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Dimension W, Harmony, Ninja Batman Manga Nominated for Seiun Sci-Fi Awards

The 59th Japan Science Fiction Convention (Nihon SF Taikai) revealed the list of nominees for the 51st Seiun Awards on Thursday.

The nominees of the Comic category includes:

• Toranosuke Shimada's A Brief History of Robo sapiens (Robo Sapiens Zenshi, complete in two volumes)
• Seiman Douman's How Many Light-Years to Babylon? (Babylon Made wa Nan-Kōnen?, complete in one volume)
• Masato Hisa's Ninja Batman (complete in two volumes)
• Yuji Iwahara's Dimension W (complete in 16 volumes)
• Fumi Minato and Project Itoh's Harmony (complete in four volumes)
• Kaduho's Kagaku Chop (complete in six volumes)

The awards this year are again separated into nine categories: Japanese Novel, Japanese Short Story, Translated Novel, Translated Short Story, Media, Comic, Art, Nonfiction, and a "Free" category. Each category has between 6-11 nominees. The nominees were chosen among works that were released between January 1 and December 31, 2019.

The attendees of "F-CON" in Fukushima, the 59th Japan Science Fiction Convention, will vote on the winners. The staff will announce the winners at the convention, which takes place from March 13-14, 2021. The event was originally scheduled to take place on August 22-23, but the organizers delayed the event until next year due to the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) situation.

"Seiun Shō" literally translates to "nebula awards," but the Japan SF Con's Seiun Awards are more akin to the Hugo Awards, in that the attendees of each respective convention vote on the winners. There is another set of awards, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan's Nihon SF Taishō honors, that are the rough Japanese equivalent of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Awards. Like the Hugo Awards, the Seiun Awards honor all forms of speculative fiction — including but not limited to science fiction — and related materials.

Previous winners of the Seiun Awards include Kemono Friends, And Yet the Town Moves, Shin Godzilla, Kochikame, Girls und Panzer, Knights of Sidonia, The World of Narue, Bodacious Space Pirates, Range Murata, Masamune Shirow, Makoto Shinkai, Fullmetal Alchemist, Gundam: The Origin, 20th Century Boys, Summer Wars, Card Captor Sakura, Madoka Magica, Pacific Rim, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Moyashimon, and more.

Last year, the SSSS.GRIDMAN anime won the Media category, and Tsukumizu's Girls' Last Tour manga won the Comic category.

Sources: Japan Science Fiction Convention, Animation Business Journal (Tadashi Sudo)