Forum

I don't see the news anywhere on the site, so I'll start a thread as I'd love to hear your opinions. The nominees for this year's Eisner Awards are in.

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_main.shtml

Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan

After School Nightmare, by Setona Mizushiro (Go! Comi)
Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (Digital Manga)
Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, by Naoki Urasawa (Viz)
Old Boy, by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi (Dark Horse Manga)
Walking Man, by Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

Not only that but...

Quote:

The growing presence of Japanese comics in American publishing is reflected in a new category created by the judges: Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan. Besides the five titles nominated there, manga works can be found in the archival category (Tezuka’s Ode to Kirohito, Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo) and in the nomination of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster for Best Continuing Series and Project X Challengers: Cup Noodle for Reality-Based Work.

While I love Monster and Tezuka as much as the next manga fan and I'm delighted to see them nominated, I have to say I'm absolutely over the moon that Fumi Yoshinaga's Antique Bakery was nominated too. Yoshinaga-sensei is one my favourite mangakas, and Antique Bakery is one of my favourite manga... It won the Kodansha Manga Award for shoujo 2002, and is one of Yoshinaga's best titles without a doubt.

For those not familiar with Antique Bakery - it's a slice of life comedy about four guys working in a bakery and their customers. It's character and situation comedy, and while it can address some serious issues at times it never takes itself seriously. Word of warning though, do not read this manga when hungry - it's got very detailed descriptions of the wonderful cakes they serve and reading it has caused me to run off to buy sweets in unusual times... Yoshinaga is also known for lot of her BL manga, but although one of the main characters is gay in Antique Bakery this is full shoujo - but with big crossover appeal, I know lots of guys who absolutely love this.

As for rest of the titles, I'm not familiar with them - anyone has any opinions they'd like to share about them?

There's already a thread about the Eisner nominations at the Talkback forum, if you want to move your debate over there. The news was reported here on Thursday, so you have to go to the news archive to read ANN's article.