Written by: Jei Beltrano | Published on: May 14, 2021 at 7:04 PM PHT (GMT+8)
Japanese manga publisher Kodansha has revealed on Thursday the winners of the recently-concluded 45th Kodansha Manga Awards.
Here are the list of winners per category.
Shōnen Category:
"Blue Lock" by Muneyuki Kaneshiro, Yūsuke Nomura
The Blue Lock manga series written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yūsuke Nomura is a sports manga which follows Yoichi Isagi, a second-year student and his team's young forward who lost the opportunity to go to the national high school championships because he passed to his teammate who missed instead of shooting himself. Isagi is one of 300 U-18 strikers chosen by Jinpachi Ego, a man who was hired by the Japan Football Association after the 2018 FIFA World Cup, to guide Japan to winning the World Cup by destroying Japanese football. Ego's plan is to isolate the 300 strikers into a prison-like institution called "Blue Lock", in order to create the world's biggest "egotist"/striker, which has been lacking in Japanese football. The manga is serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen magazine since August 2018 and has been collected in 7 tankōbon volumes.
Last year's Winner: "Tokyo Revengers" by Ken Wakui
Shōujo Category:
"A Condition Called Love (Hananoe-kun to Koi no Ki)" by Megumi Morino
The A Condition Called Love manga series is written and illustrated by Megumi Morino which began its serialization in Kodansha's Dessert shōjou manga magazine in March 3 2020. The story follows Hotaru, a 16-year-old high school first-year who has always been ambivalent about love, preferring instead to have a lively life with her family and friends. So when she sees her schoolmate, Hananoi-kun, sitting in the snow after a messy, public breakup, she thinks nothing of offering to share her umbrella. But when he asks her out in the middle of her classroom the next day, she can’t help but feel that her life is about to change in a big way... (Plot by Kodansha)
Last year's Winner: "Our Precious Conversations (Boku to Kimi no Taisetsu na Hanashi)" by Robico
General Category:
"Miss Yuria's Red Thread of Fate (Yuria Sensei no Akai Ito)" by Kiwa Irie.
The Miss Yuria's Red Thread of Fate manga series written and illustrated by Irie Kiwa follows fifty-year-old Yuria who has a quiet life teaching embroidery classes in her home, where she lives with her writer husband and his mother. Then one day her world is turned upside down when husband has a subarachnoid hemorrhage and upon arriving at the hospital, Yuria is met by a tearful young man who announces that he is her husband's lover. The manga is serialized since 2018 in Kodansha's josei manga magazine Be Love and has been collected into 8 volumes as of April 2021.
Last year's Winner: "Blue Period" by Tsubasa Yamaguchi
The Kodansha Manga Awards is one of the major manga awards in Japan, sponsored by Japanese publisher Kodansha. The Awards is held annually since 1977 to recognize serialized manga and features candidates from a number of publishers. The current award categories are: , Shounen (Boys), Shoujo (Girls) and Ippan (General). The children's category which was first introduced in the awards last 2003 was merged into the shōnen and shōjo categories starting in 2015.
