Where Iconic IP Meets Contemporary Art
Inaugural Edition: Buichi Terasawa’s COBRA × Kosuke Kawamura
About the Project
Toei Video Co., Ltd. and TANGLE Inc. are proud to announce the launch of the ReVIBES Project — a bold new initiative at the intersection of cultural legacy and contemporary art.
ReVIBES exists to reinterpret the most iconic works in manga, anime, and gaming through collaboration with some of today’s most compelling artists. These are not reproductions or nostalgia plays. They are genuinely new works — each one a dialogue between the world’s most beloved intellectual properties and a living creative voice.
Japanese pop culture is undergoing a global reappraisal. Across museums, galleries, and auction houses, the boundaries between ‘entertainment’ and ‘art’ are being actively renegotiated. ReVIBES enters this moment with a clear intention: to position Japan’s most powerful IPs as contemporary art objects, and to introduce them to audiences who may never have encountered the originals — collectors, curators, and a new generation of culturally curious viewers worldwide.
The works announced here represent the inaugural edition of the ReVIBES Project — foundational pieces that stake out an entirely new artistic category and establish an early presence within it.
ReVIBES will actively pursue partnerships with international galleries, global auction platforms, and artists from around the world, building what it intends to become a significant and ongoing artistic movement originating from Japan.
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Official Website
https://revibes-art.com/
Inaugural Collaboration: COBRA × Kosuke Kawamura
The first ReVIBES edition brings together two iconic creative worlds:
Buichi Terasawa
A student of Osamu Tezuka, Terasawa began serialising COBRA in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1978. He went on to become a pioneer of digital manga — coining the very term — and opened entirely new frontiers in sequential art. His influence on the medium is immeasurable.
COBRA
A landmark sci-fi action saga, COBRA has been published in over a dozen countries and remains one of the most globally recognised and genuinely loved works in Japanese comics history. Its visual language — bold, cinematic, and unmistakably of its era — makes it a remarkable canvas for contemporary reinterpretation.
Kosuke Kawamura
One of Japan’s most internationally acclaimed collage artists, Kawamura works fluidly across art, fashion, music, and advertising. His practice is defined by a meticulous eye for composition and an instinct for transforming source material into something entirely new. With a substantial body of work both in Japan and globally, Kawamura brings a perspective to COBRA that is both deeply personal and rigorously contemporary.
The Works
Left: Collage Art / Right: Shredder Art
Working directly with original COBRA artwork, Kawamura has produced two distinct series that each bear his unmistakable signature — while finding their own distinct visual territory.
Collage Art
A collage work featuring a rich selection of characters from Cobra. Finished with a mirrored surface treatment, the piece changes its appearance depending on the viewing angle.
Kawamura on the work:
“If you add too much, it becomes overwhelming. Too little, and it loses interest. The moment everything converged into the hair, it clicked — and created a strong impact as a large-scale work.”
Shredder Art
Kawamura’s signature shredder technique is applied here across aluminium canvas and acrylic panel, with the acrylic layer suspended above the surface to create a physically layered structure within an ostensibly flat work. The result is a piece that rewards close looking — depth emerging from what appears, at a distance, to be a bold graphic image.
Kawamura on the work:
“From nearly 100 original COBRA drawings, I selected images that could stand as a strong poster. By applying my shredder technique, I pursued a visual expression that felt even more compelling.”
| Edition Details:
・Collage Art: approx. 1,206 × 938 mm
|
Exhibition & Auction
Courtesy of SBI Art Auction
In partnership with SBI Art Auction, a registration-based auction will be held in Tokyo and online. The first release editions — one work per type — will be offered through this event.
Full details on participation and the exhibition programme will be announced via the official website.
* Edition 2/3 sales schedule is to be confirmed.
* In the event of excess applications, participants will be selected by lottery.
* Online bidding is available.
What Comes Next
ReVIBES is already developing its second phase, with new IP × artist collaborations currently in preparation. Artist selection and IP curation are underway, with the intention of introducing perspectives and expressions that are deliberately distinct from the inaugural edition.
ReVIBES will continue presenting Japanese IP as living cultural assets — repositioning them within a global contemporary art context and exploring the possibilities that emerge when legacy meets the present tense.
Further announcements will be made in due course.
Words from the Project Leaders
Rintaro Shimatani — Toei Video Co., Ltd.
Buichi Terasawa was a pioneer of digital manga. Without his contribution, Japanese manga might not have evolved as it has today.
Even in a country as rich in iconic works as Japan, masterpieces risk being buried over time. But when they are transformed into something new, their potential expands — reaching audiences that were previously beyond reach.
We are sincerely grateful to the legacy of Buichi Terasawa and to Kosuke Kawamura for bringing this vision to life. We will continue working to bring these works to as many people as possible, across generations and across borders.
Hiroto Munakata — CEO, TANGLE Inc.
ReVIBES is a challenge to the existing structure in which IP is consumed until its value becomes fixed and assumed.
Many of the works we love as popular entertainment have potential far beyond what has yet been realised. We launched this project to reinterpret Japanese IP through a contemporary lens — not to revive it, but to reconstruct its value, and to connect it with global audiences through the language of contemporary art.
This is not a revival. It is a reconstruction — and a new attempt to establish manga, anime, and games as cultural assets capable of expanding their reach and meaning worldwide.
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