On November 15, 2023, for the first time Mangan Award was announced, representing 10 major manga publishers together to evaluate the best new manga. The Mangano Prize submission period closes on February 15, 2024, and results will be announced in summer 2024. The prize is open to all ages, genders, skill levels and nationalities, as long as language The language used is Japanese. The editors of each participating magazine will deliberate and select the winner. Genre categories were not listed. Editor Hirasawa from Hakusensha praised the unusual format of the new award, calling it “a new style that is not bound by male-female frameworks.”
The manga (magazine) publishers participating in the Mangano Awards are:
- Shinchosha (Kurage Group)
- Mag Garden (Monthly comic magazine)
- ASCII Media Works (Dengeki Daioh Monthly Comic)
- Kodansha (Monthly Shonen Magazine)
- Square Enix (Monthly Large Gangan)
- Shogakukan (Sunday Webry)
- Shueisha (Shonen Jump+)
- Coamix (Monthly Zenon Comics)
- Hakusensha (Hana to Yume)
- Akita Shoten (Crossover Manga)
Magazines related to the awardMangano Awards guarantees a winner for each award. Grand Prize Winner will receive 2 million yen (~$13k), Runner-up will receive 500,000 yen (~$3.3k), Honoree will receive 100,000 yen (~$660), with nominee finally received 3,000 yen (~$20) ). Applicants who do not receive a response may still be contacted by editors at any publishing house for a search. Submissions of any genre can be made through the Mangano website. The manga must be a complete one-shot, a maximum of 120 pages long, and as long as the work is not published for commercial purposes, even manga already available online is acceptable. All terms and conditions are available here.
Yuta Momiyama, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Shueisha’s Shonen Jump+ magazine, outlined the importance of the Mangano Award in an X post on November 15: “Readers in this world are very diverse. Shouldn’t the manga award jury be more diverse? By having editors from various genres such as men’s comics, women’s comics, and youth comics evaluate the work from different angles and perspectives, I hope that hitherto hidden strengths and talents can be discovered through this manga award and have a chance to blossom. Both professional and amateur works can be submitted and the deadline is February 15, 2024. As long as it is an unpublished one-off work, existing publicly released works can also sent. We look forward to many entries!“
Mangano is a manga and art publishing platform first launched in 2021 by Shueisha and tech company Hatena, allowing creators to monetize their work through advertising and sales. The launch of the Mangano Awards, open to all skill levels, comes as Shueisha’s MANGA Plus Creators submission platform launches in 2022 in an attempt to boost its rookie-level talent pool, which was recently relaunched. now with Shueisha World Maker and Netflix Anime Contest. Attracting professional-level talent is also a clear priority, as Shueisha recently revealed plans to attract more experienced writers from other magazines. Publishers collaborating like this is rare in the industry, so it will be interesting to see what work comes from it. The Mangano Award joins similarly prestigious awards such as the Shogakukan Manga Award or the Kodansha Manga Award.
Source: Mangano Award website Featured image: Bakuman © Tsugumi Ohba・Takeshi Obata/Shueisha
