We are bringing you the highlights of the "note Creative Awards" ceremony!

Although I work as a professional, I had never won an award before, so I am extremely happy to have won such a stylish award this time. I was on the verge of getting the "yips" because other projects were being rejected and the manga I published on the internet wasn't being appreciated by those around me, so winning this award helped me regain my confidence. Thank you very much!

Kibushi is the name of a plant, and its flower language is "lie." There are two lies in this work: the first is a narrative trick, and the second is that the author, "Kibushi," is actually the manga artist "Kappii." The reason I did this was that I wanted to improve my novel-writing skills to take the next step as a manga writer. However, I felt that if I wrote a novel as "Kappii," there was a possibility that publishers would listen to my book publication pitch based solely on my name. I wanted to earn the opportunity based on my own merit, so I took on the challenge of applying for the award without revealing my name. I want to do my best as a "new novelist."

This manga is based on my actual experience in 2019, when I saved a man who had fallen onto the train tracks at a station. At that time, my outlook on life changed, and I thought, "Since I don't know when I might die, I want to create everything myself and leave something behind in the world." Since I was good at drawing, I thought I would try drawing a manga, and that's how this work was created. I'm glad that the "near-death experience" was the catalyst for winning this award.

There is an unforgettable phrase I saw on Twitter a long time ago: "There is no one interesting who has a clean room." I have always worked in editing, and it was true that the messier the desks of my colleagues in the editorial department were, the more interesting the projects they came up with, so I thought there was some truth to it. I escaped from a messy room, so I wrote this work with all my might while feeling anxious that I might not be able to create interesting content as a creator from now on. Therefore, when I received the award, the feeling of "Thank goodness..." was stronger than the feeling of being happy. I will continue to do my best while feeling my way forward.

I am from the so-called "employment ice age" generation, and I have only ever worked as a temporary employee. Also, I am originally from Gifu and was what people call a "hikikomori" (shut-in). I thought this wouldn't do, so I went outside and moved to Tottori. While working there, I read novels and even sent letters to my parents, which is unlike me, and that's when I felt that writing was interesting, which led to the creation of this work, "Hatsuka." Since there has never been a work in the world where a high school girl is sentenced to death, I dealt with a heavy subject while making a high school girl the protagonist. My life has been unremarkable until now, but I am truly grateful to have had such a wonderful experience.

Three years ago, I wanted to find something I could dedicate my life to, and four months ago, I arrived at "novels." I had no idea how to write, but this is the first work I wrote while looking back on my past. I didn't even know who it would reach, but I believe it was the "note Creative Awards" that shone a light on it. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the many people who created this venue, the judges who provided warm comments, and the predecessors who created an environment where anyone can create. I want to continue to pursue my own expression until my final moment.

I am honored to have been selected as an award-winning work. Since the day I was notified of the award was April Fool's Day, I wondered for a while if it was true. This work gives shape to something I had thought, "I wish something like this existed." When I was working in administration, I wanted to make things easier with Excel, so I learned Excel macros little by little. Macros can seem difficult, but I created this with the hope that using manga would be a trigger for many people to think, "This looks kind of interesting." This award gave me an opportunity to take stock of myself and realize that my experiences and what I have learned so far can be useful to others.

It took 10 years, but I was finally able to write about my piano study abroad experience from 12 years ago through note. A former piano student of mine recommended note to me. It is easy to write even for a beginner, and it is a mystery to me that I was able to write it to the end. Looking back 10 years, many things came back vividly, and I was able to have a very enjoyable time while feeling as if I were still studying abroad. I am happy just to have been able to finish writing it, but on top of that, receiving the reward of an award makes me truly happy, and it has given me energy and courage.

This work began to grow around the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, and I finished it in storyboard form and shelved it. Since the "note Creative Awards" had a format where you could apply regardless of the state of the work, I am very grateful that I was able to apply with the storyboard and receive this award. It is a quite painful story about an elderly mother who loses her beloved son in a shipwreck, but I believe that being struck by tragic events that you cannot do anything about is something that can happen to anyone in life. It is a work that I wrote with all my heart about how to accept such sadness and how to recover from it. If you would like, please read it.

As the title suggests, it is a story of a family called the Mamiya family, told through 34 letters. There are two main reasons why I wrote this work; one is simply because I like letters. Even in an era where the act of "typing" is more mainstream than "writing" characters, I wrote this because I believe "letters" will continue to exist in the future. The other reason is that I am also active as an actor, and in that process, I had opportunities to work with voice actors. I had a desire to create a work together with such people, and I wrote this work with the intention that it could also be presented as a reading play. Since I won this award, I have gained confidence along with happiness, so I would like to brush up this work again and deliver it in that form. If someone who reads this work feels even a little bit like writing a letter to someone important to them for the first time in a while, then it was worth writing.

It was about six and a half years ago that I won an award at the first "cakes Creator Contest" and debuted as an essayist. While watching the amazing success of the people who won at the same time, there were many days when I felt that I was the only one who had been in the same place for a long time. However, this time, I was able to write the essay that I like the most among all the things I have written so far, and I am happy that it won an award. Actually, around January of this year, there was talk of turning this work into a film, which I was very happy about, but it was eventually scrapped, and I was hung up on it for about two and a half months. Because of that reaction, I have come to like note even more because of this event. I would like to continue to publish new essays on note, and I hope to enjoy and continue doing what I like.

"Petit Bundan Bar" is the name of the bar I run in the Shinjuku Golden Gai nightlife district, and I am the owner, Kazuyuki Koenuma. "Bonnie and Clyde of Golden Gai" is a work depicting a legendary rip-off bar that once existed in Shinjuku Golden Gai. The elderly owner and the mama-san there were called "Bonnie and Clyde" because they were so notorious. By the time I opened my shop, that place was already gone, and driven by a desire to learn more about those two and the rip-off bar, I interviewed people involved, wrote an article, and was honored with an award. While I am certainly happy about the award, I am even happier that this has allowed me to promote the Golden Gai area to everyone. Even in these times, I hope you will all come and visit Golden Gai.

We are a small seafood company with 21 part-time staff and 4 full-time employees. After our company was washed away by the tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake, I thought about "why I live" and "why I work" while trying to make a comeback in Osaka. I reached the conclusion that it would be meaningless unless everyone, including myself, could live and work happily, and the result of thinking about what I should do was the free-schedule work style I wrote about this time. A company like ours that can offer various choices can inevitably work with people from diverse environments and conditions. Over these eight years, I have felt that a society without exclusion is actually a comfortable world for everyone. If possible, I would like to publish my own book through a publisher, and if you all use my company as a subject, I think today could be the start of changing the world.

This manga was inspired by the time I actually bought a huge piece of naan at a supermarket, brought it home, and felt a strange sense of attachment while taking pictures of it. So, I want to thank the naan I met that day. I usually work as a designer and illustrator, so I want to do my best with manga from now on as well.

I am an amateur housewife. Last year, when I was physically unwell or hitting a wall with child-rearing, there was a period where I read a lot of manga, and that was when I started reading BL manga. There was a work that moved me so much that I impulsively started writing fan fiction, which was my first novel. When I was a salaryman, I worked at a game company drawing pictures, so I find it strange myself why I chose to write a novel instead of drawing. At first, I published on other platforms, but after moving to note and being selected for "#2000-character drama," note gradually became more lively. I still continue to write fan fiction, so in my mind, I am just a housewife writing fan fiction. Therefore, it feels very strange to be here as an "author," but I am happy.