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Manga Nominated for Awards at Angouleme Comic Fest

Three manga have been nominated to compete in the Official Selection category of next year's Festival International de la Bande Dessinée, which opens in the city of Angouleme, France on January 28. Motoro Mase's Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit Volume 1 (right), Hiroshi Motomiya's Mada, Ikiteru… (left), and Takashi Fukutani's Legend Dokudamisō Densetsu (below right) are among the 58 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.

Nine titles are eligible for the Heritage Award, which recognizes reissues of previously published material. Two of the nine are Shōtarō Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 (below left), and Osamu Tezuka's Ore wa Sarutobi da.

Three of the 20 individual volumes that are competing in the Youth Selection category hail from Japan. (This category is for comics aimed at young readers ages 7 through 12.) They are Volume 2 of the Mighty Atom Anthology by Tezuka, Volume 9 of Hiro Mashima's Fairy Tail, and Yōshichi Shimada and Saburō Ishikawa's Gabai: Saga no Gabai-baa-chan.

Angouleme, now going into its 37th year, is one of the oldest festivals in the world that is dedicated to comics, graphic novels, manga, bande dessinée, and other sequential art. Its programming has frequently featured manga. French editions of Taiyo Matsumoto's Tekkonkinkreet (right), Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ooba's Death Note, Hideo Azuma's Disappearance Diary, Kaiji Kawaguchi's 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 festival's awards.

Source: animeanime.jp