Junji Ito’s Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection, translated by Jocelyne Allen and published by Viz Media, won the Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia category award at the 2022 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.

Ito’s manga fended off competition from Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man, Naoya Matsumoto’s Kaiju No. 8 and Tatsuya Endo’s Spy x Family to bag the award in the category.

He also won the same award last year for his manga Remina, also translated by Jocelyne Allen.

This year’s Eisner award ceremony was held at the San Diego Comic Con on the night of July 22, 2022.

Though other manga like Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (Best Humor Publication category) were included in the nomination for other categories, Ito’s was the only one to win.

Eike Exner‘s Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History won the Best Academic/Scholarly Work.

Furthermore, mangaka Moto Hagio, who is considered as the founding mother of shojo and shonen-ai (male-male romance) manga, was inducted into the Hall of Fame this year at the ceremony.

Hagio is known for her works like The Poe Clan, The Heart of Thomas, They Were Eleven, etc., all of which were published in the 1970s.

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books, sometimes referred to as the comics industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.

Eisner awards are named in honor of the pioneering writer and artist Will Eisner, who was a regular participant in the award ceremony until his death in 2005. The Eisner Awards include the Comic Industry’s Hall of Fame.

The nominations in each category are generated by a five- to a six-member jury, then voted on by comic book professionals and presented at the annual San Diego Comic-Con held in July, usually on Friday night. The jury often consists of at least one comics retailer, one librarian (since 2005), and one academic researcher, among other comics experts.

Source: Crunchyroll