Paris | Manga - Tokyo exhibition

The National Art Center, Tokyo is pleased to announce that the "MANGA ⇔TOKYO" exhibition will be held at La Villette in Paris, France from November 29 to December 30 2018, as part of the Japonismes 2018: les âmes en résonance cultural season connecting Japan and France.

The “MANGA⇔TOKYO” exhibition follows the first highly successful “Manga＊Anime＊Games from Japan” exhibition held at the National Art Center, Tokyo in 2015, and is one of the official programs of “Japonismes 2018: les âmes en résonance”, an extensive cultural season to showcase the unrevealed beauty of Japanese culture in France. This exhibition will display about 90 different works, which will provide a complex experience of the city of <Tokyo>.

How did the characteristics of the real city inspire the direction of fiction? Japan's manga, animation, games, SFX films (tokusatsu) are reflective of the social change and technological development of the city of Tokyo. This exhibition pursues to represent these depictions through numerous drawings, models and images.

How did the characteristics of the real city inspire the direction of fiction? How did these fictions and their characters present us with a new hybrid reality, now multilayered to the real city?

This exhibition does focus on Japanese manga, animation, games, and SFX films (tokusatsu), but through them it also portrays the city of ＜Tokyo＞, already iconic in a lot of people’s mind. It hopes to delve into the meaning and possibilities for Japan’s animation, manga and its gaming culture, as they have become tourism drawcards and created what for many enthusiasts is a "sacred pilgrimage" when visiting Japan.