The Kodansha awards begun in 1977 where its first winners were Black Jack and Mitsume ga Tooru by legendary Osamu Tezuka, Haikara-san ga Tooru by Waki Yamato and Candy Candy by Yumiko Igarashi and Kyoko Mizuki.
Kodansha awarded the winners of the 39th Kodansha Manga Awards on 12 May 2015.
Most of the time, the winners will tend to get anime or live action adaptations so this is a good place to start for any fans to figure which show that will appear in the future. There are at least nine Awards going on every year but Kodansha is the most prestigious in the industry simply because the company is the biggest manga publisher house in Japan and carries a lot of weight.
Besides bragging rights, recipients will receive 1 million Yen (US$8,345) of prize money. For 2015, the judge list reads like a Who’s Who in the manga world: Yuma Ando (Psychometrer Eiji), Miyuki Kobayashi (Kitchen Princess), Tooru Fujisawa (GTO), Kosuke Fujishima (Oh My Goddess!), Takeshi Maekawa (Tekken Chinmi), Norifusa Mita (Dragon Zakura), Kazumi Yamashita (Tensai Yanagisawa Kyoju no Seikatsu).
Now the winners are:
General Manga:
“Knights of Sidonia” (Tsutomu Nihei/Kodansha, Afternoon)
Shonen Manga:
“The Seven Deadly Sins” (Nakaba Suzuki/Kodansha, Weekly Shonen Magazine)
“Yowamushi Pedal” (Wataru Watanabe/Akita Shoten, Weekly Shonen Champion)
Shoujo Manga: “Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu” (Tsunami Umino/Kodansha, KISS)
Special Award: “Cooking Papa” (Tochi Ueyama/Kodansha, Morning)
Via Kodansha
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