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London SF Anime Exhibition Begins Today, Talk This Evening

An exhibition entitled "Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan" will run at London's House of Illustration gallery near King's Cross St Pancras Station (directions), from today to September 10. Tickets can be bought at the above link.

(The tickets also cover other exhibitions running at the gallery at the same time, such as an exhibit of bird drawings by the British illustrator Quentin Blake.)

There will also be a talk about the "Anime Architecture" exhibition this evening (Friday May 26 from 6.30 p.m.to 7.30 p.m.), delivered by its curator Stefan Riekeles. Tickets for the talk, which also cover entry to the exhibition, are available here.

From the website:

This is the UK's first ever exhibition of handmade background illustrations for classic sci-fi anime films. It will feature drawings and paintings from some of the most influential productions in the genre's 1990s heyday, including Production I.G's phenomenally influential 1995 film Ghost in the Shell.

The show will include Hiromasa Ogura's watercolour paintings for Ghost in the Shell, an anime epic that informed pioneering sci-fi works such as The Matrix and Avatar. Inspired by Asia's emerging megacities and based on photographs of Hong Kong, Ogura's work depicts the striking contrast between a derelict Chinese town and ruthless urban development.

Pencil drawings by Takashi Watabe – one of the most important Japanese illustrators of his generation – for 2008's sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence will also feature. His meticulously realistic style has become a hallmark of Japanese anime films as a whole.

The exhibition will also include work from Patlabor: The Movie (1989) and Metropolis (2001), by Mamoru Oshii and Atsushi Takeuchi.

The exhibit includes explanatory captions and a video screen showing scenes from the final anime films.