Shopping Guide
On March 27, the award ceremony was held for the Cartoon Grand Prize, for which recommended works from 2013 are chosen from different categories by mainly bookstore employees. Winning the Grand Prize this year was Kaoru Mori’s manga The Bride’s Stories.
The Cartoon Grand Prize is a manga award by those who like manga. It started in 2008, and the selection committee is made up of non-paid volunteers. It gathers together content with the love of manga at its core. Each of the works chosen for the award have at most eight volumes in print. The reason for this, according to the sponsor, is that “having one volume means that the manga is still a newly serialized work. New works are published at a rate of one volume every three months. So eight volumes takes two years’ time to achieve. We think that the entertainment value of a recommended manga is exhibited within this time span.”
For this year’s Cartoon Grand Prize, 98 people participated in the first round selection committee and 88 people in the second round selection committee. Chosen for the Grand Prize was the manga set in Central Asia called The Bride’s Stories. “Being set in Central Asia, it has a unique world, varied characters, and dynamic story. It is fascinating in every sense of the word. It also has a good flavor with each amassing volume. I think the developed Japan was also lost as the work depicts,” commented Naruhiro Kawamura of Mainichi Shimbun Digital (Mantan Web associate editor-in-chief).
The sponsor commented, “I hope that the Cartoon Grand Prize will be an impetus for many people by which to come across interesting manga.” The Cartoon Grand Prize is full of manga love. Definitely keep it on your radar from here on.
[Previous Winners]
2009: Gaku (Shinichi Ishizuka)
2010: Thermae Romae (Mari Yamazaki)
2011: March Comes in Like a Lion (Chika Umino)
2012: Silver Spoon (Hiromu Arakawa)
2013: Umimachi Diary (Akimi Yoshida)
[About Selection]
Selection Criteria: Manga works with at most eight volumes that were published between 1/1/2014 and 12/31/2014.
Selection Method:
First Round Selection: Each member of the selection committee picks their top five recommended works for the Cartoon Grand Prize.
Second Round Selection: The 10 works from Round 1 with the most votes are nominated and each member of the selection committee chooses their top three works from the nominees. The votes are then tallied and the Grand Prize winner decided.
