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A Chef of Nobunaga, Sunny, Inferno In Bottles Nominated for Angoulême's Top Prize

The 42nd annual Angoulême International Comics Festival, which will take place from January 29 to February 1 in France, announced that Mitsuru Nishimura and Takurō Kajikawa's A Chef of Nobunaga (Le Chef de Nobunaga), Suehiro Maruo's Binzume no Jigoku (Inferno in Bottles/L'Enfer en Boutille), and Taiyo Matsumoto's Sunny are nominated for Best Comic.

Nishimura and Kajikawa launched A Chef of Nobunaga in Hobunsha's Weekly Manga Times anthology in March 2011. The story follows a time-travelling chef who ends up in the Sengoku (warring states) period of Japan as Emperor Oda Nobunaga's head chef. The manga inspired two live-action television series.

Binzume no Jigoku is a collection of short stories by Suehiro Maruo featuring different versions of "Hell." The manga adapts the short story collection by novelist Yumeno Kyūsaku.

Hiroshi Harada turned Maruo's 1984 erotic horror manga Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show (Shojo Tsubaki) into an anime film in 1992. Blast Books published the manga's one compiled volume in North America in 1993. Maruo won the "New Artist Prize" of the 13th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prizes in 2009, although he has been drawing manga professionally since 1980.

Last Gasp Publishing released Maruo's The Strange Tale of Panorama Island manga last year. The manga was nominated for the 2014 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.

Matsumoto's Sunny manga was nominated for a Harvey Award last year, and won Slate Book Review and Vermont's Center for Cartoon Studies' Best Graphic Novel prize in 2013. Viz Media released the fourth volume last April.

Matsumoto's slice-of-life story focuses on children at Star Kids Home orphanage. An abandoned yellow car, Sunny, takes them anywhere they want to go. With Sunny, the children can escape their circumstances and go on imaginary adventures around the world and beyond.

The festival also revealed its nominees for Best Youth Comic, Best Heritage Comic, and Best Crime Comic. Angoulême nominated the following manga in these categories:

Best Youth Comic

Best Heritage Comic

Sex & Fury
Tarō Bonten

Best Crime Comic

Kaneko's SOIL manga was previously nominated in the same category in 2011. Florent Chavout's Petites coupures à Shioguni comic about a Japanese man named Kenji who borrows money to open a restaurant was also nominated for Best Crime Comic.

The festival launches on January 29, just weeks after 17 people, including five Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, were killed in terrorist attacks in France. More than three million people have filled the streets of France this weekend to march in unity against the attacks.

The festival launched in 1974 as an event celebrating comics from countries throughout the world. Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Steamboy, Short Peace) was one of three nominees for the event's top prize, the Grand Prix, last year but the Calvin & Hobbes' creator Bill Watterson ultimately won the award. None of the manga nominees for 2014 received a prize. Manga creator Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball, Dr. Slump) won the Prix Spécial 40e anniversaire du Festival (Special 40th Anniversary Festival Award) at the festival in 2012. Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story and Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life won the Prix Intergénérations (Intergenerational Award) and Prix Regards sur le monde (World Outlook Award), respectively, in 2012.

Sources: animeanime.jp, BBC

Update: Sunny's volume number corrected. Thanks, Cardbo