Shueisha’s World Maker, a free smartphone-only service that allows users to produce manga storyboards (jap. ne-mu) announced its two Grand Prize winners on Monday, June 6, 2022 on the Shonen Jump + platform.

Ito‘s “Dragon Movie Theater” storyboard and Tempeke‘s “Pool” storyboard won the Usazaki Award and ŌISHI Award respectively. Both the storyboards were created using the World Maker app.

Each of them is guaranteed a cash prize of 300,000 yen and both the manga have earned to right to be illustrated published on Jump+’s website.

Ito’s Dragon Movie Theater was illustrated by Shiro Usazaki (Act Age) and Tempeke‘s Pool was illustrated by Kōji ŌISHI (Lycopene the Tomatoy Poodle).

Ito, who believes that the Manga Maker is an app that will rewrite history, said that he couldn’t stop admiring Usazaki’s artwork.

“When I received the award, I almost fainted. Furthermore, Mr. Usazaki’s drawing is really attractive and made me tremble… I keep looking back at it night and day,” Ito said.

Tempeke too had similar thoughts on his storyboard being illustrated by Oishi.

“I have been reading Mr. Oishi’s works since I was in elementary school, and I am very moved that my manga was drawn by him, the manga artist whose work I admired so much, and whose work appeared in the back of the hard, two-color pages of Jump magazine, which carried anime information and the like. I am just overwhelmed to see how the panel layouts and compositions are transformed by a professional artist,” Tempeke said.

The Manga Awards celebrate works with up to four pages that were created with the beta version of World Maker. The World Maker Name Award started evaluating the works from Sept 8 to Oct 8, 2021.

Shueisha launched the World Maker app in August 2021 and started the Beta version for registered users on Sept 8. The app commenced the Open Beta on Sept 22, 2021.

The unique smartphone app is developed by Japanese developer Kayac Inc. aiming at finding the hidden talents who have the power to create manga but gets discouraged due to the perceived difficulty in drawing characters and making all of the elements of a manga come together, such as backgrounds, speech bubbles, effects, and page layouts.

Source: Comic Natalie