Manga artist Takashi Okazaki wins an Emmy for STAR WARS: VISIONS

Takashi Okazaki has picked up a juried Emmy at the 78th Emmy Awards, taking home the "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation" honor for his character design work on Star Wars: Visions Volume 3 — The Duel: Payback.

The Television Academy announced the win on August 12, 2026, honoring Okazaki, who's best known as the creator of Afro Samurai and for his work on the Marvel Comics series Werewolf by Night, for his contributions to the Visions short, produced by Kamikaze Douga and ANIMA. The Duel: Payback continues the samurai-inflected Ronin saga Okazaki first introduced in Volume 1's fan-favorite 2021 short The Duel, a story he's since expanded across a novel and multiple Marvel comic one-shots.

Accepting the award, Okazaki told reporters he had "always sought to try new things," The Japan Times reported, adding that he loves Star Wars and was delighted to receive a prize tied to the franchise.

Unlike competitive Emmy categories, juried awards skip the nominee stage entirely—a peer panel simply measures entries against a fixed bar of craft, and either someone clears it, or the category comes up empty (Outstanding Motion Design, notably, had no winner this year).

Okazaki wasn't the only name recognized in the animation jury this cycle: Uzoma Dunkwu won for character design on Marvel Animation's Eyes of Wakanda, David Krentz picked up a storyboarding honor for Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal, and Howard Chen was recognized for background design on The Mighty Nein.

The win adds another line to Star Wars: Visions' growing trophy case, and cements Okazaki's Ronin, a Sith-slaying wanderer set in a Feudal Japan-inspired corner of the galaxy, as one of the anthology's most durable creative exports, having jumped from screen to page and now to the Emmy Awards stage.

Source: The Television Academy, The Japan Times