Over the past quarter century, manga, anime, and video games have surpassed their former status as nice hobbies. Not only have all three become extremely lucrative industries, they’ve now been such integrated parts of popular youth culture for long enough to have had a significant influence on a large portion of Japan’s adult population, too.

With that in mind, one of Tokyo’s most prestigious art museums has announced an upcoming exhibition that examines the way comics, animation, and games have been affected by, and in turn have affected, Japanese society over the past 25 years.

The rather straightforwardly named Manga * Anime * Games from Japan exhibition will be held at the National Art Center, located in Tokyo’s Nogizaka neighborhood. For the event, the museum will be specifically looking at works created since the death in 1989 of Osamu Tezuka, the Japanese comics pioneer known as the God of Manga.

Rather than take a chronological approach, though, the National Art Center has chosen to organize its subjects into the following eight categories, each dealing with a separate societal concept.

1. Contemporary Heroes and Heroines places the spotlight on iconic characters of the last 25 years, and their embodiment of ideals such as friendship, justice, and the spirit of adventure.

2. “Reality” as Depicted by Technology examines the ways in which the telecommunications revolution and spread of the Internet changed the speed and scope of sharing information, through the lens of how augmented reality, robotics, and data networks feature into the world views of fictional works plus how they facilitate computer graphics and other digital productions.

3. The Fruits of a Network Society focuses on the direct connection and feedback cycle established between media creators and users through content sharing.

4. Encounters and Gatherings: Games as “Places” highlights video gaming’s transition away from a solitary pastime to a form of group entertainment, whether through competitive or cooperative titles in which the users themselves essentially play a role in rounding out the finished product.

5. The World: A Place Where Characters Dwell deals with both characters who grow beyond the bounds of their fictional home worlds, like virtual idol Hatsune Miku, as well as real people such as professional athletes and historical figures whose existences are simulated in digital worlds.

6. The Intersection of the Ordinary and the Extraordinary explores how mixing elements of the audience’s daily life or their accustomed surroundings can create a sense of familiarity with the fictional world, giving it the weight of reality even when the story is filled with other fantastical elements.

7. A Link to Reality takes on the subject of how real world events, such as natural disasters and terrorism, have served as the catalyst for the creation of games, anime, and particularly manga, which due to its more flexible and less asset-intensive production tends to be the quickest of the three media to react to such developments.

8. Finally, The Creators’ Handiwork shows some of the methods by which the featured works were crafted.

Manga * Anime * Games from Japan is scheduled to open on June 24 and run through August 31. Adult admission is 1,000 yen (US $8.50) at the door, while college students can get in for 500 yen. Presale tickets are discounted 200 yen, and guests under 18 are free, thereby allowing teens to put more of their allowance towards the landmark manga, anime, and games coming up in the next 25 years.

Related: Manga * Anime * Games from Japan website, National Art Center website

Sources: IT Media, National Art Center

Top image: National Art Center (1, 2) (edited by RocketNews24)

Insert images: Wikia (1, 2), Blogspot