This Week in Anime

American Manga Awards 2025

Coop
It's still early days for the AMAs, but I'm encouraged by the caliber of talent behind the entire kit and caboodle. The judging pool is comprised of newshounds like our very own Executive Editor, librarians like Ashley Hawkins, and translation pros such as Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda. Looking through the additional information and comments given on each nomination, it's easy to see that this wasn't done willy-nilly.

Speaking of those extra details, they appeared to help any eligible voters get a better gist of a title that they might not have read. Who are these eligible voters, you ask? Anybody who works in the industry, whether a translator, editor, letterer, or in quality assurance. For example, since I have an editing background, I was eligible to vote in this year's awards! I've gotta say, we all picked some real winners.

Green Yuri, as it's colloquially known, is one of those titles I've been saving for a rainy day...and that ended up being today. I fell in love with this one right away—it's delightfully gay and incredibly relatable. Arai gives readers an effortless glimpse into the fleeting, split-second moments in a relationship that make you go, "Why are they so entrancing?"

Before this column, I'd actually been waiting for the upcoming hardcover edition of Volume 1 to check it out properly. But when you're friends with the letterer and he absolutely kills it, you find yourself double-dipping a little bit.

However, for as much as I dug my time with Green Yuri, my vote went to Spacewalking With You. This Best New Manga nominee struck an at times painful chord with me when I reviewed its first volume back in July. Spacewalking is a profoundly impactful look at navigating life as a neurodivergent teenager. I can't stress enough how close to home this one hit for me.

Spacewalking spoke to me directly in a way that not many pieces of media have in a good long while. It's a nice reminder that I'm not alone in my struggles, but it's even more heartwarming that today's teens have a book they can see themselves in.

But given just how dang relatable Green Yuri is, I'm fine with Spacewalking losing out this time. Either way, both titles provide plenty for readers to click with. Not to mention that music also plays a fairly large role in both...

Now, dear readers, this is the point where you collectively shout at me, "WHY AREN'T YOU UP TO DATE WITH THE APOTHECARY DIARIES?!" It's on my "to check out" list, I swear! Maomao's exhilarating exploits among royalty have bagged this one the AMA for Best Continuing Manga Series. I actually read a bit of the light novel a while back, so I can totally see how audiences have fallen in love with this series. There's some mighty fine tension going on.

Admittedly, I ended up bouncing off of the anime series—even though I'm fully on board with the themes it's scratching at. However, my time with the anime has me champing at the bit to sit down with the manga at some point. The horror of Hikaru seems to be better geared toward the impact a single panel can provide. I'd say it boils down to this: sometimes the images you're seeing on screen might not exactly hit as hard as they did on the page.

Tamaki & Amane is a heart-wrenching experience, especially the third story in this collection. By simply focusing on the relationships between characters who happen to bear the titular names, Yoshinaga is given considerable freedom to explore love in all its various forms—whether romantic, platonic, or familial. The first story sets a great baseline for the stories it's looking to tell.

This Tamaki and Amane are a married couple who are trying to best navigate the fact that their daughter is gay, stumbling along the way despite their best intentions. However, this situation prompts Tamaki to reminisce about his first crush, who was also a boy. From there, he starts wondering about what could've been and what it means for his relationship today—it's realistically messy and hazy in that exploration. With that in mind, there are many ways in which you could read the panel above. Yoshinaga establishes right off the bat that she's not afraid to have her characters ask questions of themselves that most would probably shy away from.

Oh boy, oh boy, was I stoked to see that Evan Hayden's analog lettering handiwork took the prize here. As detailed in this interview with Gizmodo, Hayden shed a little light on the painstaking process of creating effects with era-accurate analog tools.

Combined with the attention to detail given to Joe's hefty physical volumes, it's no wonder this classic scored high with the judges and voters. Outside of a few specific books we'll get to in a moment, the first omnibus is one of the nicest releases I've had the pleasure of holding.

But since I mentioned that Gizmodo piece, we need to have a little talk about what this award means materially for the winners behind these prizes. Over the past few months, I've been seeing more and more stories from industry folks on the edge of burnout. They've poured their hearts and souls into these projects, resulting in products that've garnered publishers both sales and accolades. Now, there is something to be said for trying to gauge how much energy is invested in a project based on the compensation and what's best for your own well-being. However, if someone truly wants to give it their all for a particular project, I understand the need to push past that. And if that extra effort results in an award or plenty of sales, the folks who did that work deserve a pay bump—one that could hopefully raise a new standard for wages across the industry. At the end of the day, an award is great, but it means nothing if you're struggling to put food on the table.

I might be speaking too optimistically, but I hope these accolades allow their recipients to further assert themselves when contract time rolls around. The expertise those workers bring should be reflected in their compensation. Again, this isn't exactly how things have historically worked in the industry, as far as I'm aware, but I think it is worth using these acknowledgments to their fullest potential.

I have similar feelings about Ashita no Joe's fellow Best New Edition of Classic Manga nominees—Mitsuru Adachi's Short Game and Moto Hagio's They Were 11! I touched upon this in my review of the former. Still, after all the headaches Denpa dealt with while bringing both titles to market (of which they regularly shared on their social media channels), I sincerely hope these nominations will net them the resources they need to avoid similar hurdles in the future. Needless to say, I hope the AMAs can serve as the rising tide that lifts all boats in this industry—especially with the economic and societal challenges we're all dealing with today.

Seriously, the fact that we're even getting these classics is something to celebrate! Because as Chris and I talked about a while back, it's a tall order to bring these titles to market over here.

Moving on to something of a modern classic from Vinland Saga creator, Makoto Yukimura, Planetes took home the Best Publication Design award for its stunning new edition of Volume 1. It's in this category that I believe the AMAs' extra information helps doubly, because it's hard to judge these titles without holding them in your hand...which can get expensive depending on your circumstances and what your library has available.

Looking at the other noms here, I do quite like how Veil's covers come together to form a larger piece of artwork. It worked with me on VHS tape spines, and it works on me here, too.

As a card-carrying tactile item enjoyer, I can safely say that we're eating pretty good these days, even with the slant toward digital-only titles remaining ever-present.

Finally, minami's win for Best Translation with volume one of Chu Amairo's The Otaku Love Connection rounded out the show. Translation isn't something I'm qualified to delve into the nitty-gritty of, but given the title's frequent use of Japanese shipping terms and the like, I can appreciate how minami and their editor approached this localization challenge. I mention their editor as well because that interplay between translator and editor (along with the rest of the team, of course) is key in producing an enjoyable read. It's also an aspect of the process I can speak to. This one might be a little hard to judge for, but perhaps a Best Editing category would be worth exploring in the AMAs' future.

Having been privy to the copy approval process a few times myself, I absolutely know what you mean. Because of that, efforts like Otaku Love Connection shine brightly for the wordsmithing it does in an industry that occasionally navigates such restrictions.

And with that, the 2025 American Manga Awards are in the bag. As I alluded to earlier, I hope that as this show grows, its influence can potentially improve lives in the industry for the better. By the way, if you're looking for in-depth reviews of the winners and nominees, you're already in the right place.