In order to promote and celebrate manga while also advancing the artistic creativity of the manga industry, Japanese electronic bookstore and e-book distributor BookLive is hosting its inaugural Magademy Awards. The winners will be announced next week. Modeled after the world-famous Academy Awards ceremonies, which also occurs later this month, the Magademy Awards were created to recognize excellence in manga but also promote and encourage the development of the industry by calling attention to manga characters, and the fans whose support powers their popularity.
BookLive is a standalone electronic bookstore and digital book distributor based in Tokyo. It carries one of the largest selections of manga including shonen manga, seinen manga, and shojo manga, in Japan.
In this first awards ceremony, the awards will focus on four main categories, namely best male and female lead in a manga, and best supporting male and female character. The characters in competition for each award were nominated by fans between December and January via the dedicated website that BookLive created for the awards. Fans were able to choose their favorites from across the range of manga genres. The top five voter-getters for each category made it into the award round.
Like the Oscars, the creators of the Magademy Awards hope to make it an annual event where the focus is squarely on the characters. The idea is that while manga creators might be the essential element, since it is the manga characters and their interaction with the fans that makes or breaks a manga, the celebration of the characters' gift to fandom has been long overdue. In the words of the creators of the award, its purpose is to commemorate the manga characters who encouraged, enriched, and added excitement to the lives of manga lovers everywhere.
Nominations for the awards are based on comics that were published between December 1, 2020, and November 30, 2021. In addition to giving fans a chance to participate, the awards also provide insight into which manga has captured the hearts and minds of the public over the last year.
The nominees for the Best Actor Award include Attack on Titan’s Eren Yeager, Yowamushi Pedal’s Sakamichi Onoda, Don’t Say Mystery’s Totonu Kuno, Space Brother’s Nanba Mutta, and Ranking of Kings’ Bodge. For the Best Actress Award, the nominees include Promise Cinderella’s Hayame Katsuragi, The Evening Moon of Uruyashi’s Yoi Takiguchi, Freeren of Funeral Freeren, The Apothecary of the Pharmacy’s Cat Cat, and Jonah from Jonah of the Dawn.
The nominees for Best Supporting Actress include The Fable’s Yoko Sato, Yu Takahashi from Tomorrow, I’m Someone’s Girlfriend, and Chihayafuru’s Shinobu Wakamiya.For Best Supporting Actor the nominees include Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan, Kage from Ranking of Kings, Manjiro Sano from Tokyo Revengers, and Detective Conan’s Toru Amuro.
The winners of BookLive's first Magademy Awards, who will be selected by a special judging committee composed of a select panel of manga experts, critics, and industry insiders, will be announced in a special event on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.
Sources: Magademy Awards