Medalist (manga)

Medalist (メダリスト) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tsurumaikada. It has been serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Monthly Afternoon since May 2020, with its chapters collected in ten  volumes as of March 2024. In North America, the manga is licensed for English release by Kodansha USA. An anime television series adaptation produced by ENGI is set to premiere in January 2025.

Medalist won the Next Manga Award in the print category in 2022, the 68th Shogakukan Manga Award in the general category in 2023, and the 48th Kodansha Manga Award in the same category in 2024.

Plot
Inori Yuitsuka, an 11-year-old girl in the fifth grade, dreams of becoming a world-class figure skater. While she practices in secret at her local ice rink, competitors her age are considered "too old" to begin seriously training; in addition, as her older sister's skating career ended in failure, her mother is resistant toward putting her through the same experience. A fateful meeting one day introduces her to Tsukasa Akeuraji, a former ice dancer on the edge of giving up competitive skating himself, and he agrees to become her coach and help her realize her dreams. Those around Inori soon learn she has immense natural talent for the sport and, together, the two strive toward Inori's ultimate goal of winning an Olympic gold medal.

Characters

 * Inori Yuitsuka (結束 いのり)


 * Tsukasa Akeuraji (明浦路 司)


 * Hikaru Kamisaki (狼嵜 光)


 * Jun Yodaka (夜鷹 純)

Production
The story takes place in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. Its author, Tsurumaikada, is also from Aichi. While the manga is about figure skating, Tsurumaikada lacked experience and knowledge of the sport, and enrolled in a month-long figure skating class held in Nagoya Sports Center in Ōsu before beginning to illustrate the manga. Medalist is Tsurumaikada's first commercial work.

As a self-professed fan of Natsumi Haruse, a voice actress known for her role as Kaoru Ryūzaki in The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls U149, Tsurumaikada tweeted in 2018: "I would also like to draw a figure skating manga that would someday be made into an anime, and have Natsumi Haruse play the main role!" Haruse narrated the commercial for the release of the first volume of the manga series in 2020.

Manga
Written and illustrated by Tsurumaikada, Medalist started in Kodansha's manga magazine Monthly Afternoon on May 25, 2020. Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual volumes. The first volume was released on September 23, 2020. As of March 22, 2023, ten volumes have been released.

In March 2021, Kodansha USA announced the digital English release of the manga in North America, starting on May 18, 2021. At Anime Expo 2023, Kodansha USA announced that the series would be published in print. The first volume was released on March 5, 2024.

Anime
An anime television series adaptation was announced on May 18, 2023. It will be produced by ENGI and directed by Yasutaka Yamamoto, with the script written by Jukki Hanada, character design by Chinatsu Kameyama, and music composed by Yuki Hayashi. It is set to premiere in January 2025 on TV Asahi's NUMAnimation programming block.

Reception
The series ranked fifteenth on the "Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics of 2021" by the Honya Club website, and ranked twelfth on the 2022 edition. The series ranked sixteenth out of 50 nominees in the 2021 Next Manga Awards in the print category; it won the award in 2022. The series placed ninth in the 2021 Tsutaya Comic Award, and placed third in the 2022 edition. The series ranked 30th on the 2021 "Book of the Year" list by Da Vinci magazine; it ranked 23rd on the 2022 list; and 27th on the 2023 list.

The series won the 68th Shogakukan Manga Award in the general category in 2023. It was nominated for the 47th Kodansha Manga Award in the general category in 2023; it won in the same category for the 48th edition in 2024.