I have been more excited about this than the Kingdom of Characters display (I had tons of things to complain about that one!) and more so, when I saw this in the Japan Foundation Magazine, back then, they only hide five series on display.
And now they have more!
The Japan Foundation will be holding an exhibit on the art of Japanese comics called “Manga Realities: The Art of Japanese Comics Today.” I am particularly excited about this exhibit as it contains some of my favorite mangaka and more. In Japan Foundation’s July Newsletter, the curator of this exhibit, Takahashi Mizuki of the
Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, noted that the exhibit intends to “recreate, in installation, sound and video, the same feeling of entering a “manga world” that you get when you read in manga…. Manga is experienced in private but this style of exhibition makes it possible to share the experience of manga with family and friends.”
I’m quite excited to see this exhibit and I hope manga fans will enjoy this as well!
Manga Realities: The Art of Japanese Comics Today
Ayala Museum, August 16-October 2
The Japan Foundation and the Ayala Museum in cooperation with the Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito in Japan, will bring to Manila the traveling exhibition, “Manga Realities: Exploring the Art of Japanese Comics Today”.
It is widely known that Japanese manga and anime are attracting global attention today as the leading media of Japanese visual culture. Starting from manga comics by Osamu Tezuka, the master cartoonist of postwar Japan, this country’s manga has established a distinctive style that is different from American comics or French bande dessinée. Once depreciated as children’s amusement or a subculture, the public perception of these media has been changed considerably in recent years. Japanese manga and anime are now regarded as the main culture as the soft power that represents Japan today.
The exhibition which will be on view from August 16 (Tuesday) to October 2 (Sunday) at the Ground Floor Gallery and at the Glass Lane and Luna and Amorsolo Rooms at the Third Floor of the Ayala Museum will showcase nine manga artists and their works including Ninomiya Tomoko (Nodame Cantabile); Harold Sakuishi (BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad); Asano Inio (Solanin); Anno Moyoco (Sugar Sugar Rune ); Igarashi Daisuke (Children of the Sea); Kuramochi Fusako (Five Minutes from the Station); Kyo Machiko (Sennen-Gaho); Matsumoto Taiyo (No. 5); and Wakaki Tamiki (The World God Only Knows). During the exhibition run, other activities including lectures and workshops will be conducted.
From its first exhibit in Art Tower Mito, Japan, the exhibition has traveled to Artsonje Center in Seoul, South Korea and to the Vietnam Fine Art Museum in Hanoi, Vietnam where it has received considerable acclaim.
Manga Realities: Exploring the Art of Japanese Manga Today is presented by Ayala Foundation and the Japan Foundation; additional support is provided by Lyric Piano and Organ, Acer and Via Mare.
For inquiries, please contact the Japan Foundation, Manila at telephone numbers 811.6155 to 58 or visit www.jfmo.org.ph.
Ayala Museum is located at Makati Avenue corner de la Rosa St. Greenbelt Park, Makati City. The museum is open from Tuesday to Friday (9:00 am to 6:00 pm) and Saturday to Sunday (10:00 am to 7:00 pm). For more information, please call Ayala Museum at telephone numbers 757.7117 to 21 or visit www.ayalamuseum.org.
Yes! For once, I was not to busy to forget this very special day!!
Fujoshis! Run amock! Go wild! Buy some lovely BL and snicker behind every nasty page you’re reading! You deserve it!
Over the last year, I’ve also crossed a fun fujoshi who I don’t mind pimping to everyone. If you guys haven’t read Hazukashii kedo…, then as a fujoshi it’s about time you do so. Fuuko’s a lovely fujoshi who is not afraid to squee over her BL. She’s got some of the latest news from Japan since, she’s admittedly, a fantastic stalker (of the legal kind of sorts) to her favorite BL mangaka. I suggest you guys follow her blog and read through some titles which we can hope can get licensed someday. If you guys enjoyed Men of Tattoes (Shisei no Otoko) then Fuuko has tons of Aniya Yuiji manga for recommendation. I have been getting BL recs from her and I haven’t felt disappointed. <3 Fujoshi-chan, it’s time you get on with the program.
Of course, 801 no hi is a reminder not only of this blessed day to be a fujoshi but on this particular 801, Otaku Champloo will also start its month-long 5th anniversary celebration! \o/ I can’t believe it’s been five years since I started this blog! I’ve got things lined up for this month and I hope you guys won’t mind that I bring out my fujoshi side! At the same time, I’ll be raffling off some manga every weekend! Call me crazy but I’m feeling quite generous after five years and I know I owe it to some of my readers!
Hence! With great gusto, let’s all celebrate being a fujoshi by shouting our beloved oath, “Gentlemen! I like BL!”
Gentlemen, I like BL
Gentlemen, I love BL
I like Kichiku Megane
I like underage assaults
I like naughty assaults
I like gakuen monogatari
I like riiman
I like parallels
I like gachi muchi
I like crossdressers
In parks, in schools
In companies, on streets
In harems, in deserts
In darkness, in daylight
I love every aspect of boy’s love that takes place on this earth
I like quickly shooting the customer with the cash register while packing up the merchandise
When new publications on the stand decrease at amazing speed, my heart dances
I like operating the computer and responding to customer inquiry quickly
When new books arrived at the cash register, my heart leapt
Gentlemen, I desire BL, BL that is like hell
Gentlemen, my companions in the battalion, who follow me
Gentlemen, what do you desire?
Do you desire BL as well?
Do you desire PC games and commercial magazines that strike the wallet with no mercy?
Do you desire doujinshi that stretch the limits of iron, wind, lightning and fire to the limit, one that will kill all the delusions on this planet?
“BL! BL! BL!”
Very well, they are on the 3rd, 4th floor
I wish I had a reason for my delinquency, but work and research is no excuse for my great delay in terms of handling my spotlight. While I promised to do this every month, sickness and sudden workload kept me from opening my manga for months. Then again, I tasked myself in putting down gargantuan authors for those months and perhaps I’ll just make it up to all of you when I make up for those lost spotlights by the end of the year.
But for now, before everyone thinks I just spotlight BL authors, I present to you the man who captured my heart with an eggplant, Iou Kuroda.
And it looks like a completely different animal. o3o)
I’m quite sure a lot of fellow fujoshi started getting into BL with Yami no Matsuei either as their gateway shoujo to BL manga or as a complimentary shoujo almost BL manga to their already growing collection of BL in the early 2000s. All of us were shocked by the sudden inclusion of tentacle rape by volume 11 and I’m quite sure all of us were shocked when author, Matsushita Youko took a major holiday (rumors are she was completely obsessed with Final Fantasy 11) right smack when she had already got a good portion of her main story line going. A lot of us almost gave up on her after not hearing a word about her in year.
While she published volume 12 last year, Matsushita finally returns to the pages of The Hana to Yume , a complimentary special magazine to Hana to Yume. She even drew the cover and yeah… it’s a whole lot different to what we saw 5 years ago.
She might have changed in terms of style but here’s me hoping that she doesn’t give us another five years of waiting to see what happens next to those memorable shinigamis of Yami no Matsuei.
Thanks to Fuuko of Hazukashii kedo for the tip. The edited image above was from a fan twitpic.
Have you ever thought of something so different when you see a landscape drawn in manga?
Say for example, you saw this river from this page in Cross Game.
Would you honestly think of what happened next just by seeing this river?
Guest on 
d4rkn on 
Ash on 
