CULTURE: Inio Asano Art Exhibition 2019

A short photo essay from the Ctril+T2 exhibition of Inio Asano's work in Ikebukuro, January 2019

Jocelyne Allen (left) and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher (right) at the Inio Asano Exhibition.

This week on the Mangasplaining Podcast, we’re talking about our first book from mangaka Inio Asano, Goodnight PunPun. It reminded me that allll the way back in January 2019, myself, my husband Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, and our pal translator/interpreter Jocelyne Allen went to check out the exhibition of Inio Asano’s manga works. Called Ctrl+T2, it was named after the then just-released artbook of Asano’s work, the second such tome showing his manga art, illustration, sketches, and behind the scenes material.

That’s it on the bottom there. It’s still in print and available from reputable sellers, and whether you’re a fan of Asano’s work or just really great art books in general, I can strongly recommend it. It’ll give you a taste of the originals contained in the exhibition (there were tons!) and also it goes behind the scenes a little bit into how he creates his manga.

We’re making this a free-for-everyone post, but maybe you’ll consider subscribing to get future cool posts delivered right to you? If you get a paid subscription, we have a bunch of very interesting manga coming up soon too that we think you’ll like! :D

I do need to say: The exhibition itself was held in a very weird ‘swing' space, or event space, in the World Import Mart Building behind Ikebukuro’s Sunshine 60 Mall complex. I also saw a Yoshitaka Amano show there a year later, fwiw. But anyway, because of the slightly weird space, the work was mounted and framed with some pretty reflective materials, and then lit like a Walmart, and so unfortunately most of the photos of original art didn’t turn out very well, with lots of reflections/distortions. Maybe worth getting the book for clear photos of those, lol. But it really was an interesting exhibition (I hope I get to see another one some day), and I definitely was able to capture the ‘flavour’ of it in the photos that follow. Enjoy

- Christopher

The exhibition was broken up into sections around Asano’s publishing catalogue. Early works, like these short story collections, got much less space.

Interesting to see him doing physical art for all elements, but drawing complex backgrounds and characters separately and compositing it afterwards.

I thought this was a neat presentation of a bunch of his sketches and character designs.

Solanin is where I started to become more familiar with the work on offer. Interesting to see him go back and draw the two leads in his ‘current’ (for 2019) style from Dead Dead Demons.

These pages from the new Solanin Epilogue.

This look at Asano’s process using photo paste-ups and layouts is really interesting to me…

Andrew and a frog, ostensibly from Solanin.

Then we get into Goodnight PunPun territory.

Terrible teachers (left) and your brain coming out your wiener (middle). It’s a hell of a series. I love that lettering though…! Also this is one of the LESS reflective photos. Lol.

Spoilers if you zoom in.

The Aiko memory-cave section… PunPun is Asano’s most popular work, and they devoted a ton of space and time to it in the exhibition, including some of these more interesting desgins and spaces.

This was roughly 2 metres (6 feet) wide. Lol. Perfect selfie spot, can’t believe I missed taking one.

They also had a spot where you could sit on a Park Bench with a really gorgeous little PunPun statue and snap a pic. I wonder if Asano got to keep that? ;)

On to the next work, and what’s behind this image? Why it’s Girl on the Shore, a manga about being a young person and dealing with sex and a whole bunch of other stuff that is uncomfortable. In print in English from Vertical Inc.

A selection of ‘tame’ pages were included on the exterior of this section, but you needed to go through the adults-only curtain to see the more mature artwork. I’ve seen this used at a few exhibitions in Japan, including one for Natsume Ono, who makes ‘regular’ comics and also BL Comics, with the BL behind the curtain. Anyway, no pictures behind the cuttain.

You can enjoy this page though!

The end of the exhibition was reserved for Asano’s most recent work, including the ultra-colourful and ‘busy’ illustrations of Dead Dead Demons DeDeDeDe Destruction.

The end of the exhibition had a few displays of more recent works. Here are some pages from Downfall, which was released into English from VIZ Media.

I don’t know what’s up with this exactly, but Asano did a short-story about nude old people sort of laying around Tokyo? I bet it’s fascinating but I couldn’t tell you what’s going on.

The last bits of art in the exhibition were these pieces that were the llustrations created for the exhibition! I wonder if they’ll be the illustrations that kick off Ctrl+T3?

At the end, attendees were invited to sign the wall! Pretty cool! :D

And that was the Ctrl+T2 exhibition by Inio Asano! We hope y…

Just kidding. Of course there was a Gift Shop.

There were a ton of goods on sale, including these towels and clear-files featuring Inio Asano’s artwork.

But my favourite may have been these Dead Dead Demoms Dededede Destruction character cookies, with a super-cool box. I have no way of getting this kind of stuff home without destroying it.

They had more towels and blankets too, including these full-colour-print ones. I think these were sold out though?

And as mentioned up top, literally all of his books were there too, pretty cool.

So actually THAT;s our little walk through the Inio Asano Ctrl+T2 exhibition from January, 2019. We hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to Jocelyne and Andrew for being models for the photos. :)

Of course I had to get a picture with PunPun. Poor kid.