Guest column by Cordelia LeFay 

Recently, I went to the Kyoto International Manga Museum. Unfortunately, I have this nasty habit of walking in the exact opposite direction of where I want to go, but luckily, I found a map and corrected myself. ^_^

The museum is really nice! It is an old refurbished elementary school. And ironically, this museum is brand spanking new! It opened in November of 2006. You can visit an English version of their website here: http://www.kyotomm.com/english/

It was the last day of the International Manga Exhibition. There were tons of kids there with their parents. I got to see comics from around the world--not just manga made in other countries, (I saw the last volume of Sailor Moon in Polish! Polish!) They also had some Sailor Moon books in German that I’ve never seen before. They had comics from other countries--from America they had comics of Peanuts, X-men, Superman etc. I even recognized some of the French comics they had (Asterix, Chat et Rabin). I even spotted some American manga--volume 3 of Megatokyo. Unfortunately, I couldn't read any of text of the displays, but that was ok, I will still excited to be there.

The museum is mainly a library, but they had a few other things like "resident manga-ka.” There were two women who were working on their manga behind glass so you could watch them work. They had a reading room solely for kids and their parents, an "animation" room where you could give characters different outfits and characterists. They also had some type of speaker, a history room with information of the old school, and a tatami room.

I was also on a mission to find the original Sailor Moon manga, and after asking some helpers, I finally found it! It was really neat to see the original comics. Since I was in the Naoko Takeuchi section, I was also able to browse through her other works. You can really see how her art developed over the years. It's amazing to see how she used the same character designs for different characters. For example, the main character in Miss Rain looks exactly like Ami. The main girl in that story about an ice skater looks like Usagi except she's got hair like Kirsten (from the American Girl stories). The male lead in Maria looks exactly like Mamoru.

All and all, the Kyoto International Manga Museum sounds like a unique endeavor. Their mission is to preserve and study manga. Their next exhibition is devoted to, not surprisingly, the Gundam phenomenon. You can help support the museum by donating manga, please see their website for more details. In the future, I hope to see more translated manga there as well as more Original English Manga. Let’s show them how Japanese manga is changing the world!