Shop ‘till you drop unfortunately becomes shop ‘till you get arrested.

As any hard-core fan can tell you, anime and manga can be a pricey hobby. Sure, the proliferation of video streaming services and digital reader apps mean the content itself is much more affordable than it used to be, but the modern otaku merchandising industry is more robust than ever, with an endless flow of figures, plushies, character standees, and more for fans to covet.

This brings us to a 32-year-old restaurant worker living in Osaka’s Kita Ward, who, in a statement to the police, said “I like anime,” and has the numerical data to back it up. Over a roughly two-year period beginning around October of 2023, she ordered more than 4.3 billion yen (US$27 million) worth of items from manga publisher Shueisha’s Jump Character Store. If you’re wondering how she managed to pay for all that merch on what’s assumedly a modest food service worker’s salary, the answer is that she didn’t.

That’s not to say that the woman, Mayu Yoshida, stole anything. Instead, she placed the orders but never paid for, or took delivery of, the items. She did this through two methods, the first of which involved exploiting Japan’s convenience store prepayment system. For shoppers who either don’t have a credit card or don’t want to carry a balance on it, many online retailers in Japan allow customers to place an order but pay for it at a convenience store, with the seller shipping the item once payment has been confirmed. There’s a limit, though, to how much time is allowed to pass between the order’s placement and payment, after which the order will be cancelled. So Yoshida would order figures, key chains, and other items through the Jump Character Shop, select the convenience store prepayment method, and just never actually go to pay for them. Between 2024 and 2025, she placed orders with a total bill of over 4.3 billion yen this way.

Her second strategy was to order items from the Jump Character Shop and select the cash-on-delivery payment method, wherein the recipient renders payment to the delivery person. In these instances, Yoshida would refuse delivery, and therefore not pay for, the things she’d ordered. It’s unclear what the total value was for the orders she refused delivery of, but you have to wonder if any delivery person got tired of coming to her house again and again.

▼ Please, ma’am, I’m begging you, pay for this one.

As a major online retailer, the Jump Character Store likely has protocols in place to flag orders from shoppers who habitually cancel or refuse delivery of their orders, but Yoshida got around these safeguards by creating 238 different customer accounts and hopping from one to another.

However, just because she wasn’t keeping any of the items without paying for them doesn’t make this a no-harm, no-foul situation. By not paying for the COD items, she also wasn’t paying for the shipping charges, leaving Shueisha with a cumulative bill of approximately 7.5 million yen in fees for items sent to her which then had to be returned. There’re also restocking and order-processing costs involved, all of which were enough for the police to arrest Yoshida on charges of fraudulent obstruction of business, which she has admitted to, on August 4.

The repeated targeting of the Jump Character Store might make it seem like she has a bone to pick with the manga magazine or its publisher, but that’s actually not the case. “I have been feeling stressed from daily life, and I felt a sense of satisfaction and refreshment from ordering items before they sold out,” said Yoshida following her arrest. “I do not have any resentment towards Shueisha.”

A particularly bittersweet aspect to the situation is that Yoshida had previously been a legitimate paying customer with the Jump Character Store, placing her first order in the fall of 2018. Hopefully once her legal situation is sorted out she’ll be able to return to a more responsible form of fandom.

Sources: FNN Prime Online, Jiji, Yomiuri Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Pakutaso
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