Interest
Take a Private Video Tour of the British Museum's Manga Exhibition
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
The Manga exhibition at the British Museum in London opened on May 23 but if you can't make it to England before it closes, Viz Media's Urian Brown has a special video highlight tour just for you.
The exhibition will run until August 26 in the Sainsbury Exhibition Galleries, and is divided into six zones. The first, ‘Understanding Manga’, focuses on how manga are drawn, produced and read, and the symbols of manga that form the grammar of the medium. The zone also looks at the role of manga's editors and publishers.
The second zone, ‘Power of Storytelling’, looks at visual storytelling in manga, including a reading space and digital experiences; these include a virtual version of Comic Takaoka, one of Japan's oldest continuing manga bookstores.
The third zone, ‘Seen and Unseen Worlds’, explores manga genres. The fourth zone looks at manga's role in society, including fandom, taking in Comiket events and cosplay.
The fifth zone consists of displays along the 70-metre-long walls of the Sainsbury Exhibition Galleries. These displays show the original drawings of major artists and blown up versions of their famous characters. Among the artists represented are Keiko Takemiya (Toward the Terra) and Katsuhiro Ōtomo.
The last zone looks as manga's expanding boundaries, including avant-garde manga, media crossovers, gaming (focusing on Pokémon) and manga's influence internationally.
The exhibit features a bespoke mascot, a white rabbit character called named Mimi-chan, created by the manga artist Fumiyo Kōno (In This Corner of the World), which accompanies guests through the exhibition.
Other artists confirmed represented in the exhibition include Hokusai, Kyosai, Osamu Tezuka. Fujio Akatsuka, Akira Toriyama, Takehiko Inoue, Eiichiro Oda, Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya and Akiko Higashimura.
There will also be free lectures linked to the exhibit; information can be found here.
