The color catalog of the International Cartoon Festival in Saitama 2024, Japan

Received yesterday the color catalog of the International Cartoon Festival in Saitama, Japan. It was the 34th year of the festival in 2024. I participated in the event with two cartoons of mine, one titled "Here you are!" on the theme of UCHU which means "The Universe" and the second one of Free theme. Works on both themes by 40 Japanese and 39 foreign artists are included in the catalog of the exhibition that took place at Plaza North in November 2024. 

Saitama City is the place where Rakuten Kitazawa - the father of modern cartoon in Japan - spent his later years. The Saitama Municipal Cartoon Art Musem in the home to Kitazawa in his later years hold the Saitama-City Rakuten-Kitazawa Manga Awards competition each year. In 2024 they held the 39th edition and the winning cartoons are included in this collection book of "The Best Cartoons of Nippon" which are also displayed on the museum website here.

The standard A4-sized (21x29.7 cm) catalog of "The Best Cartoons of Nippon 2024" has almost 100 pages, about 70 of them covering the color and the monochrome cartoons participated in the festival and selected for the catalog. The remaining pages are the lists of the Japanese and the Foreign artists with their personal histories in both Japanese and English. With this perfectly designed book of art in hand, it is possible to compare the style and wit of the native and overseas manga/cartoon artists and enjoy the great humour in their works.

From Turkey are published the works of the following cartoonists in the catalog: Aşkın Ayrancıoğlu, Erdoğan Başol, Kamil Yavuz, Kemal Özyurt, Muammer Kotbaş, Musa Gümüş, Oğuz Gürel, Seyit Saatçi, and Hüseyin Çakmak from Cyprus.

Thank you to the festival organizers and the staff of Plaza North who sent me this great collection of manga/cartoon art.