Kadokawa's Immersive Anime Show

Kadokawa Musashino Museum opens an immersive “Galaxy Express 999” show on April 25, turning the 1979 anime film into a walk-through projection experience in Saitama. (kadcul.com) The exhibition, titled “Galaxy Express 999 THE GALAXY EXPERIENCE: The Journey Goes On,” runs through October 26, 2026, in the museum’s roughly 1,000-square-meter Grand Gallery. The museum says visitors will move through a 30-minute audiovisual program as passengers on the 999, with screenings starting at 10:10 a.m. and repeating through 5:30 p.m. (kadcul.com) Kadokawa says it installed 32 new 4K laser projectors for the show and added three-dimensional surround sound. Composer Kenji Kawai wrote new music for the exhibition, and the finale uses Godiego’s “Galaxy Express 999.” (kadcul.com) The display does not stop at video walls. The museum says visitors will enter through a railway-car foyer, then walk a 25-meter track-lined passage and into a section with production materials and setting documents from the film. (kadcul.com) “Galaxy Express 999” is one of Japan’s best-known science-fiction anime properties, adapted from Leiji Matsumoto’s manga into a 1979 film directed by Rintaro. Kadokawa frames the new show as an expansion of that movie “as space,” rather than a conventional screening. (kadcul.com) The exhibition also extends a format the museum has been using for other large-scale digital shows. Kadokawa’s English-language site says the venue has already staged immersive audiovisual exhibitions built around artists including Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, alongside the 2025-26 “Ukiyo-e RE:BORN” program. (kadcul.com) Kadokawa Musashino Museum is part of Tokorozawa Sakura Town, a pop-culture complex run by Kadokawa Corp. and the Kadokawa Culture Promotion Foundation. Japan’s national tourism organization describes the site as a “Cool Japan” hub with a museum, hotel, shrine, shops and restaurants. (japan.travel) The museum itself opened in 2020 as Kadokawa’s flagship cultural venue in Tokorozawa. Its official site describes it as a hybrid of museum, library and event space, with projection-mapped installations already built into its programming. (kadcul.com ) For Kadokawa, the new show puts one of anime’s most durable titles into the same immersive format museums and cultural venues have been using to sell longer visits, timed entries and merchandise. For visitors, the next departure is Saturday, April 25. (kadcul.com)