Recently I spent a couple of days in the Kansai region travelling back and forth between Osaka and Kyoto. While this was not a dedicated figure hunt as such there are just so many opportunities to encounter Gashapon machines in these large cities and I figured I'd discuss the topic a little.
Here are some of the current Gundam-themed Gashapon currently in circulation. We see the most recent set of Mobile Suit Ensemble (Part 29) as well as the currently reprinted batch of Part 12 which first appeared in January 2020. The last couple of years have brought several of the early sets back to market which is a great opportunity for recent collectors to catch up on the MSE's history. Nowadays the series is mainly bogged down in expensive premium releases so attention can definitely be pointed in this direction. Also seen in this photo are the first two sets of the newest incarnation of the super-deformed legacy - the awkwardly named Capsule Index - as well as some tiny gold and silver-style minis that look back even further into the earliest days of SD Gundam figurines.
The great thing about Gashapon is that you can turn a corner and just suddenly bump into a tower of dispensers sitting around outside a random shop or inside a building. Here is an example of some random machines installed on the platform at Kyoto central station among other vending machines and bento shops. You should bear in mind though that Mobile Suit Gundam has a rather small presence in the Gashapon scene, there are just too many brands competing for the space. Still, you never know what you will find and I made it a thing to stick my nose into any shop where they could be spotted (and those were quite a few).
Here is a typical "UFO Catcher" shop dedicated to the selling of current Gashapon. This particular shop is located in a block between the very tourist-centric Nishiki Market and the more pleasant Teramachi Shopping Street in Kyoto. Shops like these sometimes also feature some claw machines although they are not as crazy and loud as the dedicated arcades. Inside, expect narrow passageways crowded with curious eyes looking for the next Gashapon fix.
One step up we have Capsule Planet "C-Pla" which are a chain of stores that sometimes look completely identical inside. The one you see on the image here is one of several located within the Shinsaibashi shopping arcade near the popular Dotonbori-area of Osaka.
C-Pla shops look small on the outside but venture deep into the building, typically sectioned off in up to three long and narrow rooms chock-full of vending machines. Some of them are also multistorey with up to three floors of goodies in total. As for Gundam-machines however you usually find the handful of them on the ground floor, often close to the entrance. Some shops organize the Gashapon vending machines by genre while others are a bit more randomly distributed. The general atmosphere is crowded and narrow but clean and neat. You will find coin exchange machines here and there inside the shops which normally accept 1000-yen bills and return ten 100 yen coins, of which you typically need to spend 300-500 per pull depending on the product. In one shop I visited the machine did not recognize the most recent crop of 1000-yen bills but there the staff could assist in switching newer bills for older ones.
Then we have the ultimate bosses of Japan; the mega-stores. I'll let them be represented by the Yodobashi Camera department store in Umeda, Osaka. These stores have pretty much everything. Electronics, beauty products, home appliances, clothes, camping gear, you name it. The toy-sections are amazing and unlike anything I have ever seen. It really has to be experienced in person.
What do you think mate, enough Gacha machines for you? There must be thousands of them here. Granted, not every machine is unique, there are plenty of duplicates around but they are scattered about and not located next to each other. Still, popular sets tended to be sold out whenever I came across them, no Japanese police cars for me for example.
This is one aisle of machines in the slightly smaller Gashapon section of Yodobashi in Kyoto. Still, your memory will be tested when you make the journey to the coin exchange machine, will you find your way back to the prize?
The absolute majority of Gacha-dispensers we encountered were these Bandai-type machines. Usually with white stickers when encountered in the wild but with black backgrounds inside the C-Pla shops which honestly starts to tire the eyes after browsing corridor up and corridor down. Your senses are constantly assaulted with a ton of colours and patterns and it really overwhelms you after a while as everything starts looking more and more indistinct and similar.
This was a rare find of multiple Gundam-themed machines neatly organized into a larger section. You can see here a random distribution of Ensembles and Capsule Index figures mingling with more gimmicky stuff like acrylic sheets and those Mechanical Bust display pieces that I simply don't fancy. Notice the bin in the bottom left corner, these are intended for chucking away unwanted Gashapon balls. I filled up my bags and carried them all the way back home just to photograph them, I imagine the security screening staff at the airport had a giggle as the bag passed through x-ray.
