Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d test the waters and see what you all thought about the race for this year’s Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Japan. Comics professionals can cast their official vote through June 15, but I’m nosy and impatient. I’ll check back in on June 16 to see which title “won.”

You may notice that I didn’t put in an “Other” option, not that I don’t want to hear what titles you think were neglected (as I’ve contributed to such discussions myself), but because people viewing the poll results can’t see voters’ write-in nominations. So hopefully you’ll cast your vote in the actual ballot and, if you aren’t satisfied with the choices, post a comment naming the book you’d vote for in a perfect world.

I’ll post my pick after the jump. It’s like how you can’t have campaign signs within a certain distance of a polling place.

From the official selections, I’m going to let sentiment win the day and cast my vote for Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo (Vertical). I’ll just repeat what I said over at The Comics Reporter:

“Between the premise and the moody undertones, it feels like I could have read dozens of volumes of Dororo without becoming bored. That I won’t get the chance probably plays a significant part in the book being so fixed in my thinking. The rushed conclusion has a melancholy beyond its basic narrative elements, which isn’t unusual for Tezuka, but the speculation on what could have followed and how the story could have unfurled give that melancholy an extra layer.”

It’s a tough call, and I still might have voted for Dororo even if my alternate had been nominated, but I would have loved the chance to decide between it and Hideo Azuma’s Disappearance Diary (Fanfare/Ponent Mon). Again, I’ll be lazy and quote myself:

“For as much of a prig as I can be about the behavior and morality of fictional characters, I found myself unexpectedly complicit with the Azuma portrayed in Disappearance Diary. I certainly can’t support the choices that yielded these experiences, but I got quite a bit of reading pleasure out of watching Azuma chronicle them. Perhaps he viewed his failures as such a given that it would have been redundant to dwell on them. Perhaps he really isn’t contrite in the least.”

Division by genre is maintaining a fairly consistent lead over division by demographic category in yesterday’s poll. Genre proponents entirely outnumber demographic supporters in the comments, so I’d love to hear from people who like the idea of awards under the shônen-shôjo-seinen-josei-etc. umbrella.