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Kemono Friends, And Yet the Town Moves Win at 49th Seiun Awards
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The 58th Japan Science Fiction Convention (Nihon SF Taikai) revealed the winners for the 49th Seiun Awards on July 21. Niconico livestreamed the event. Kemono Friends won this year's Media category. Director TATSUKI accepted the award at the ceremony wearing a penguin mask.
Masakazu Ishiguro's Sore de mo Machi wa Mawatteiru (And Yet the Town Moves) manga won this year's Comic category. Ishiguro himself accepted the award.
Noriko Nagano (Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy) won the Art category. Young King Ours' tribute manga project for the 50th anniversary of Yuki Hijiri's Locke the Superman manga won the "Free" category at this year's awards.
Yoshiki Tanaka's 16-volume Arslan Senki (The Heroic Legend of Arslan) series received a nomination in the Japanese Long Story category, but did not win. In addition, Taiyo Fujii's short story "Kidō no Tamaki" received a nomination in the Japanese Short Story category, but did not win. Viz Media's Haikasoru imprint published Fujii's Gene Mapper in English.
The awards this year were again separated into nine categories: Japanese Long Story, Japanese Short Story, Translated Long Story, Translated Short Story, Media, Comic, Art, Nonfiction, and a "Free" category. Each category has between 6-9 nominees. The nominees were chosen among works that were released between January 1 and December 31, 2017.
The attendees of the 57th Japan Science Fiction Convention at "Juracon" in Gunma voted on the winners.
"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 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, Cardcaptor Sakura, Madoka Magica, Pacific Rim, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Moyashimon, and more.
Source: Archived livestream of 49th Seiun Awards via My Game News Flash
