Animate Girls Festival 2026 First Visit Guide
Plan AGF in Ikebukuro on November 7–8: main-hall tickets versus stage viewing, face-photo requirements, prices and a Japanese fan’s experience.
The archive
Anime & Manga
Browse anime & manga in the Akihabara archive.
Nuikatsu Explained: Why Fans Take Plushies Out
What is nuikatsu? Explore Japan’s plush-companion hobby through Japanese fan experiences, creative choices and practical tips for a first outing.
Ikebukuro Halloween 2026: A First-Timer’s Cosplay Guide
Choose how to enjoy Ikebukuro Halloween 2026: watching, cosplay or photography, with checked ticket rules and Japanese participants’ experiences.
Shojo Manga Infinity in Tokyo: Three Artists, Original Pages
Meet Moto Hagio, Ryoko Yamagishi and Waki Yamato through Tokyo’s Shojo Manga Infinity exhibition: original artwork, Japanese perspectives and visitor details.
Machi★Asobi 2026: Tokushima’s Town-Wide Anime Festival
Explore Tokushima’s town-wide anime festival through its October 2026 programme and Japanese fan perspectives. Main festival dates have passed.
Japan’s Cheering Screenings: Why Fans Go and What to Expect
Discover Japan’s cheering screenings, why fans join in, what Japanese viewers love or dislike, and how to enjoy your first visit without knowing every call.
Hayao Miyazaki Prepares to Cast One Last Spell
“I believe that the tool of an animator is the pencil,” he tells me. (We speak through an interpreter, Yuriko Banno.) Japanese pencils are particularly good, he notes: The graphite is delicate and re…
This New Pokémon Card Shop Is Claiming To Be the Largest in the World
Tokyo‘s Akihabara district is now reportedly home to the largest Pokémon card store in the world. The Pokémon Card Specialty Shop Hareyua 2 first opened this summer and claims to not only have the bi…
Ghibli Rebooted: Studio Goes 3D for New Movie “Earwig and the Witch”
Studio Ghibli will soon release Earwig and the Witch, a new venture into 3D CG animation, that will make its debut on Japanese television. While Miyazaki Hayao works on what is likely to be his last …
This AI-Algorithm Generated 3,000 New Pokémon
Becoming a Pokémon trainer takes on a new meaning in this project for generating new pocket monsters using a machine learning algorithm. Matthew Rayfield, a programmer who makes mobile and web…
AI Generated Pokemon Sprites with GPT-2
Training GPT-2 with a bunch of text is super easy. The trickiest part was writing code to manage those results into something usable. My "generation" code does this. In this way it…
Tokiwa-sō, Legendary Manga Incubator, Restored for Fans
Tokiwa-sō is a boarding house where a number of aspiring young manga artists, led by the famed Tezuka Osamu (creator of “Astro Boy”), roomed in the 1960s. Chronicled in their works, Tokiwa-…
Big in Japan: giant Gundam robot makes its first moves in Yokohama
It stands just over 18 metres tall and weighs 25 tonnes. And, after years of painstaking work, a life-size Japanese Gundam robot has just proved to its legions of fans that it really can move.…
Revamped "Gundam" theme cafe opens in Tokyo's Akihabara district
A bigger and more immersive version of a themed facility based on the popular Japanese science fiction anime "Mobile Suit Gundam" has opened in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district.
Size matters: Gundam Cafe Akihabara to get four times larger
The Gundam Cafe that opened at the Canal City Hakata commercial complex in Fukuoka's Hakata Ward in November (Asahi Shimbun file photo) Gundam fans brace for impact. Japan's very first…
Hatsune Miku for Nintendo Switch: Project DIVA Mega Mix | Gameplay Trailer
Hatsune Miku’s Nintendo Switch debut is just around the corner! Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix launches exclusively in digital format on Nintendo Switch on May 15, 2020. Check out a new tra…