Chiba Days #4 - Animate Matsudo

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for another installment of Chiba Days. Located just a stone's throw away from the Matsudo Station, today, we will be taking a look at Animate's branch in Matsudo. 

The store itself is located in the basement floor of Tokyo Gulliver, a three-story arcade. Upon entering Tokyo Gulliver, you would immediately spot the route towards Animate from all the anime posters pasted on the stairwell leading to the basement. 

While the basement itself can be pretty dimly lit, the entrance to the shop is clean and bright welcoming all visitors. Before one even enters the shop, there is a whole host of merchandise to peruse such as several gachapon machines and the latest magazine releases. 

Any self-respecting anime/manga shop would have its coveted wall of pre-orders and Animate Matsudo is no different. All you have to do is grab a ticket from the holder on the wall, head to the cashier and complete your pre-order.

Animate Matsudo was a fairly small shop with every possible square inch of space devoted to merchandise. Unlike other Animate(s) that I have visited in the past, the Matsudo outlet seemed to focus more on manga. This could very much be indicative of the customer base in Matsudo. 

Merchandise such as clear files, straps and charms were the most apparent. Many series were now promoting their Halloween series which had characters dress up in various themed costumes. 

Hatsune Miku is celebrating her 10th anniversary this year.

Aside from Miku, there were merchandise of the other vocaloids too.

Just like the other series, the vocaloids are now in Halloween guise too.

Aside from the manga and trinkets, Animate Matsuod also has a large section dedicated to CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Another popular idol series is Love Live Sunshine and it had no shortage of merchandise too.

Dia in her pajamas and the last one too. I have a feeling one of our writers would be rather keen on this.

Before I left the shop, I made sure to take a photo of all the gashapon machines lined up outside. It is not the most I have ever seen in a row but, with the limited space available, it was certainly impressive.

Located right next to Animate was the Tokyo Gulliver arcade. While I have briefly walked through, I will make sure to write a full feature in the future.

With that, I will leave you all with a photo of this Kizumonogatari gashapon machine. It has been a while since I have seen the Mini Capsule Station which needs only 200 Yen instead of the usual 300 Yen and above. Shows what you can never expect to find outside of the big city. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!