Monthly Afternoon 40th Anniversary Exhibition at Sunshine City
Kodansha's monthly manga magazine Monthly Afternoon celebrates its 40th anniversary with a large-scale original art exhibition from July 10 to July 26, 2026, at Sunshine City Exhibition Hall A in Ikebukuro. This is the magazine's first major retrospective, gathering original artwork from the titles that defined the publication across four decades.
Advance tickets cost ¥2,200 for the regular ticket and ¥5,200 for the goods-included ticket. Same-day tickets at the door are ¥2,500 for regular and ¥5,500 for the goods-included version. The hall is open from 11:00 to 19:00, with last admission at 18:30.
From Oh My Goddess to Blue Period
The exhibition spans the magazine's full history. Early landmark titles like Oh My Goddess! and Parasyte are shown alongside current serializations including Blue Period and Medalist. The display includes original manga pages, newly drawn illustrations by contributing artists, and related sculptural pieces and production materials. Twelve artists have contributed new illustrations for the anniversary, and limited-edition goods featuring those illustrations are sold at the on-site shop.
Afternoon launched in 1986 as a companion to Weekly Shonen Magazine, aimed at an older readership. It became known for a distinct editorial line that blended genre work with literary-leaning manga, and the exhibition leans into that identity rather than presenting a simple greatest-hits lineup. The mix of classics and ongoing titles gives a sense of how the magazine's sensibility has shifted while keeping its core.
Pairing with the Hikaru no Go exhibition
The Afternoon exhibition shares Exhibition Hall A with the Hikaru no Go Original Art Exhibition, which runs on the exact same dates. The two are separately ticketed but physically adjacent, making it possible to do both in a single visit. Hikaru no Go was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump rather than Afternoon, but the pairing reflects how Ikebukuro's exhibition calendar clusters major manga retrospectives into the same window each summer.
Exhibition Hall A is on the 4th floor of the World Import Mart building. The hall is a short walk from the JR Ikebukuro Station side of Sunshine City, and 3 minutes from Higashi-Ikebukuro Station on the Yurakucho Line. The final weekend is expected to be the busiest, so weekday mornings are the quietest window.
For readers unfamiliar with the magazine, Afternoon's roster includes titles that crossed over into anime and film well beyond the manga-reading audience. Parasyte became a live-action duology, Vinland Saga became a globally streamed anime, and Blue Period became a Netflix anime about a high school student discovering painting. The exhibition's value is in showing the original manga pages behind those adaptations, which are rarely exhibited publicly because of their fragility and the logistics of sourcing them from the artists and Kodansha's archives.
Practical Details
- Dates: July 10 to July 26, 2026
- Time: 11:00 to 19:00, last admission 18:30
- Venue: Sunshine City Exhibition Hall A, World Import Mart Building 4F, 3-1 Higashi-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo
- Nearest station: Higashi-Ikebukuro Station (Yurakucho Line), 3 min walk; JR Ikebukuro Station, 8 min walk
- Price: Advance ¥2,200 regular / ¥5,200 with goods; same-day ¥2,500 regular / ¥5,500 with goods
- Website: mixalive.tokyo/afternoon_40thten
