Shiten Akiyama

In 2023, Shiten Akiyama’s short manga Hero won the Spirits Shinjin-ō, a new-talent award from publisher Shogakukan’s Spirits manga magazines. Special judge Inio Asano, creator of Goodnight Punpun, chose it as the entry that most strongly conveyed its creator’s emotions and humanity. Akiyama has also worked as an assistant to Asano.

Akiyama says he always tries to make the work his younger self wanted to read. His series HORIZON, serialized in Shonen Gahosha’s Young King BULL, follows Mieko, a woman nearing thirty and worn down by her busy life, who on a tipsy whim puts on a school uniform and heads to a park at midnight, where she meets a young man almost too perfect to be real. In his storytelling, he favors literary monologue, alternating prose with cinematic imagery rather than using words simply to explain his characters’ thoughts.