For a relatively young band, BABYMETAL has lost no time in spreading their music around the world with festival appearances, adorable videos, and endorsements by numerous metal icons. Sadly, they can’t be in every city every day, so your chances of actually seeing the group perform may be kind of low. However, thanks to Funko, you no longer have to wait until their tour pass through your town for a chance to see the fox god devotees. Soon, you’ll be able to buy the whole group and keep them on your shelf!
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Bandai’s S.H.Figuarts line has released several figures from the Super Mario video game series: Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and important items from the games like pipes, blocks and coins. Its latest figures expand the collection with iconic enemy characters: a Hammer Bro, Lakitu and Spiny.
Japanese gachapon machines aren’t just for kids, if the success of recent mega-popular plastic toys like Cup no Fuchiko and cup-clinging hamsters have recently proven. Perhaps there’s something about hanging a little character on your morning cup of joe that appeals to the kid inside us that is nevertheless forced to be an adult in a harsh and unforgiving world (which often requires caffeine.)
However, the most recent cup-clinging curio on the gachapon market has us feeling both hungry and creeped out in equal measure. Meet Dumpling Head Man!
Recently, we’ve been seeing what appear to be cracks in Nintendo’s outer image as a smiley, pure-hearted, “I’m OK, you’re OK” kind of company. First, we saw that the company’s official Line account is still holding a grudge against Sony for the industry-changing success of its PlayStation console. Now, some fans have found that their new figures of presumable nice guys Mario and Luigi reveal the Nintendo stars to be smirking, gloating jerks.
Even if you’re happy to share your home or workspace with a cat, there are still certain boundaries you want to maintain. In the past we’ve looked at special products designed to keep your feline companion off your chair or keyboard, and to make sure everything stays tidy most people want their desk to stay cat-free as well. However, with this new line of kitty-shaped pencil stands you can have a whole team of organizational felines adorably holding everything in its proper place.
The success of One Piece really is amazing. Not only does it remain a perpetual favorite among its target demographic of young boys, the manga and anime franchise has managed to retain a surprisingly large amount of its original fanbase some 18 years after its first issue was published.
Since One Piece has held the attention of fans for so long after drawing them in as children, there must be something to creator Eiichiro Oda’s pirate tale that appeals to adult men as strongly, or maybe even more strongly, than to children. Maybe it’s the series’ core theme of long-term friendship, which grown-ups can more acutely understand. Maybe the way the stakes keeps getting higher for Luffy and his crew strikes a chord with fans who see it as a parallel to the way life throws more responsibilities and pressures at you as you get older.
Or maybe guys just like Oda’s penchant for drawing ridiculously stacked female characters which are then immortalized in plastic, as with this new Boa Hancock figure.
One of the few good things about mornings is the coffee. There’s nothing quite like a jolt of caffeine after rolling out of bed! It’s hard to improve on the formula of coffee, but Chat Noir may have found the perfect ingredient: Cat figures!
Now, for a limited time only, the company is offering adorable cat figures to customers who buy three drinks, so be sure to stop by Caffe Veloce or any of the company’s other cafes for your morning cup of joe and earn yourself one of these awesome black kitties!
The two things in life that are always guaranteed are death and taxes. Death can come out of nowhere, and it’s the most surprising ones that hurt us the most. Taxes, on the other hand, should never be a surprise. You have to file and pay your taxes every year at the exact same time, so you can’t really say that you didn’t see them coming. In Japan, if the government finds out that you are withholding money from them, trust that they will be coming to collect that cash. As one citizen found out, if you can’t pay them what you owe, they will just take away your precious collection of anime figures.
Star Wars fans have been blessed recently with a veritable Imperial March of fantastic toys. Many fans dream of possessing the coolest, best action figure out there and Bandai has been making it pretty hard to choose just one. They’ve made the choice a little more difficult with their newest toy now, however, which is modeled on a new character from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Move over Fett clones, the troopers have a new captain in town. Fall in line for Captain Phasma.
It is a well-known stereotype in Japan that Osaka oba-chans, or Osaka ladies of a certain mature age, are strong-willed, sassy, love loud clothing, and aren’t afraid to speak their mind. And with cup clingers being all the rage recently, who better to sit on your cup and chastise you then a set of the legendary Osaka oba-chans?
Will you get a mouthy, big-haired cougar-type? Or perhaps you prefer the UV-hating full-body track suit oba-chan? Read on to see all the oba-chans that await you!
Children all over the world idolize at least one TV or comic book character at some point while growing up. For everyone who gets a rush of excitement whenever they fondly recall their favorite childhood character toys, we’d like to introduce you to a must-see event that’s currently going on in Tokyo’s Odaiba district: the “Nostalgic Toy Great Exhibition” (懐かしのおもちゃ大博覧会)!
