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Manga Creators Kenichi Sonoda, Hitoshi Ariga Receive Comic-Con International's Inkpot Award

Comic-Con International in San Diego awarded its Inkpot Award to manga creators Kenichi Sonoda and Hitoshi Ariga on Thursday. Sonoda and Ariga both attended the event in person as part of an art demonstration panel alongside Udon Entertainment artists Edwin Huang and Jeffrey Cruz.

Sonoda is best known for being the creator of such manga as Riding Bean, Gunsmith Cats, and Cannon God Exaxxion, as well as being the character designer of the Bubblegum Crisis sci-fi OVA series. He is also the character designer of Gall Force - Eternal Story and the franchise's subsequent OVAs. He also designed characters for Scramble Wars, and is credited for conceptual design for Solty Rei.

Udon Entertainment is offering its new Bubblegum Crisis: Complete Archive artbook at the event. Dark Horse Comics also recently announced that it will begin releasing Gunsmith Cats in a new omnibus edition in February 2025.

Udon Entertainment published Ariga's three-volume Mega Man Megamix and the three-volume Megaman Gigamix manga in North America. Viz Media published Ariga's Big O manga. Ariga is also known for being a character artist for the Pokémon franchise.

Past Inkpot Award winners include Osamu Tezuka, Hayao Miyazaki, Robotech's Carl Macek, Lupin III's Monkey Punch, Ranma 1/2's Rumiko Takahashi, Crying Freeman's Ryōichi Ikegami and Kazuo Koike, Sailor Moon's Naoko Takeuchi, Usagi Yojimbo's Stan Sakai, Silent Service's Kaiji Kawaguchi, Bleach's Tite Kubo, shōjo manga pioneer Moto Hagio, Domo-kun creator Tsuneo Gōda, Yu-Gi-Oh! creator Kazuki Takahashi, Macross Frontier's Hidetaka Tenjin, and horror manga creator Junji Ito.

Source: Email correspondence