Ghibli Museum, Mitaka
Photo: Olivier Bruchez / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Collection

Anime and Manga in Tokyo

Museums, shops and pilgrimage spots for anime and manga fans

Tokyo has more for anime and manga fans than any other city, and a lot of it costs nothing to walk into. Akihabara and Ikebukuro are the obvious stops, with whole buildings of figures, second-hand manga and capsule toys. The museums sit further out along the train lines. There's Ghibli in Mitaka, the free Suginami and Toei museums in the west, and Tokiwa-so, the rebuilt apartment house where Osamu Tezuka and a generation of manga artists started out. Book the Ghibli and Fujiko F. Fujio museums before you fly. Neither sells tickets at the door.

18 places
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The places

Museum · Mitaka Ghibli Museum The Ghibli Museum is Hayao Miyazaki's own idea of what a museum should be: imaginative, handmade and anti-corporate. A short film screens here and nowhere else. The Cat Bus room for children is one of the most joyful rooms in any museum.
Shopping · Akihabara Akihabara Electric Town Akihabara Electric Town is one of the densest concentrations of electronics, anime and manga anywhere. Eight-storey shops are stuffed with gadgets, figures, retro games and obscure components.
Shopping · Nakano Nakano Broadway Nakano Broadway is a 1966 shopping arcade reborn as a centre of otaku culture. Four floors of vintage manga, anime cels, retro toys and watches, anchored by the Mandarake used manga chain.
Shrine · Kanda Kanda Myojin Shrine Kanda Myojin is a 1,300 year old shrine that guards Tokyo's old merchant district, and the Akihabara tech crowd has adopted it, coming to have gadgets and startups blessed. The vermilion halls glow against the office towers around them. Anime fans come too, since the shrine appears in Love Live! and Steins;Gate, and it has issued charms and ema with series like Sword Art Online.
Shopping · Tokyo Station Tokyo Character Street Tokyo Character Street is an underground arcade of more than 30 official character shops inside Tokyo Station: Ghibli, Pokémon, Sanrio, NHK mascots, all of it. With kids it's a destination. Without kids it's dangerously good gift shopping.
Shrine · Yotsuya Suga Shrine Suga Shrine is a modest neighbourhood shrine in Yotsuya whose crossed staircase next door became world famous as the final scene of the anime film Your Name, and fans come in a steady stream to recreate the shot. The shrine itself dates from the Edo period and guards the area's eighteen former towns.
Shopping · Akihabara Akihabara Radio Kaikan Akihabara Radio Kaikan is the building that has anchored Akihabara since 1962, rebuilt in 2014 as ten floors of hobby shops opposite the station: new and used figures, plastic model kits, trading cards, dolls and a few of the old electronics dealers.
Shopping · Akihabara Mandarake Complex Mandarake Complex is eight floors of second-hand manga, anime goods, retro games, figures and collectibles in a black building on the backstreets west of Chuo-dori. Each floor has its own theme, and it's the place in Akihabara to look for older and out-of-print items.
Museum · Ogikubo Suginami Animation Museum The Suginami Animation Museum is a free museum on the third floor of Suginami Kaikan, run by Tokyo Polytechnic University. A timeline walks you through the history of Japanese anime, there's a dubbing corner where you can try voicing a scene yourself, and the theatre shows anime on a 200-inch screen. Special exhibitions on one studio or series change three or four times a year.
Museum · Oizumi Toei Animation Museum The Toei Animation Museum is run by Toei Animation itself, the oldest anime studio still in business, in Higashi-Oizumi in Nerima. It's small and free, and it covers about seventy years of the studio's work, from its earliest films to the series on TV now. A permanent Digimon display opened in June 2026.
Museum · Minami-Nagasaki Tokiwa-so Manga Museum The Tokiwa-so Manga Museum is a rebuilt Tokiwa-so, the two-storey apartment house in Toshima where Osamu Tezuka moved in 1953. Young manga artists followed him there, Fujiko F. Fujio, Shotaro Ishinomori and Fujio Akatsuka among them. The original came down in 1982, and the rebuilt version in Minami-Nagasaki Hanasaki Park runs exhibitions on the artists who lived there.
Museum · Ikebukuro Anime Tokyo Station Anime Tokyo Station is a free anime centre set up by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and run by the Association of Japanese Animations, four minutes from Ikebukuro's east exit. The basement takes you through how an anime gets made, with real production material. The upper floor holds special exhibitions on one series at a time, and they're free too.
Shopping · Ikebukuro Animate Ikebukuro Animate Ikebukuro is the flagship of the Animate anime shop chain, five minutes from Ikebukuro's east exit. Since a 2023 rebuild it fills a building of nine floors and two basements with character goods, manga, music and games, and it has its own theatre downstairs for stage readings and talk shows.
Shopping · Ikebukuro Gashapon Department Store Ikebukuro The Gashapon Department Store in Sunshine City is Bandai Namco's capsule toy hall, with 3,775 machines on the third floor of the World Import Mart building. Weeks after it opened in 2021 it set the Guinness World Record for the most capsule toy machines in one place, and it's added more since.
Shopping · Shibuya Shibuya PARCO Shibuya PARCO is a fashion mall, but anime and game fans go straight to the 6th floor, where Nintendo TOKYO, Pokémon Center Shibuya, the JUMP SHOP and the CAPCOM STORE TOKYO sit side by side. THE GUNDAM BASE SHIBUYA is due to open in the building in November 2026.
Museum · Kawasaki Fujiko F. Fujio Museum The Fujiko F. Fujio Museum in Kawasaki is given over to the creator of Doraemon, who lived for years in the city's Tama ward. His original colour artwork fills the first floor, a small theatre screens films you can't see anywhere else, and his characters wait for you on the rooftop playground. There's a manga reading room and a cafe too.
Shopping · Odaiba The Gundam Base Tokyo The Gundam Base Tokyo is the official Gunpla centre on the 7th floor of DiverCity Tokyo Plaza, where you can buy, build and look at Gundam model kits, with finished models on display. The life-size Unicorn Gundam statue outside the mall ended its run on 31 August 2026.
Museum · Sakura-shinmachi Hasegawa Machiko Art Museum The Hasegawa Machiko Art Museum is two buildings in Sakura-shinmachi for the creator of Sazae-san. The Memorial Museum covers her life and her best-known manga, Sazae-san, Ijiwaru Baasan and Apron Obasan, with original drawings and photos. The Art Museum, open since 1985, shows the paintings and crafts she and her sister Mariko collected.

Anime and games events coming up

AnimeJapan, the big spring anime fair that used to fill Tokyo Big Sight, is at Intex Osaka on 27 and 28 March 2027. Source: AnimeJapan

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