Kodansha Manga Awards, an annual prize for the best-serialized manga, announced the winners for its 45th annual Manga Awards.
It is one of the most prestigious manga awards of all time, sponsored by the well-known publisher, Kodansha itself. The mangas serialized in the Kodansha magazines of the previous year compete for the honors.
It is currently awarded in three main categories: shōnen, shōjo, and general.
Kodansha has announced the winners of all the three categories. Read on to find out what the nominees were and which title ended up bagging the award.
Best Shōnen Manga
Nominations
- Blue Lock
- Fire Force
- Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.
Winner: Blue Lock
Blue Lock, by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura, follows the story of Yoichi Isagi, who is invited to a mysterious training program to discover and cultivate “the worlds’ greatest egotist striker.”
Blue Lock is an exciting, fresh soccer series with great characters and an impressive storyline to make this a binge-worthy read.
Best Shōjo Manga
Nominations
- A Condition Called Love
- Defying Kurosaki-kun
- Honey Lemon Soda
- A Sign of Affection.
Winner: A Condition Called Love
A Condition Called Love, by Megumi Morino, is a romantic manga where two odd-duck teenagers try to figure themselves out by being together.
Best General Manga
Nominations
- Yuria Sensei no Akai Ito
- I Want to Hold Aono-kun so Badly I Could Die
- Sweat and Soap
- Hakozume: Kōban Joshi no Gyakushū and Futari Solo Camp.
Winner: Yuria Sensei no Akai Ito
Yuria Sensei no Akai Ito, by Inio Asano, is a romantic slice of life drama about a fifty-year-old Yuria whose world is turned upside down when she comes across a young man who announces that he is her husband’s lover.
The 45th Kodansha annual awards were full of surprises as most fans were expecting other mangas to be the winner, but the actual outcome is quite different.
Though there were some great nominees in each category, only the best can claim the title!
About Blue Lock
Blue Lock is a Japanese manga series written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura. It has been serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine since August 2018. Blue Lock won the 45th Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category in 2021.
The story begins with Japan’s elimination from the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which prompts the Japanese Football Union to start a program scouting high school players who will begin training in preparation for the 2022 Cup.
Isagi Youichi, a forward, receives an invitation to this program soon after his team loses the chance to go to Nationals because he passed to his less-skilled teammate.
Their coach will be Ego Jinpachi, who intends to “destroy Japanese loser football” by introducing a radical new training regimen: isolate 300 young strikers in a prison-like institution called “Blue Lock”.
Source: Comic Natalie
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