For kids growing up the 90s, no childhood was complete without the mousey-faced, rosy-cheeked Pikachu and his array of Pokemon friends who challenged fans to “catch ‘em all!”
Have you ever wondered what’s in Japan’s water to make sushi rice look mouth-watering good? That same water can also clean an amazingly dirty gyūdon bowl; but the true secret ingredient to either of these is not the water, it’s the Japanese appliances. People from nearby Asian countries fly to Japan just to get their hands on the country’s rice cookers and compact dishwashers and if they can’t take it with them by plane, they’re sure to use a buying service like FROM JAPAN to get them.
Few Japanese franchises have been as influential as Sailor Moon. As an award-winning manga, Sailor Moon helped redefine the “magical girl” genre. As an anime, the series helped to cultivate the acceptance, and popularity, of anime in the United States and around the world. Today, Sailor Moon is lauded as one of the best-selling, most recognized influences of Japanese animation in Western culture.
A star-studded array of Sailor Moon merchandise is mass produced each year to please the franchise’s enormous fanbase. We’ve compiled a list of ten of the most unique, beautiful, and popular items that every Sailor Moon fan deserves to have in their collection of memorabilia.
Fukubukuro Season in Japan is basically the equivalent of Black Friday in the United States. Starting from the day after New Years and usually lasting until January 5, stores try to get rid of products left over from the previous year, by packaging them into bags called fukubukuro and selling them at ridiculously discounted prices. Usually, the fukubukuro is sealed to prevent you from looking inside, basically making it a mystery shopping event; however, in an effort to draw more customers recently some stores have departed from the surprise aspect and now post fliers showing what’s inside. That way, the customers don’t feel like they got a raw deal. Interestingly, it seems to be working for the stores as fukubukuro are as popular as ever.
The Comic Market, or Comiket as it is more widely known, takes place twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each time. For those that are not familiar with this huge event, this article will hopefully help you understand the significance of this event for manga and anime lovers living in Japan.
At Comiket, artists of all trades sell their self-made works. These can be music CDs, figures and plushies, doujinshi, and even games. Most of these works are based on anime, manga, or specific Japanese games such as Kantai Collection or Touhou.
Despite ending its serialization in 1995, Dragon Ball continues to hold the #2 spot in best-selling manga… almost twenty years after its completion.
Carrying on the franchise’s legacy are its many anime adaptations—Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and Dragon Ball Kai—along with a variety of action figures that have continued to be released throughout the series’ span.
With literally hundreds of Dragon Ball figurines on the market, let’s take a look at some of the most rare, limited, and expensive ones available that are most worthy of a true collector’s cabinet.