Love Live x Atre Akihabara Exhibition

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale. Having completed my trip in Nagoya, it was time for me to return back home via Tokyo but, not before making a quick pit stop at Akihabara. Fortunately, I had a whole day at hand prior to my flight out later at night. This meant I was fortunate enough to attend the Love Live Exhibition that was being held at Atre Akihabara in conjunction with Love Live's upcoming 9th anniversary celebration.

The Love Live x Atre Akihabara exhibition was a month long exhibition held in the small shopping complex adjacent to the main JR Akihabara station. Held throughout the month of November 2019 from the 1st till the 30th, I barely just made it on the 28th. Fortunately, Atre Akihabara was fairly easy to find as all you would have to do is exit the Akihabara station from the Electric Town Exit and you would be greeted with Atre right in front of you from the moment you leave the ticket gate. This particular Atre is often the spot for many anime collaborations and exhibitions and this time around, it just happened to be Love Live.

From the Electric Town exit, straight into Atre and up onto the third floor where the temporary exhibitions are held. Located roughly in the center of the third floor, you will then be greeted by a booth full of Love Live merchandise including several which were exclusive to this event. 

Because of the nature of the event and the size of exhibition floor, the items on sale were mostly limited to smaller memorabilia-type items such as clear files, charms and lanyards. While they did not have any bigger ticket items such as figures or plush toys, there were still a fair number of event exclusive merchandise on sale. Moreover, the other little Love Live memorabilia on sale were fairly special finds themselves too.

Take for example, this Love Live Sunshine Smart Card Case. Both a combination of a lanyard and a smart card holder (think RFID security passes or IC cards), these sort of trinkets are hugely popular among collectors. Case in point, I still have my Cospa Tomoe Mami pass case which has kept my IC card safe and secure throughout all these years. One of our writers here on Tiro Finale, Takuya, has been looking for just the thing for the past several months now.

Another corner of merchandise which caught my intrigue were these Love Live Sunshine hoodies and sweaters. Rarely found in stores, these apparel are usually best found via pre-order or, if you are really lucky, from re-sellers with an apparel section such as Lashinbang. Seeing the entire series here featuring each individual character's jacket makes for a total of 18 different types (2 for each member of Aqours) which made for quite the sight indeed. Unfortunately, as we are about to find out, there is a good reason these merchandise are not often found on display in stores.

At a retail price of 6,480 Yen, these jackets do run a little steep and compared to the significantly cheaper trinkets on sale, they are not exactly flying off the shelves. Even our die-hard Dia fan, Takuya, was hard pressed to part with that much of his hard earned coin simply for a Dia jacket. Though, I will admit the design is pretty good with the grey on black design.

Between the third yeas, the only difference in design were the accent colors which actually made them fairly wearable on a day to day basis. My favorite design that I singled out was Mari's, the purple accents add a nice touch to the design without clashing too much with the other colors on the jacket. Nevertheless, I was not quite ready to part with 6,000 Yen seeing as how I already had more than enough jackets in my closet at this point.

When it comes to the event exclusive merchandise, there were the acrylic character stands depicting the members of Aqours in the princess/fairy tale outfits that were made specifically for this exhibition. Each one cost 2,460 Yen and, despite the high price, were a very popular choice among attendees. For a cheaper alternative, there were also clear files featuring the same outfits at a much cheaper price point.

Another very popular event exclusive item, were these acrylic charms which featured character designs from all three generations of Love Live groups thus far. They cost 500 Yen each and each customer was limited to buying 10 from each series. Unfortunately, these charms were kept behind blind packets. As such there was no way of really knowing what you would be getting.

Fortunately, they were kind enough to split it into each series which, I suppose, does improve your odds by three fold. I am not much a fan of getting blind/sealed goods but, at the same time I did not quite want to leave empty handed and this seemed to be the only Muse merchandise that the exhibition had on sale.

In the end, I decided to go with two charms for Aqours and two for Muse. I figured it would be a good activity to do with my fellow writers when I got back. In the end, if memory serves me right, I got Maki and Nico for Muse while, Aqours were Kanan and You. Not exactly any of our favorite characters but, such is the nature of sealed blind goods. You win some, you lose some.

At the checkout, my total summed up to 2,138 Yen (taxes and all) which made me eligible for two Aqours foil cards. Now for the life of me, I cannot seem to recall which of the two members I received. I will have to look back through my stash and see what I managed to get. With that, we were pretty much done with the exhibition right?

Well, not quite as Atre was nice enough to set up these large sized cardboard cutouts of all nine members of Aqours in their event exclusive outfits. The third years were located on the third floor somewhere further in past the exhibition itself.

The second years, on the second floor. They were fairly easy to find too located near a floor guide and right in front of a wall.

Lastly, the first years were located in, you guessed it, the first floor. Despite that, I actually had quite a bit of difficulty finding the first years because the first floor was by far the most densely packed floor both in terms of shoppers and stores. 

I did find it rather amusing that Atre Akihabara is also the home of an Idolmaster Shop. I took a quick glance at the Idolmaster Shop but my passing knowledge of Idolmaster meant I was not able to appreciate much of what was being sold there. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out especially if you are a fan of the series and happen to be visiting Akihabara sometime soon.

On my way out, I was greeted with a large poster reminding shoppers about the ongoing Sega Collaboration Cafe with Love Live All Stars, I have never attended any of these collaboration cafes in the past before and it would surely be nice to attend one in the future.

From end to end, the entire exhibition took a little under an hour and that was with me scrutinizing every little merchandise they had on sale. While small, it certainly was a unique experience and catching pop up stores like these are always worth your time for both the exclusive merchandise and the fact that you never know what you may find. With just a few more hours on hand, there was still some time left for me to go through Akihabara and which store did I go to with just a few short hours on hand? Well, stay tuned to Tiro Finale to find out as we will be exploring that in next week's article. Until then, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!