16th Impact: the Guests of Honor

Attending the festival on Saturday and Sunday, our Manga Guest of Honor offered you many opportunities to meet him and let’s say that you didn’t miss him! Invited in partnership with the publisher Pika Édition, the author of the international success Love Hina, of Negima! Magister Negi Magi and of UQ HOLDER!, his latest manga still unfinished, has a busy week-end. With 4 signing sessions at the festival areas and at Pika Édition’s booth, he allowed many attendees to leave with a personal souvenir and great memories.

On Saturday, he also revealed some of his techniques and secrets during a masterclass with the happy few who were there at the Wacom Japan Expo masterclass area. And that was only a small insight of what to expect on Sunday: a conference during which Ken AKAMATSU answered all your questions showed his talent during an astounding digital live drawing. He also took this opportunity to celebrate his own birthday at Japan Expo!

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Evangelion saga, Japan Expo welcomed Yoshiyuki SADAMOTO, one of the founders of Gainax animation studio which produced the cult series Neon Genesis Evangelion, and especially the chara-designer of the series and the film Evangelion: Death and Rebirth, and the mangaka of the adaptation. He also worked on Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, and Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, as the chara-designer and animation director.

On Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, he met you at 4 signing sessions, as well as a fascinating conference during which he answered your questions.

To honor him and his work on Evangelion, Japan Expo also organized an exhibit dedicated to the saga: from its creation to now, you had the opportunity to experience again 20 years of this major work of Japanese animation.

The moment all video game fans expected more than anything else happened on Friday: Nintendo’s big event with one of the greatest name of video games, the creator of Mario and of licenses such as The Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, or Luigi’s Mansion, and Video Game Guest of Honor of the festival, Shigeru MIYAMOTO. On this exceptional visit to Japan Expo, he presented Star Fox Zero for Wii U and the gameplay new features. He had, not one, but two amazing surprises in store for the audience with two guests who joined him on stage.

Takashi TEZUKA, the producer Super Mario Maker, also presented the latter, and then a demo of the level creation tool, with a level created especially for Paris! And there was one more: Tsubasa SAKAGUCHI, co-director of Splatoon, who went up on stage, armed with… a water gun! If you were in the front seats, you may even have received some water. Then he talked about his game too.

There’s no need to mention that, whether announced or not, each guest was unanimously cheered! 

Famous in the whole wide world for their explosive performances, the band VAMPS had come to set Japan Expo on fire. After conquering the world thanks to the unique style of HYDE (L’Arc~en~Ciel) and K.A.Z (Oblivion Dust), it was Japan Expo’s attendees’ turn to get carried away by their J-rock hurricane.

They launched the party with a talk-show on Thursday morning and kept on with signings in the afternoon, on Friday and Sunday. So many occasions to meet both stars of J-rock which you didn’t miss!

The best moment took place on Sunday in the late afternoon: VAMPS offered their fans a whole hour-long concert. A great moment for those who were lucky enough to be there!