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Manga Nominated for Awards at Angouleme Festival
posted on by Mikhail Koulikov
Four manga have been nominated to compete in the Official Selection category of this year's Angouleme International Comics Festival, which opens in the city of Angouleme, France on January 24. Taiyo Matsumoto's Tekkonkinkreet (right), Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ooba's Death Note (left), Kyoko Okazaki's Helter Skelter (below right), and Hideo Azuma's Disappearance Diary (below left) are among the 50 graphic novels from around the world that are competing for the festival's grand prize, six "Angouleme Essentials" designations, and the honor for best new comic.
11 titles are eligible for the Heritage Award, which recognizes reissues of previously published material. Two of the 11 are L'ame du Kyodo, a collection of Hiroshi Hirata's samurai manga, and Un Gentil Garcon, which brings together several short manga by the realist artist Shin'ichi Abe. Abe's works appeared in the 1960's avant-garde magazine Garo.
For the first time this year, Angouleme has combined its prizes for comics aimed at young readers ages 7 through 8 and 9 through 12 into a single category. More than a fourth of the 21 individual volumes that are competing in the Youth Selection category hail from Japan. They are Volume 3 of Moyoco Anno's shōjo Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 4 of George Morikawa's boxing manga Hajime no Ippo, Volume 3 of Fujiko F. Fujio's classic Doraemon, Volume 3 of Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō, and Takashi Hashiguchi's Yakitate!! Japan Volume 11.
Angouleme, now going into its 35th year, is one of the oldest festivals in the world that is dedicated to comics, graphic novels, manga, bande dessinee, and other sequential art. Its programming has frequently featured manga, and last year, Mizuki's Non Non Ba to Ore was honored with the 'Best Comic Book' grand prize. French editions of Kaiji Kawaguchi's alternative-history Zipang, Daisuke Igarashi's Witches, Hideki Arai's Kiichi!!, Moyoco Anno's In the Clothes Named Fat, Junji Ito's Gyo, and Kazuichi Hanawa's Doing Time were all nominated for the award.
