The Knowledge Quarter is delighted to invite staff from Knowledge Quarter organisations to the next in our series of private breakfast views. It will be on this occasion hosted at House of Illustration. KQ staff and partner organisations will have the opportunity to have an exclusive last chance look at Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan; House of Illustration’s blockbuster exhibition.

About Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan

This is the UK’s first ever exhibition of architectural backdrops from classic anime films. It features over 100 original technical drawings and watercolour illustrations from some of the most influential films in the genre’s 1990s heyday, including Production I.G’s artwork for Ghost in the Shell.

These background artists were tasked with creating a universe for the director, and their fictional, future worlds reflected real-life concerns over Asia’s ruthless urban development. Their work has had a defining influence on the style of anime we think of as typical today.

“A show full of glittering, neon-lit cityscapes” says Time Out

The show includes 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 looming, faceless skyscrapers.

Takashi Watabe’s meticulously realistic style has become a hallmark of Japanese anime films as a whole. We show his pencil drawings for 2008’s sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, as well as work from Patlabor: The Movie (1989) and Metropolis (2001), by Mamoru Oshii and Atsushi Takeuchi.

Registration: Please click here to book your place.