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2025 World Expo Osaka Will Feature "Gundam Pavilion"
posted on by Kim Morrissy
Bandai Namco Holdings announced in a press release on Monday that it will display the tentatively named "Gundam Pavilion" at the 2025 World Expo in Osaka. The company also unveiled a key visual, shown below:
The company aims to use the Gundam Pavilion to demonstrate the brand's future aspirations, encourage collaborative creations, and create a link with the virtual world. It will hold a "grand demonstration experiment" in order to "solve the problems of the future society based on Mobile Suit Gundam." The press release does not specifically mention the Gundam metaverse platform, although the two projects have overlapping goals.
Expo 2025 is scheduled to take place from April 13 to October 13, 2025. This will be the second time Osaka has hosted a World Expo after Expo '70, 55 years earlier. Anime creator and director Shōji Kawamori is one of 10 co-producers of Osaka's Expo 2025. Pikachu and Hello Kitty are among the ambassadors promoting the city of Osaka during the expo.
The World Expo is held every five years and can last for up to six months in their host city. The themes of World Expos are designed to raise awareness of and find responses to universal challenges of our time. Dubai, UAE held the most recent 2020 World Expo. The BIE General Assembly postponed it to October 2021 due to the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and it concluded in March 31, 2022. The theme of the Expo was "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future."
Source: Bandai Namco Holdings press release via Crunchyroll News
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.
