In the year 2025, it’s admittedly hard to care about a World Expo, though I am perhaps an outlier drawn to the spectacle of national branding under the banner of bringing humanity together (all the “civilised” parts of it, anyway).
This year’s Expo was held in Osaka, which last hosted an Expo in 1970 featuring the Tower of the Sun – a singular monument I visited a few years ago that remains undefeated in weirdness and wonder. Back then the Tower of the Sun’s creator, Tarō Okamoto, filled it with a surreal vertical exhibit that depicts the evolution of life; the 2018 film Tower of the Sun suggests that Okamoto meant for his creation to challenge the Expo 70 theme “Harmony and Progress for Mankind,” because humanity hadn’t yet achieved or earned either of these things.
I think about this a lot more than I should, mostly because I have a Tower of the Sun statuette above my television, but also because the flaws of the Expo’s techno-optimistic, tomorrow-focused social attitudes have become, somehow, even further out of step with reality.
In Osaka 2025, we have Gundam and Astro Boy and Sanrio and the bafflingly endearing multi-eyed mascot Myaku-Myaku. We also have a climate change-powered heatwave, WiFi, and a lot of walking, which is arguably the hallmark of any Expo – I also murdered my feet at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, which was the largest in modern expo history. But most of all, I recognise the bewildering yet seamless mental transition between the expensive, sprawling sociopolitical circus in front of me, and the tar-coated digital one at home, where I left Sam Porter Bridges vibing in the middle of a post-Death Stranding Australia.