Tokyo Motor Show is one of the world's most important biennial automotive exhibitions, and I get to see them all. It attracts everyone who's anyone in the motoring industry, drawing phenomenal crowds — 1,4525,800 people over 17 days from Oct. 26 to Nov. 11. And more than any other car show in the world, with Tokyo's, it's "Showtime!" Young girls present the latest creations in the cathedral of the automobile; borderline ridiculous, but in Japan — the home of manga — the overt is preferred to subtlety.

But where were the big non-Japanese international car manufacturers this year? Discrete, so much so that it was disquieting. Only Audi presented a concept with any acuity — the next A1. This minicar is remarkably well-executed, even for Audi, with the exception of the unfortunate Peugeot-style front overhang. BMW and Mercedes didn't show us anything we haven't already seen. It was as though they had run out of steam (or used up their budgets) at the Frankfurt Motor Show a few weeks earlier.

Tokyo's show, usually a formal demonstration of unbridled creativity, took a new direction this year: global warming forcing a new vision with relation to consumption; manga expanding its vocabulary. All manufacturers announced their electric vehicles for 2010, as well as their second-generation rechargeable hybrids. It was a signature Japanese response to the less high-tech, more pragmatic European example. Tokyo, usually carefree and fun, became serious — and, to tell the truth, a little boring. Of course, it was all still dressed up as youth in a miniskirt, but the heart had gone out of it. A certain dull sheen crept over the optimism.