Anime shopping in Tokyo

As a disclaimer, I am into Hololive so I was obviously looking more for their merch, so depending on your liking, you might find more or less stuff of your liking in different stores/area.

Akihabara

Regardless of the fact some say it is overrated, I still think it is a must. Yes, there is lot of stores all around, Radio Kaikan building, Akiba Culture Zone building and Animate are probably a good starting point, but there is so much more places, just grab a map and explore. I was personally quite happy to see a bunch of Hololive goods, like a big display of second hand merch in Lashingbang (many limited items from their official site). I also saw Hololive collab items at Kanda-myojin. I ended up buying some Pekora merch at Animate and Miko merch at a taiyaki shop where she is having a collab right now.

Nakano

While many people say it’s better than Akihabara, I did not really understand it. I feel it was mostly a Mandarake splitted in many little stores and a bunch of little niche stores that sell really specific things like Gundam, Kamen Rider, model train, etc. As for my specific interest, I barely saw any Hololive, mostly Nendoroid. Just bought nothing on that day, actually I got a rhinoceros beetle gatcha at a beetle shop where they sell live beetles, that was really cool to see and the staff showed them to me and even let me touch (if you know Hololive, you can guess that I am a Nene fan). Overall, I do not get much of the appeal of Nakano Broadway, too much retro stuff that I do not remotely care about. Not sure if I missed something.

I am writing this from Mito (went to see the plum blossom at kairakuen) and I got more anime stuff here than in Nakano. I got a Nene mini shikishi at lashingbang, a Nishizawa 5mm (Nene’s mama) doujin. They did not had much at animate and the other store was a card store.

I will go to Ikebukuro later, likely when the new Animate open, but I know there is stores spread around and they might focus more on things that female otaku like.