Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man won the ‘Best Manga’ award at the 2021 Harvey Awards on Friday. The hit series took home the award over other nominees which included: Naoki Urasawa’s ‘Asadora!‘, Keito Gaku’s ‘Boys Run the Riot‘, Junji Ito’s ‘Remina‘, and Tatsuya Endō’s ‘SPY x FAMILY‘. h1g53
Fujimoto released a statement after receiving the award:
“Thank you for the insanely awesome award! It’s the best award of any awards that exist in America! I consider this crude manga of mine unbefitting of any award, but I plan to continue packing it full of all the things that I love. If you ever happen to be handing out awards again, hit me up! Thank you very much!”
And perfect timing, too. Fujimoto received the award just a couple of days before his birthday (October 10)!
The Harvey Awards established itself as one of the most prestigious award ceremonies in the comic industry, one of the primary reasons being that comic book industry professionals are nominating and selecting the winners.
Chainsaw Man is now the award’s fourth winner. Previous winners include Kabi Nagata’s ‘My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness‘ (2018), Kōhei Horikoshi’s ‘My Hero Academia‘ (2019), and Kamome Shirahama’s ‘Witch Hat Atelier‘ (2020). Before the ‘Best Manga’ category debuted in 2018, Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan won the ‘Best American Edition of Foreign Material’ award in 2014.
Awards aren’t something new for the series. Earlier this year, Chainsaw Man also won the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category. The series currently has over 11 million volumes in circulation as of June 2021 but the success doesn’t stop there. It also topped Barnes and Noble’s bestseller list back in July and has climbed onto the New York Time’s Bestseller List throughout the year.
In December 2020, it was confirmed in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine that the Chainsaw Man manga will be receiving a part two, picking up where it left off with chapter 97.
Fujimoto also published his 140+ page one-shot manga “Look Back” in July. You can read it, along with Chainsaw Man, on the Shonen Jump app.
Before writing Chainsaw Man, Fujimoto also published the series Fire Punch, which ran for eight volumes and 83 chapters over the span of two years (2016-2018). While not having nearly the success of Chainsaw Man, the series is definitely worth a read.
The Chainsaw Man anime is arguably the most anticipated one of recent years. The trailer for the anime was released in June and it reached seven million views in under 11 hours.
You can view the official Chainsaw Man trailer below.
Source: Harvey Awards
©Tatsuki Fujimoto, SHUEISHA