Expelled from Paradise sequel maps Japan in 47 visuals

The sequel to Expelled from Paradise has begun a campaign that will cover the whole of Japan, one prefecture at a time. On 29 September the film's official site started publishing a run of 47 visuals, each pairing a landmark from a single prefecture with a character from the film. Hokkaido went first, with a figure in a white suit posed in front of the Sapporo Factory, the 19th-century brewery whose brick kiln and glass atrium now house shops and a beer hall.

The rollout follows a Kyoto visual shown at Kyomafu 2026, the Kyoto International Manga and Anime Fair, and it is tied to a nationwide Japanese opening. Every entry credits the local partner that helped make it, so the artwork is doing the work of a tourism collaboration as much as a poster.

What the film actually is

Rakuen Tsuiho: Kokoro no Resonance opens in Japan on 13 November 2026. It is the sequel to Expelled from Paradise, reunites director Seiji Mizushima with writer Gen Urobuchi, the pair behind the 2014 original, and continues the story past it.

The prefecture visuals are the loudest part of a build-up that has been running for weeks. A Lucrea figure of Gabriel was confirmed on 26 September, and the film's site marked a 2014-to-2026 support illustration on 19 September. The Kyoto image from Kyomafu set the template that Hokkaido and the remaining prefectures now follow.

Forty-seven images is a plan, not a poster

Publishing local artwork one prefecture at a time gives the campaign a reason to post every week for the rest of the run, and it spreads the film into regional cinemas that rarely get a marketing budget of their own. A visual anchored to a landmark people walk past on a Sunday is something a small exhibitor can put in a lobby.

Our opinion

Selling a film region by region rather than shouting from Tokyo is a genuinely clever bit of marketing, because it gives 47 separate local news stories a reason to exist without the studio writing 47 press releases. The bigger problem is the one the campaign cannot solve: a sequel arriving twelve years after Expelled from Paradise has to introduce itself to an audience that was in primary school when the first film came out.

Which is why the prefectures are the easy part. A landmark plus a character is a template, and by the twentieth entry the novelty will be carrying the whole thing unless each illustration finds something specific to say about its patch of Japan. Mizushima and Urobuchi's first collaboration was a lean, argumentative science-fiction film about digital utopias and physical bodies, and a sequel that leans on regional charm instead of that argument will have traded away its best asset for a nice poster campaign.