News

Nippon2007 Convention Hands Out 38th Seiun Awards (Updated)

Nippon2007, the combined 65th World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) and the 45th Japan Science Fiction Convention (Nihon SF Taikai or Japan SF Con), held the awards ceremony for the Seiun Awards in Yokohama, Japan on Sunday.

Mamoru Hosoda's critically lauded A Girl Who Runs Through Time animated film (also known as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time or TokiKake) won another award in the Movie/Theater/Media category. The movie won over the anime projects Zegapain, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Paprika, as well as over the Everyone But Japan Sinks live-action parody film. (Author Yasutaka Tsutsui happened to have written the original inspirations for TokiKake, Paprika, and Everyone But Japan Sinks.)

Hitoshi Ashinano's recently ended Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō (Yokohama Shopping Trip or Quiet Country Café) manga won in the Comic category. The other nominees were Death Note, Buso Renkin, Karakuri Circus, and Yōsei-koku no Kishi.

Nippon2007 Guest of Honor Yoshitaka Amano (Gatchaman, Mospeada, Final Fantasy) won in the Artist category for a record fifth time. Amano had won for four years straight between 1983 and 1986.

Guest of Honor Sakyō Komatsu (Sayonara Jupiter) and co-author Kōshū Tani won in the Japanese Long Fiction category for Japan Sinks, Part 2. This sequel follows the novel that inspired last year's Japan Sinks live-action suspense film, featuring cameos by Hideaki Anno, Moyoco Anno, Mayumi Shintani, and Yoshiyuki Tomino. Japan Sinks, Part 2 won over Marduk Velocity (the latest novel from Tow Ubukata of of Le Chevalier D'Eon, and Sōkyū no Fafner fame), Ai no Monogatari from Record of Lodoss War game contributor Hiroshi Yamamoto, and Toshōkan Sensō (Library Wars, Hiro Arikawa's novel that inspired two manga in LaLa and Monthly Comic Dengeki Oh).

Hōsuke Nojiri's "A Furoshiki and Spider's Thread" garnered the Japanese Short Fiction category award. Nojiri also wrote the Rocket Girls novel series that inspired the anime series of the same name. Yūichi Sasamoto, the author of the novel series that inspired the Ariel anime video, won the Nonfiction category award for Passport into Space 3: Space Pioneers, A Frontline Report. Phillip Reeve's Mortal Engines and Adam-Troy Castro and Jerry Oltion's "The Astronaut from Wyoming" won in the Translated Long Fiction and Translated Short Fiction categories, respectively.

The M-V rocket launch system from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (the Japanese equivalent of NASA) won the Special Award in the Free Entry category over the OpenSky Aircraft Project, the artist-led attempt to recreate the personal jet glider from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Comic Market co-founder Yoshihiro Yonezawa, who passed away last October, won another Special Award.

"Seiun Shō" literally translates to "nebula awards," but the Japan SF Con's Seiun Awards are more akin to WorldCon's Hugo Awards in that the attendees of each respective convention vote on the winners. This year, no Japanese creator won a Hugo Award, which were also handed out at Nippon2007.