What is Animate Online Shop Japan?

Being the leading company in anime goods retail in Japan, Animate has its own dedicated online shop for fans that cannot make it out to one of their physical locations. The Animate Online Shop offers everything from keychains and can badges, to digital goods, and even jewelry and clothing. This online shop is especially popular for collectors and hardcore fans because they offer many exclusive bonuses as well as limited editions! Aside from these licensed goods, Animate’s online shop sells doujinshis as well.

Does Animate Japan ship overseas?

Animate Japan does not ship overseas and they will redirect international shoppers to their website Animate International. Unfortunately, their dedicated international online shop has a more limited selection than their Japan site.

Use a proxy buying service to get your items from Animate Online

If what you want to buy isn’t for sale on Animate International, we recommend using a proxy buying service like Japan Rabbit to shop on Animate Japan. International shoppers are also unable to create their own accounts on the Japanese online store if they do not have a Japanese address. However, if you are fairly confident in your Japanese, a forwarding service that assigns you a Japanese address to use, like Blackship may be the option for you!

How to buy from Animate Online Shop Japan?

Buying from Animate is easy and Japan Rabbit is here to help!

Step 1: Visit Animate Online Shop Japan

To get started, the page of the Japanese Animate online shop is here: animate-onlineshop.jp. A neat feature about the website is that they offer an option to translate their website using Google Translate and it works with different browsers so you aren’t restricted to just using Google Chrome for its translation extension.

Step 2: Search and find the products you want

The Animate website is colorful and full of many banners depicting sales and series. At the top of the page, there are three drop-down menus that when hovered over, will give you different options to choose from:

• Title Search - You can search for a series by its title.
• Categories Search - You can search by categories such as 2.5D Stage, OVA, Idol, and much more.
• Product Category Search - Allows you to search by product types, such as figures, games, or music.

Under those dropdown menus is a blue bar with five categories that you can browse through as well:

• The left one is “New Products” and takes you to a page that shows only new products or up-and-coming ones that may still be available for preorder as well.
• Next to that is “Limited Edition, Rewards”, and the products shown will only be ones that are a limited edition or ones that come with an Animate bonus. Bonuses can be anything from a keychain to postcards, to replica animation cells, and much more.
• “Fair Events” will lead to a page that has a list of events that are happening at different Animate stores. These events often include limited event-only merchandise.
• The “Ranking” page shows which items are the most popular and best sellers for that day, week, or month using the tabs on the ranking page.
• The option furthest to the right is for products that are on sale. The new price and the percentage off will be listed in red.

Besides these, there are many banners on the front page of the Animate online shop. A lot of the popular series and if there are special events will have these banners. If any of those are your favorite series or events you are interested in, you can click on them and they will lead you to the product list for that series or event!

Step 3: Tell us what you want to buy from Animate

If you’re done shopping and are ready to order, here’s where we can help! All you need to do is go to the Japan Rabbit app. Once you’re there, you will be prompted for the URL of the product page. To get the URL, you can highlight the link of that page’s address bar, right-click with your mouse and select copy, or press Ctrl+C on your keyboard. After copying, just paste it into the field on the Japan Rabbit app that asks for “Product web page” and then click “Next”. After clicking “next”, you will be redirected to a page where you can fill out more information about the product. The first field asks for the name of the product. To locate the product’s name, it will be on the product page in a bigger font and directly to the right of the product photo. Copy the original Japanese name and paste it into the “product name” field. If your webpage is translated, all you need to do is hover the mouse over the translation and a box will pop up with the original text that you can copy. Then let us know the price and how many of the products you’d like to buy. The price is listed under the product name and is in red font with the tax already included. If you are buying an item with different sizes or options all listed on the same page, just let us know which one you want by filling out the field for “size, color, and description”. After you are done, just add the item to your cart! If you have more things to buy, just repeat these steps. If you are ready to complete your order, click that checkout button and let us do the rest!

Step 4: Consolidate, repack, and ship your packages

We will notify you once your package arrives. Japan Rabbit offers free consolidation and repacking. If you have more than one item in your mailbox, consolidating everything into one package is the best way to save on shipping. When you are ready to ship your package, we will provide a list of different shipping methods so you are able to choose the one that best works for you.

What to buy from Animate Japan?

If you are unsure or just looking for inspiration for what to buy, here are just a few of the top things that people like to buy from Animate Japan!

Figures

Animate Japan has a huge selection of figures. They have many figures as ready stock as well as preorders for figures that are still under production. What better way to show your love for your favorite characters than with a beautifully made figure of them?

Blu-rays, DVDs & CDs

If the opening or ending theme to your favorite anime gets stuck in your head all the time, maybe you’d be interested in buying the soundtrack to it! Or maybe your favorite character’s song is being released? Whatever the reason, there are hundreds of CDs available on Animate’s website, such as full albums, character songs, and drama CDs. Animate also has DVDs and Blu-rays available for many different series. It’s not just animated series though! If you’re interested in 2.5D musicals and stage plays, there is plenty of merchandise for them available as well.

Doujinshi

For those that would like to see even more content of their favorite characters in different situations, there are thousands of doujinshi available for sale on Animate. They are sold new and you are also able to preorder upcoming doujinshi as well.

Cosplay items

If you’re into cosplay, their cosplay selection is for you! There are hundreds of cosplay items on the online shop to use in your costumes. They have props such as glasses, geta, proplica swords, and much more. Makeup geared towards cosplay is also available there.

FAQs

How to browse Animate in English?

The Animate website itself will offer you a translation with the Google Translation extension they’ve embedded onto their page.

Where are the Animate stores in Japan?

At the time of writing, there are currently more than 160 physical Animate locations within Japan. There are also some shops abroad in the following countries: Thailand, China, Taiwan, and Korea. For a complete list, you can check out the store information page.