Friday, October 16, 2009

Animate (the 3rd floor -1-)

Lucky Star 1000 pieces jigsaw puzzle.

Trading cards sold in a package.

Due to their policy, they only sell anime cds.

The Detective Conan puzzle. Battery-powered handy lights and stuff.

A variety of stuffed toys.


As I promised before, I went to the 3rd floor of the Animate that is in Kashiwa city to see what they were selling. When I was much younger, like a decade ago or before, I frequented this Animate. Back then the number of people who liked anime was much smaller. There wasn't even the word "Moe" nor a super-pretty Seiyuu like Aya Hirano. And Akihabara was mainly a place where people were selling electronic devices.

Popular animes then were "Saber Marionette J", "The Slayers", " Ranma 1/2", "Blue seed", and so on, which a handful of people enjoyed back then. In '96 people were beginning to use the Internet once in a while in Japan, but there wasn't a broadband connection available for ordinary people, let alone Youtube, nor other video sites. So people overseas perhaps didn't have good means to see what was really hot in Japan or maybe they weren't simply interested in Japan itself.

And it was a bit unusual for even Japanese people to see somebody doing cosplay. From that times when anime wasn't so prevalent as now in Japan, Animate has striven to cater to the need of anime fans.