Wow, it will be a pretty big adjustment going from this
to this
But still, that is incredibly awesome even if the series does lauch the month that I move away from Japan. T.T
I'll share something that isn't extremely new news, being a few months old, but might be new to many CAAers:
So, every year Japan has an event called the Japan Media Arts festival, which is a pretty big deal here, and awards are given in categories including anime and manga to the works that judges find to have superior artistic and creative merit. Here are the 16th Annual Japan Media Arts Festival manga category award winners (results were announced in maybe February or March this year):
Grand Prize
Les Cités Obscures (Cities of the Fantastic)Benoît PEETERS / François SCHUITEN
Translation: FURUNAGA Shin-ichi / HARA Masato
Excellence Award
Gaku, Minna no Yama (Peaks, Everyone's Mountains)ISHIZUKA Shinichi
GUNSLINGER GIRLAIDA Yu
Mashiro no Oto (Sound of Snow White)RAGAWA Marimo
MuchachoEmmanuel LEPAGE
New Face Award
Bokura no FUNKA-sai (Our "Eruption" Festival)SINZO Keigo
Koori no Te, Siberia Yokuryuu-ki
(Frozen Hands: Tales of a Siberian Prison Camp Survivor)OZAWA Yuki
Sennen Mannen Ringo no Ko (Apple Children of Aeon)TANAKA Ai
Clicking on the links above will take you to the Japan Media Arts Festival's English-language descriptions of the works, why they won, and author bios, and you can read the complete list of the winners in every category
here. What I find to be extremely interesting about this year's awards is that not just one but two of the manga that won top prizes in Japan's Media Arts Festival are French: the grand prize winner, Cities of the Fantastic, is Belgian-French, and Muchacho is French. Japan is, shall we say, not always very attuned to things released outside of Japan, especially in Japan-dominated media like video games and manga. Looking through the festival's past awards, it seems this is not the first time that a non-Japanese work has been recognized, but it does appear to be the first time a non-Japanese comic has won the grand prize.
My thoughts on these titles: Cities of the Fantastic also sounds pretty fascinating but it looks like the cheapest price is on amazon.fr for 19 euros per volume. T_T Frozen Hands: Tales of a Siberian Prison Camp Survivor also piques my interest personally because it's the story of a Japanese POW in a Siberian prison camp, based on the experiences of the mangaka's father and a bunch of other information which she carefully gathered, and that point of view is probably something none of us here has ever heard before. Then there's Gunslinger Girl, which I would guess is the only title most people here are familiar with, myself included. Nice to see this title getting some recognition.