[Blog] Busan Animate + Aniplus and other Anime Goods store (Patreon)

I took a train journey to Busan yesterday to do a big tour around the main block of the anime goods stores in Busan starting with the Samjung Tower. I've had a day of rest ever since that trip yet I still feel a little out of it as I'm writing this as it's been a long train ride there and back.

I think regardless of where you go, you can expect a big crowd of people everywhere. Despite that the streets look awfully clean compared to other countries I've visited in the past, there's hardly any litters on the streets... yet there are no sights of rubbish bins anywhere on the streets.

For anyone wondering if Samjung was a typo and I was meant to write Samsung, no this tower really is called Samjung. It's a huge department store, though I often have no idea where to draw the line since every department stores in Korea are quite massive.

The place I visited here are on the upper floors which could be reached through the escalators that went up 16 floors.

First stop was Aniplus.

Remember how I saw that Blue Archive hamburger collab from my last blog entry? Yeah, it seems Korea really has a huge fandom for Blue Archive. As I walked in, I was greeted with this menu.

There was the counter in the middle and on the left of the counter was a Blue Archive collab cafe where you can order themed drinks and desserts supposedly created by the iconic faces of Blue Archive.

Little sneak peek inside the cafe area.

There was another collab cafe on the other side which seems to be of a BL gacha game but I've never seen it before. Actually, I'm not even sure if it's a game. It might be something else entirely but who knows. 

It seemed relatively empty.

The place had a lot of goods being sold but most of them were Blue Archive goods.

After looking around, I went up the escalators again until I reached the top floors where Animate was and I was greeted by a big cutout of Mori Calliope.

It was mostly books being sold here ranging from Artbooks, Manga, BL novels, Albums and some Genshin goods which were mostly Acrylic Stands. Believe me, I went in there prepared to spend a bit on buying anime goods but for some reason I really couldn't find anything I really wanted.

I'm sure if I had to pick though, I probably would have bought an artbook of a author I liked.

Oh they also sold Tanjiro's Katana but I'm sure customs would probably stop anyone carrying a sword onboard so I didn't bother haha.

There were other smaller stores outside the shopping mall next to the streets too but they were tiny in comparison to anything the mall had to offer. Here are some places I went which were mostly located underground bunkers.

Dark Magician and his Namekian twin.

It's always located underground for some reason. My immediate guess is that the rent is cheaper but who knows.

Saw an impressive collection of magic wand belonging to Moon Crystal Power wielders of a bygone age.

Behold the Great Wall of Weeb!!  So many anime/manga fans who left small notes of otaku footprints on the wall! I'm sure I'd have run into a lot more of these had I looked into other stores too! 

These boxes all contained custom wrapped anime goods which you can pull out of the box and pay for. But you don't know what's inside the wrap. It's more or less IRL gacha. 

There are sometimes cabinets where the prizes are arranged like this pokemon gacha I saw next to a big pile of boxes. 

Found a small Nikke corner too as I looked around one of the underground stores. 

There's a ton of goods I took pictures of but posting all that seemed a bit too spammy so I'll just finish up with the pics I shared above! Who would have thought that one little trip would be so draining haha.

Yet, I couldn't find anything I wanted to buy from any of the stores I've been to.

Here's a fun little question for those of you who managed to read this far.

In all honesty, what would you buy if you were visiting an anime goods stores for fun? I'm interested to hear your answers so if I end up going again, I might have a better idea of what I'd want to grab.

I saw these places too but didn't actually go inside to check it out.