This event is a massive display of classic Japanese character toys that date from the Showa period (1926-1989) to the present day. Everything from ultra rare vintage tinplate toys from the 1960s to Sailor Moon figurines from the 2010s are on display, for a grand total of approximately 2,000 toys. On top of that, photography is permitted—it’s truly a toy lover’s paradise!
Even among animation aficionados, it can sometimes be hard to justify spending the equivalent of a hundred dollars or more on an anime character figure. No matter how high the quality of the product is, that’s a lot of cash to shell out for something that’s going to just sit there gathering dust on your shelf, even if it looks pretty doing it.
But perhaps it’ll be easier for shoppers to pull the trigger on this particular figure. True, the subject being a busty and bikini-clad anime heroine isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but what makes this figure special is that it’s designed to let otaku cram a straw between its breasts to suck on as they enjoy a refreshing glass of milk.
Virtual idol or not, there’s no denying that Hatsune Miku is a bona fide star in the Japanese music scene. But while human vocalists might have professional photographers eager to take their pictures for a glossy photo spread, the equivalent for Vocaloids like Miku is being drawn or redesigned by famous artists of the anime and video game world.
Last year we saw Miku as reimagined in CG by Final Fantasy’s Tetsuya Nomura, and now the world’s most popular computer-generated songstress is being given a new physical form as a figure based on a redesign by the character designer of seminal anime hit Evangelion.
We’ve documented plenty of the unusual-but-awesome gachapon figures coming out of Japan over the years, but these “poison mushroom” figures might just be the most unusual yet awesome figures we’ve seen to date! Combining the adorableness of tiny mushroom figures with the stomach-rending agony of eating poisonous mushrooms, these Poison Kinoko Plus figures will be right at home on your desk or hiding in your date’s plate of stir fry.
Remember the Evangelion and Japanese Sword Exhibition that we reported on a while back? We thought the idea was pretty cool, because…well, an exhibit that brings together an internationally popular anime and beautiful deadly weapons of steel has to be awesome, right? And we think you’d agree that such a unique exhibit deserves a commemorative item that’s just as unique and artistic.
Evangelion fans need look no further, because toy manufacturer Takara Tomy has come up with just that — a series of original tie-in figures of the anime’s three female pilots as they appear in promotional artwork for the exhibit…in magnificent kimono!
The twice-yearly Wonder Festival exhibition is all about models of anime, video game, and other 2-D characters. Just like with model airplanes or trains, you can often find multiple versions of the same character in different scales, usually several times smaller than the heroes and heroines they’re based on are actually supposed to be.
Walking around the convention, though, we came across two stunning life-sized figures. It wasn’t just their size that impressed us, though, but their amazing attention to detail. Not only did we stop to gawk and snap pictures, we also got an explanation of how they were made, and it involves a 3-D printer!
Japan loves showing off the reasons why it is the king of the plastic model world. Two months ago we saw some amazing creations at the Amazing Japan Model Expo 2015, and now this month that tradition is continuing with Wonder Festival Summer 2015, an exhibition for artists to show off their sculpted creations.
But there’s something special about Wonder Festival. Whereas other plastic model exhibits focus on scantily clad female figures, Wonder Festival was completely dominated by sculptures of male characters, ranging from the dashing and handsome to the outright seductive.
Curious to see what an exhibit full of these plastic hunks is like? Read on!
With the unrelenting flow of new animated series produced in Japan, the country’s hyper-otaku could always use some extra cash to pay for the latest and greatest anime goodies. To raise those funds, many superfans eventually cycle out the stuff they’re tired of by selling it online or to a retailer specializing in used items. On the other side of that equation, if you’re an anime fan, but not the hardest of the hardcore, you can pick up used Blu-rays and DVDs at attractive discounts from their original prices.
You can even find anime character figures for sale in the second-hand market, but there are a couple of things you’ll want to investigate before buying a used statuette. First, you’ll want to make sure it’s in good, scratch-free condition. Double-checking that it’s not a cheaply made knockoff is also a good idea.
But while doing your homework in important, there’s also one thing to remember after the deal is done and you’ve got your used figure sitting on your shelf: Whatever you do, don’t shine a black light on it.
If you’re reading this at work, be advised that things are going to get pretty gross from here on!
While each member of the core cast of Sailor Moon has her own personality, the one descriptor that works across the board for the Sailor Senshi is “helpful.” Even protagonist Usagi, for all of her lack of willpower regarding the temptations of junk food and video games, is always ready to lend a hand to those in need when the chips are down.
Case in point: Not only will the hit anime’s magical girls protect your town from interdimensional monsters on a weekly basis, they’ll even keep you company during your coffee break, in the form of these cheerful Sailor Moon figures that’ll cling to the edge of your cup as you sip your beverage.
Would you like to know what Sailor Moon and her pals eat for lunch? Or perhaps you’re curious to find out how they study or what they’d take along to the local shrine. Well now you can find out all that and more, with this gorgeous miniature collection!

















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