One need look no further to understand why Narita is acting so cautiously. As the company’s living seal of quality, he doesn’t want the company’s origins to be misunderstood by its business partners. Yet French Bread's history and products are inseparable from doujin culture and the era which saw the birth of the studio.

Doujins for everything

Given their status as unlicensed commercial products, doujin softs are technically illegal items; some precisions are due to explain why they are tolerated and we must try to understand their origins. Admittedly, amateur circles create games under license, without a contract, but the distribution of these titles remains extremely confidential, as the copies are sold only during Comiket.

Comiket, the biggest comic book show in Japan which has been taking place twice a year ever since 1975, honors amateur authors and offers them a space to exhibit their work. While some of them sell original productions, others take advantage of this opportunity to sell doujin creations of their favorite series. Unofficial scenarios and illustrations (sometimes involving radical changes in the type of narrative or visual style) are common adaptations that we can still find up to this day.

According to Otaku culture specialist Aurélien "KuramaTengu" Laureau, "the second boom of doujin took place at the beginning of the 80s, between 1982 and 1984." Laureau says it’s "the arrival of female artists doing more or less erotic adaptations of works from the nekketsu genre who started it. Minami Ozaki and her work on Captain Tsubasa adaptations are the prime example of this. It ended up being so successful that some doujinshis were selling more than the manga they were taking inspiration from!"