"A Spirit of the Sun" Wins the Grand Prix at the Media Arts Festival

Winners of the tenth Media Arts Festival held by the Agency for Cultural Affairs were announced on December 15, and in the comics division, "A Spirit of the Sun" (Kaiji Kawaguchi, Shogakukan), which is currently serialized in the "Big Comics" magazine, was selected as the grand prix winner. Serialized since 2002, the highly popular work comprises thirteen volumes, and has a cumulative total of 2,100,000 issues in print. It won the 51st Shogakukan Comics Award as well.
Despite putting out so many series, the author has never slackened in the slightest in his ability to deliver powerful descriptions, detailed expressions, and a sense of human dignity that exudes from the protagonist. A tip of the hat to him is definitely in order, as the hardships he must be going through to pull off such a feat is clearly evident series after series.
The judges were unanimous in their decision to award the top honor for the work, which they evaluated as "a masterpiece that will remain forever in the history of comics."
In addition, the winners of the Excellence Prize were "Oooku (The Inner Palace, Hakusensha), "Osaka Hamlet (Futabasha) Hyakyagyosho (The Pandemonium Extract, Asahi Sonorama), "Yotsubato!" (MediaWorks).
For this year's award ceremony, 1,808 works were submitted for consideration in four divisions, including animation and manga, and 24 works were chosen from the four divisions as grand prix and excellence award winners.
The presentation ceremony of these awards will be held on February 23rd next year at The Westin Tokyo in Ebisu, and then from the following day, the 24th, through March 4th, the works of the award winners will be on display at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Ebisu, Tokyo.

Hakusensha takes advantage of an award winner to expand sales

Hakusensha won its first award with Oooku (The Inner Palace), an SF historical manga currently serialized in the comic magazine for women, "Melody."
"Basically it's comics for girls, but it's based on historical facts and male readers can enjoy as well," says the magazine's editorial department.
With the award under its belt, the company aims to expand their readership base by proposing a fair to retail outlets that will promote book editions together with the latest issue of Melody released on December 28th.
The Inner Palace began its serialization in August 2004. Its latest book release is Vol. 2, which came out on November 28th. With the comics managers at the stores being cooperative, and the level of attention from fans being high, the company appears to have received some solid response.


*Some of the book titles are tentative translations.
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