Just days after its official premiere, Grand Blue Season 2 has been leaked in full online. While only Episode 1 has been officially released, all 12 episodes have appeared on unauthorized torrent sites. The material appears to be finalized, including full animation and audio, though the source of the leak remains unknown.
One of the circulating torrent file descriptions includes a link to a Japanese streaming site, happydouga.jp, though its connection to the leak is unverified and may have been falsely added by the uploader.
Leaks of this scale will do little to deter the increasing urgency that Japanese rightsholders are acting to defend their IP. Kodansha, a member of Grand Blue’s production committee as the manga’s original publisher, was part of a lawsuit against Cloudflare in 2022, which stood accused of facilitating easy access to pirated material. The Japanese government is also preparing to lend support to anime and manga companies looking to clamp down on piracy, greenlighting $2 million last year for a piracy detection system using AI.
Neither is part of Grand Blue‘s production committee, but major anime companies like Toho and Aniplex have employed fingerprinting tactics and technology in the past to quickly identify leak channels. These methods include watermarks and false credits for episode versions, intended to catch out leakers; the two companies filed subpoena requests using these tactics in August 2024. Meanwhile, Toho most recently filed a request for a court to order X (formerly Twitter) to reveal identifying information of alleged leakers of The Apothecary Diaries and My Hero Academia anime.
Followers are encouraged to support Grand Blue Season 2 through legal streaming platforms as it continues its official weekly run. Unauthorized leaks not only violate distribution rights, but also jeopardize the work of the creators and studios involved. It is streaming worldwide on Crunchyroll.
©Kenji Inoue, Kimitake Yoshioka, Kodansha/Grand Blue Production Committee
