The only way that you do not get old is to be curious-minded and try new things.

In Japanese, “manga” (漫畫) refers to all kinds of cartooning, comics, and animation. Among English speakers, “manga” has the stricter meaning of “Japanese comics”, in parallel to the common usage of “anime” outside Japan.

In Hong Kong, we often use “動漫” (dung maan) which combines “anime” (animation) and “manga” (comics) together as one word.

The more popular term is “ACG” (動漫遊), i.e. animation (動畫), comics (漫畫) and game (遊戲).

Japan is the leading country from which the commercial power of ACG stems. The successful ACG of Japan creates a lucrative global fan base and drives Japanese’s substantial cultural economic activity through her exports to the world of contents like films and video games, and merchandise like toys. The close connections between ACG and youngsters through storytelling and emotional engagement are beyond our imagination. Additionally, ACG is Japan’s significant driver of the “soft power”, and strengthens its cultural impacts on Hong Kong.

The new trend derived from ACG in Hong Kong is also “Cosplay” (扮裝) which is the style of dressing in costume to portray a specific character from popular cultures, such as from ACG, Cosplay is more than just being on costume; but it involves “play” element which includes acting in character, adopting mannerisms, and repeating quotes to portray the specific character.

Recently, I watched a super popular Japanese animation movie Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle (鬼滅之刃無限城篇). The movie is an adaptation from a comic book. By 2025, this manga had over 220 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. It has received critical acclaim for its art, storyline, actions, and characters.

The story is simple: a family is attacked by demons and only 2 members survive—Tanjiro and his sister Nezuko. Tanjiro sets out to become a demon slayer with the intent of seeing justice done. Of course, demons never disappear and the battles continue!

As of September 2025, the movie of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is approaching HK$90 million, making it one of the five highest-grossing animated films in Hong Kong in terms of its box office success.

The cinemas in Hong Kong are usually quiet these days. It was really a shocking delight for me to see the cinema fully packed with the young audience who were crazy about ACG. Some cosplayed the movie characters. Many said the movie saved the cinema business in Hong Kong. I like simple and minimal things. I am too old to appreciate the busyness, colourfulness, speedy tempo and violent scenes of the movie. I of course cannot expect the young ones nowadays to be fond of the old Japanese movies like Rashomon (羅生門). The world should be moving forward…

I also visited a Japanese ACG exhibition in Kai Tak called “Attack on Titan Final Exhibition” (進擊的巨人展Final). The experience was disappointing!

The story of Attack on Titan as a comic book and movie is again simple: with his hometown in ruins, young Eren Jeager was full of anger with determination to fight back against the giant Titans that threatened to destroy the human race. This ACG has been popular since 2009.

Attack on Titan became an exhibition with the first event held in Tokyo Japan in 2014. The exhibition was then made larger and extensive. It has travelled to places like Singapore and now Hong Kong.

For the exhibition in Hong Kong, there is only one big carton installation and one film screening which are relatively special. The rest are just image drawings boringly on the wall. The gift shop is also unappealing: the usual stuff of T-shirts, stationery and souvenirs. It is not worth waiting in line for more than an hour in order to enter the venue. The price is not cheap too.

It was once said that during every moment of every day, we were tripping backward while the rest of the world marched forward. Hong Kong is obviously behind in the development of her pop cultural economy, especially in relation to ACG. We surely have got some good talents and ideas. The critical obstacle is the lack of huge amounts of investment to incubate and turn these talents into lucrative world-famous ACG idols and icons!

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