It's manga awards season!

The results of the 32nd Kodansha Awards are out, and they've selected some really great-looking stuff this year. (The Kodansha Awards have made plenty of solid picks in the past: both Tramps Like Us and Nodame Cantabile are previous Kodansha winners.) I've read scanlations of the first few chapters of this year's very cute shojo pick, Kimi no Todoke, but I'm totally unfamiliar with their general manga choice, Moyashimon--a situation that must be rectified immediately.

According to Wikipedia, Moyashimon is the story of Tadayasu Sawaki, a first-year agricultural university student with the bizarre ability to communicate with micro-organisms. In addition to the story's cast of nutjob human characters, readers also get to know Tadayasu's micro-organism buddies, including Aspergillus oryzae, the main micro-organism character (a fungus used in the production of soy sauce and miso), and Lactobacillus homohiochi, the "bad guy" of the series (a fructivoran that makes sake go bad).

Doesn't that sound awesome? And, just to make things even cooler, look how cute all the micro-organisms are:



Neither Kimi no Todoke nor Moyashimon are currently licensed in the U.S., but you can read scanlated versions of both series via IRC, and you can watch the Moyashimon anime online.