I have all of these awesome feelings when this week started and the most awesome of announcements was Historie winning the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize for 2012!

Historie’s  the story of Eumenes and his adventures with Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army.  If you love your Greek history, this is a title that you shouldn’t miss! According to the screening committee, the title has brought excitement as it drew closer to historical events. At the same time, some members were also impressed with the strength that came out of young men at that time! While I find their comments to be a natural impression on a great historical story, I believe that Eumenes’ strength lies in its ability to capture the energy and the landscape of that time.

That said, I really haven’t caught up with this title since I last reviewed it (it was running slow in Afternoon for a while) but I’m assuming that based on the cover of the 7th volume, Alexander’s a lot older and has probably chased Darius away! ((And quite an awkward cover too considering that it paid homage to this Alexander mosaic in Pompeii))

I’m still quite surprised that this title has not been picked up. I’m actually just as surprised that the manly history boom hasn’t exactly started yet in English translated manga. Thermae Romae’s licensing was quite a bold move, but we have yet to see sweeping epic manly tales of vikings and Macedonians in our bookstores. Hopefully, we’ll see them soon but for now we can at least enjoy some bit of history through titles like Vagabond and Emma. And maybe Afterschool Charisma.

Other winners were Itoh Yu’s Shut Hell for the New Artist Prize and Roswell Hosoki’s Sake no Hoso Michi for the Short Work Prize. At the same, in recognition of their efforts in giving children free copies of Shounen Jump during the time of the earthquake, Shiokawa Bookstore from Sendai was also given a Special award with the grand prize of 1,00,000 yen.

Source: Comic Natalie