Some 80,000 French Japanophiles attended a recent Asian pop culture expo it’s being reported.
The annual expo – which drew only 3,000 visitors when it launched in 1999 – was a runaway success, organiser Pierre-Yves Devroute says.
“It was a phenomenal success which surpassed all our aims,” he said, adding that between 75,000 and 80,000 people visited the three-day show which opened on Friday (local time).
“Mangas, Japanese highly stylised graphic novels,” were the big draw. “They account for more than a third of all comics sold in France today, up from only 19 per cent in 2003, according to trade publication Livre Hebdo.”
Is this our future?
Heh, heh. “Mangas.” Welcome to the invasion, France.
I was there. It was like an American anime con, but with a lot more cultural stuff–exhibits on the Tanabata Festival, kimono, where to travel in Japan. Even JAL and Air France had small booths with discount flights to Japan.
France is the largest publisher of manga, after Japan. My Usagi Yojimbo French editions are in the smaller, manga-size editions, and are doing well there.