ANIME NEWS: Foreign Comics Festival to be held in Tokyo

A new event focused on comic books from outside Japan will be held at Tokyo’s Big Sight convention center on Nov. 18.

The Foreign Comics Festival will feature comic books from the United States, Europe, Taiwan and South Korea, and is being organized in tandem with Comitia, an established quarterly event dedicated to "dojinshi" fanzines and other amateur comics.

The festival will be held at the Atrium court in Big Sight’s West Hall, while Comitia 102 will take place in West Hall 1 and 2 on the same day.

The organizers expect about 30,000 visitors to the festival, including 10,000 people attending the Comitia event.

Japan has been making concerted efforts to promote and sell its manga abroad in recent years, but there are also moves to increase Japan’s exposure to foreign comics with an increasing number of translated editions of foreign comics now being published.

Frederic Toutlemonde, chief editor of the Euromanga comic anthology, serves as head of the festival executive committee and has been working to promote "band dessinee" (comics for French and Belgian readers) in Japan.

The festival's official website will include sections dedicated to U.S. comics, band dessinee, South Korean "manhwa," Taiwanese manga and other works.

The festival will be held with support from the Kyoto International Manga Museum, International Comic Artist Conference, Gakushuin University, Meiji University and Tokyo Polytechnic University, in addition to the French, Belgian and Spanish embassies, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Korea Creative Content Agency and other entities based in Japan.

Items related to foreign comics and animation and fanzines will be available for sale at the venue. An exhibition and an auction featuring original illustrations from the comics will also be offered.

The organizers are also accepting applications from companies wanting to exhibit at the event. Names of special guests and other details will be revealed on the event’s official website at (http://www.kaigaimangafesta.com/en/index.html).