The Tokyo National Museum has unveiled the centrepiece works for an exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of Final Fantasy, the role-playing game series that first appeared in 1987. Titled The World of Endless Fantasy, the show will run from 8 January to 4 April 2027 in the museum's Hyokeikan building, looking back over four decades of the franchise while pairing its imagery with masterpieces of Japanese art.

The collaboration brings together national treasures and important cultural properties from the museum's collection with characters and worlds from the games. Twelve art designers who have worked on the series across its history took part, making new works that combine the old paintings with game imagery using techniques that range from traditional woodblock printing to the latest specialist printing methods.

The most eye-catching pairing sets Hishikawa Moronobu's Beauty Looking Back, a celebrated 17th-century portrait of a woman glancing over her shoulder, against Sephiroth, the antagonist of Final Fantasy VII. Designed by Tetsuya Nomura, the work keeps the original composition and prints it on glossy satin, so that the soft texture of the historic painting and the presence of the character sit together in one image.

A second collaboration fuses Katsushika Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa with the world of Final Fantasy IX. Designed by Toshiyuki Itahana, it weaves the summon creature Leviathan into the towering wave, and was produced by contemporary painters, carvers and printers working together with traditional woodblock methods. Rather than simply placing game figures onto old pictures, the project adopts the craft of Japanese printmaking itself as part of the meeting between the two worlds.