The most important meeting in Europe in terms of Japanese pop culture (and more broadly Korean and American), Japan Expo, is held from July 13 to 16 at the Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center, in Seine-Saint-Denis. It must accommodate more than 250,000 festival-goers on 140,000 square meters of stands, stages and merchant aisles.
While some regulars have made their mark for many years and have already drawn up a list of their centers of interest, it is sometimes difficult to find your way around the program offered by this show, which is both cultural convention and trade fair. Here are some animations that caught our eye.
Thursday, July 13
They are the co-creators of manga and have no equivalent in comics. Tantosha – or tanto – are editorial managers and support mangakas in comic book publishing magazines in Japan. More than logistical support, they support artists in the script and the long-term production of a series.
Yuta Momiyama, deputy editor of Jump Plus, and Yu Saito, deputy editor of Weekly Shonen Jump, the prestigious magazine that incubated Dragon Ball, Naruto and One Piece, will also be present at a conference to talk about the tantosha profession and a well-established editorial system.
Japan Expo is also an important meeting place for amateur artists, fanzine circles and creators of all kinds inspired by Asian pop culture, who have a stand and meet their fans. A space always teeming with ideas and original interpretations of our favorite heroes and heroines, where you can buy amateur or self-published publications, original illustrations and other small objects.
Friday, July 14
To those who think that sumo is just a kind of fight between two big guys in underwear or who, on the contrary, have enjoyed reading the Hinomaru Sumo manga (Glénat, 2014-2023) or watching the Sanctuary series on Netflix, the the presence of the Paris Sumo amateur club is a good opportunity to get on the dohyô and discover this extremely codified art.
This is a first at Japan Expo: the dubbing actors Pascale Chemin, Adrien Larmande, PV Nova and Bruno Méyère, under the leadership of Brigitte Lecordier, will go on stage to read and perform an excerpt from Pick Me Up! in public, the new webtoon from South Korean studio Redice (famous for its former Solo Leveling series). When very familiar voices give life to yet unknown characters. Two sessions are scheduled: one on Friday, and the other on Sunday.
Cosplayers Vixann and Akisa lead a master class to learn and master all the stages of creating a handmade costume. With advice on processes, techniques and materials to make your best hero outfit.
Saturday July 15
Rakugo (“a story with a fall”) is one of the oldest Japanese comic arts, still popular. In kimono and alone on stage, the rakugoka kneel on a cushion facing the audience and tell a story that lasts between ten and thirty minutes. The staging, reduced to the simplest expression and where only the upper body can move, requires great liveliness of speech and facial expressions to tone up the show. Stéphane Ferrandez, rakugo performer, and Sandrine Garbuglia, author and director, come to present this discipline.
An exclusively female theater group created by the Coamix publishing house, the 096k Kumamoto Drama Company offers an adapted performance of the Chronicles of the Extravagant Keiji Maeda, manga by Tetsuo Hara, the designer of Hokuto no Ken (Ken the Survivor). The trailer having left us as perplexed as it was curious, we thought we had to go see it all the same.
What better way to celebrate our recent Olympic esports champion from Just Dance TheFairyDina than to gather around a giant party? Gatherings around Ubisoft’s rhythm video game, which requires you to synchronize your movements to well-known pop songs, are always very entertaining, even if you have two left feet.
Sunday July 16
Daisuke Hagiwara, author of the popular series Horimiya, will draw live on stage. The opportunity to appreciate the finesse of his line but also, perhaps, some manga techniques. Attending a live drawing always has an effect that is as impressive as it is relaxing.
Pandora Crew, a French dance group that loves South Korean pop, invites the public to meet him for a “random play dance”, an exercise that consists of dancing and reproducing choreographies from a playlist that is not known to the public. ‘advance. An event that will appeal to fans and the curious alike, who will have the pleasure of seeing the level of training of certain dancers, who spend hours reproducing the choreographies of the greatest K-pop idols.
