Twenty-five years of gunfire, cigar smoke, and morally flexible pirates have earned Roanapur its own exhibition. Shogakukan and the BLACK LAGOON 25th Anniversary Executive Committee confirmed today that a BLACK LAGOON 25th Anniversary Original Art Exhibition (原画展) will run at Sunshine 60 Observatory’s Tenbo Park event space in Ikebukuro, Tokyo from 13 November to 6 December 2026.
What the BLACK LAGOON Art Exhibition Will Showcase
The exhibition is set to be the most substantial look behind the curtain of creator Rei Hiroe’s craft since the series launched. Confirmed exhibits include original manga manuscripts, full-colour illustration reproductions, and — most intriguingly — real gun props that appeared on the series’ iconic comic covers. Photo spots styled around the streets of Roanapur are also planned, giving fans a chance to step (at least visually) into the series’ fictional Southeast Asian port city.
Details on ticketing and admission prices have not yet been announced. The organisers have indicated that further information will be released through the official SundayGX channels and blacklagoon.jp, so it’s worth bookmarking both now if a Japan trip late this year is on the cards.
Twenty-Five Years in the Port City — and 10 Million Copies Sold
BLACK LAGOON began as a one-shot in 2001 before Rei Hiroe kicked off the full serialisation in Shogakukan’s Monthly Sunday GX in 2002. The series follows Dutch, Revy, Rock, and Benny — the crew of the torpedo boat Black Lagoon — running jobs out of the fictional port city of Roanapur, a place that feels pulled from the grimy, sun-bleached harbours of Southeast Asia.
That setting has never been incidental. Roanapur’s unmistakably Southeast Asian atmosphere, the multilingual criminal underworld, the sense of a city that exists just outside the reach of any government’s law — it’s a world that has always resonated particularly hard with readers in Singapore and the broader region. We’re part of the geography that inspired it, even if the city itself is fiction.
After a quarter century, the series has shipped 10 million copies worldwide. A fourteenth volume of the main manga is currently available, and two official spin-off series remain in active publication: BLACK LAGOON Eda: Initial Stage and BLACK LAGOON Sawyer the Cleaner: Dismantling! The Gore-Gore Sisters.
Dates, Venue, and How to Visit
The BLACK LAGOON 25th Anniversary Original Art Exhibition runs from Friday, 13 November to Sunday, 6 December 2026 at Sunshine 60 Observatory Tenbo Park in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. The event is organised by the BLACK LAGOON 25th Anniversary Original Art Exhibition Executive Committee, with support from TOKYO MX.
For Singapore fans already planning a Japan trip around the winter school holidays, the exhibition window slots in neatly. Ikebukuro is a straightforward stop on the Yamanote Line, and Sunshine City is well-signposted from the station’s eastern exits. Admission pricing, advance ticketing, and the full programme will be announced closer to the opening date via the official SundayGX BLACK LAGOON page (Japanese).
The announcement was first reported by Famitsu.com (Japanese) earlier today, and no English-language coverage has followed yet — making this one of those cases where checking Japanese sources first genuinely pays off for readers outside Japan.