Famously, Mark Fitzpatrick of the Totally Not Mark review channel received over 150 copyright claims from Toei in late 2021 and TeamFourStar, the group behind Dragon Ball Z Abridged, received numerous copyright strikes over the years of the parody show's production.

Judging by Ng's post on the matter, his appeal has been rejected, and he will be taking the video offline within the next few days to avoid a permanent strike on his channel.

Source: Nigel Ng on YouTube