Popular anime essayist ‘Totally Not Mark’ has achieved a landmark YouTube victory against Toei Animation after the anime company served him with over 150 copyright strikes in a single day.

However, in January 2022, Mark returned with a shocking update: YouTube had reinstated his affected videos in most countries outside of Japan.

YouTuber wins landmark victory against Toei Animation copyright strike

This latest development came about after Toei purportedly failed to comply with YouTube’s copyright strike policy. Rather than responding with a “justification” for their 150 + takedown notices, Toei instead manually claimed and blocked “each and every one” of the videos, as per Mark’s newest announcement. As a result of this, YouTube could avoid effectively “picking a side” in this battle, and has now reinstated Mark’s videos in most countries outside of Japan.

This means that, should Toei hit Mark with another strike, they would be acting outside of their own country’s copyright laws. “YouTube felt the videos could reasonably qualify for a fair use exemption in most of the rest of the world,” Mark explained. “So the content will remain up everywhere else until, or unless, Toei can make an argument that it would not qualify for copyright exemption in other territories.”

totally not mark pleads with toei

One Piece artwork official Toei