30th Barcelona International Comic Fair

From the 3th of this month to the 6th, it was held the 30th International Comic Fair in Barcelona, that with about 100,000 visitors each year is the largest comic convention in Spain and one of the biggest worlwide.

I used to go every year until 2004, and since then I never went again until now because of two main reasons. The first one is because several years ago this convention splitted to form the Barcelona Manga Fair, that is also pretty big (65,000 visitors per year) and is only focused in manga, anime and videogames, and I rather prefer to go to a manga only convention that a general one. The second reason is that it turned in a huge marketplace with overpriced stuff that you can order via internet all the year round, and usually the guest artists are not really worth the trip for me.

So at the end I only go to Spanish conventions only if they have a guest artist that I'm fan of: last time I went to a Barcelona Manga Fair was in 2006 when the guest artists included Nakajima Atsuko (character designer for the anime versions of Ranma 1/2 and Taiho Shichauzo), Monkey Punch (veteran manga artist mostly know for Lupin III) and Katsura Masakazu (Video Girl Ai, I''s, Zetman...), and this time I went because of Nagai Go, a very prolific author with over 100 main franchises and countless minor works, but is probably best known for creating Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z. 

Mazinger Z was specially covered in this convention because is it's 40th anniversary. It was the series that made me interested in "Japanese cartoons", and after all those years is still one of my favorite old school series despite not being a fan of the mecha genre. So yeah, I went only to see Nagai and a few original drawings of him that were displayed.

This is the closest I was able to aproach to Nagai in the first day.

Nagai's originals

Yumi Sayaka was my first 2D love...

Since by extension the convention main theme this year was "Robots and Comics", a few Tezuka's originals of Astroboy were on display as well.

Nagai only signed to 160 persons (80 in one day and another 80 the following day) that were selected by lucky draw among the people who purchased Mazinger Z related merchandise, so in order to participate for the last session I purchased:

The complete Blu-ray collection of the Spanish edition of Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z Hen and the volume one of the original manga.

Shin Mazinger was a reboot of the series that was aired in 2009, and mixed elements from different Mazinger continuities (Great Mazinger, Z Mazinger, Mazinkaiser...) and references to other works by Nagai (mostly Violence Jack). I didn't like Shin Mazinger that much when was airing (I dropped it after episode 5) because it was mixing from way too many sources, but now that I have it I'll give it a chance, I guess.

Anyways, I was one of the winners!

The illustration was printed specially for the event and he was only signing that. He also wrote the name of each person in romaji, but I asked him to write my name in katakana (the rest of the people said their names to the translator, the translator wrote down the name in a paper and Nagai Go copied the name from the paper). He also shaked hands with me, but I have no photo of the moment...

This is the moment he shaked hands with the guy before me.

Since I was there, I took a few photos of the exhibitions as well:

 

An exhibition of originals of Spider-man to commemorate it's 50th anniversary. In the picture, a John Romita Sr. cover.

DC originals covering the latest revamp "New-52" were displayed as well, like this Batman from the new series drawn by Greg Capullo.

A litography in the corner dedicated to the recently late Moebius

A display of originals of Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay

 

A really nice canvas by the Spanish illustrator Luis Royo

And as usual in this kind of events, a bunch of people was cosplaying. I never take pictures to cosplays, but this time I did an exception:

A couple cosplayed as Battler and Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka

Since I'm almost over with my holidays, in the past few days I visited several places that I didn't visited until now: Nara, the Osaka Castle and yesterday I went to Takarazuka.

Takarazuka's main touristic atraction is the Takarazuka Kagekidan, an all-female musical theater with strong yuri overtones because women play both male and female roles.
Sakura Taisen series is heavily influenced by the Takarazuka Revue, as well as several shoujo manga like Ikeda Riyoko's Versailles no Bara and Shoujo Kakumei Utena.

The Takarazuka Grand Theather.

An statue near the Takarazuka Grand Theather entrance representing Oscar and André, from Versailles no Bara.

Cherry blossom on the street to Takarazuka Theather, the Hana no michi.

But the main reason for my visit to Takarazuka was Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum.
Tezuka Osamu is often called the "Father of Anime" and "the God of Manga", so as an anime and manga fan one should, at least once, make a courtesy visit to his museum.

A statue of the Phoenix from the manga Hi no Tori in the entrance.

Details on the lampost.

Concrete handprints and footprints of his most famous characters. In the photo, Atom (Astroboy).

The museum is not as cool as the Ghibli Museum and it's rather small, but I spent a good 3 hours inside.The first floor contained an elaborated reception hall with a Tezuka's self portrait in mosaic on the floor and a stained glass panel with Tezuka's characters in the ceiling. I'm not sure if it was allowed to take photos inside; except for a few places, there was no sign saying that it was prohibited but none of the visitors was taking any, so I sneakly took just a few.

Stained glass panel in the ceiling.

Painted tiles on the floor.

Also in the first floor it's the permanent exhibit, with manuscrits and originals despicting life and work of Tezuka and a screening room displaying a 20 minutes documentary about him.

The basement floor is a little animation workshop oriented toward children, so I briefly looked arround and left.

In the second floor is the temporary exhibition room, right now displaying the early works of Mushi Productions, Tezuka's animation studio, with an exhibit of settings, cels and storyboards for Tetsuwan Atom, Jungle Taitei and Ribbon no Kishi.

There is also a bunch of statues: Leo (almost not seen in the photo), Atom, BlackJack, Sapphire and the pretty much unknown in the west Sharaku and Unico:



The rest of the floor was a book display of Tezuka's first editions books, a little and expensive cafe and an also little and expensive shop.
In the shop I purchased:

A shitajiki with Sapphire from Ribbon no Kishi, Atom aka Astroboy from Tetsuwan Atom and Leo aka Kimba fom Jungle Taitei. Incidentally, those are the only Tezuka's animes that I watched; I watched the first 25 episodes from Tetsuwan Atom (the 2003 remake), and long, long ago I saw both Jungle Taitei and Ribbon no Kishi, but only vaguely recollect.
In the case of Ribbon no Kishi, I recall that the Spanish version had the most bizarre and unfitting ending of all times: an 80's styled band of girls and a retarded kid dancing and singing in an scenario, that can be viewed in YouTube. In spite of that, the song was catchy.

And a keychain. They didn't had the iconic Atom, so I picked Leo from Jungle Taitei because we share the same name.