Let's take a quick look at what is on offer, shall we? Here we have two Mobile Suit Ensemble sets currently on offer. I had hope to be able to find slightly older sets like the Hatsune Miku-collab, the special Requiem for Vengeance set or the very rare Gundam Mecha set from last summer (which features U.C.0079-era vehicles) but no such luck. I only stumbled on a couple of boxed Hatsune Miku-figures in a random hobby store in Osaka that was selling all sorts of collectables.
Here are some of the more gimmicky stuff; two sets of acrylic sheets with various characters from the Witch From Mercury and a really random set of Haros and that quirky RX-78F00/E Gundam from Next Future Pavilion. I didn't bother with any of these, the F00/E was released in Converge earlier this autumn but I have yet to be able to find one on the secondary market.
I was not aware of the fact that the Hatsune Miku-collaboration was also released in a realistically proportioned Gashapon set. The Capsule Action series is a premium Gashapon-series that has so far produced a handful of not too exciting representations of the RX-78-2 and the MS-06S, I think there is also a RGM-79 in there. These figures are modifications of existing sculpts featuring four different figures to collect; two solid colour and two translucent variants, just like in the Mobile Suit Ensemble series. While they intrigued me a little I decided against purchasing any, 1500 yen (almost 10 USD) for a random figure is too much of an investment in trying to complete the set from a vending machine but I may pick them up on the secondary market at some point if the price is reasonable.
I was surprised at the dearth of Pokemon-themed Gashapon for sale. I am a huge fan of the cleverly sculpted Pokemon range from Takara Tomy A.r.t.s. but I could only find half-a-dozen or so machines among the thousands I scanned in Kyoto and Osaka. This series of leaning and sleeping Pokemon for example is now into its 8th set already. I bought two as I walked past the machine on the way to lunch in the Isetan department store at Kyoto station, and when I backtracked to try my luck some more afterwards they were sold out. I revisited the same machine two days later but it had not been restocked (granted this was over the weekend). However, you will find Takara Tomy's excellent "mainline" Pokemon figure series in most well-stocked toy- and department stores but whenever I come across such a big selection I just get sensory overload and walk away. I prefer to discover them one at a time on the secondary market...
While she did mostly roll here eyes at first, my wife got into the addiction when she discovered the Tamagotchi-themed figurines. These were in very high demand and more often than not the machines were sold out. In the places we discovered the machines we often had to take turns with other people looking to complete their sets - or perhaps empty the machines for possible resale? It was here that I got my first look at the "pros" of the Gashapon circuit. I have never before seen someone able to chuck in three coins into the machine in quick succession using only a single hand. I saw people with flashlights shining into the machine to try to determine which figure was next in line. We also witnessed backpack-carrying customers who would twist and turn the handle of the machine both clock- and anti-clockwise to try to manipulate which capsule would fall into the slot. At least there were no occurrences of fisticuffs like we see on the videos from Walmart. :)
That could have gone better... Bandai Namco recently relaunched the old Tamagotchi-phenomenon and these things were sold out in almost every store we visited.
Before wrapping things up; here is a quick shot of the Mandarake branch in Kyoto. This is a relatively small shop as far as Mandarake goes and there is not much Gundam goods inside. Besides a decent selection of model kits the section covering figurines, action figures and the like was a simple corner section of a single shelf with a couple of HCM Pros and the odd Ensemble figure. In practice, the different Mandarake branches have different specializations and the Kyoto store usually has a good selection of Pokemon trading cards and a very nice selection of Zoids for example. You will not find the store in the street, instead you must walk into the Takashimaya department store and head up to its eighth floor.
Here we are inside the toy section of Yodobashi in Kyoto. Schleich is a German toy manufacturer that has an extensive range of domesticated, wild and even fantasy creatures. Their main range is in the 1/24 scale. Those dragons on the top shelf really caught my eye.
This was an impulse-buy. I had never seen the Schleich figures before and they had several beautiful looking dragons. This one stood out however, with its intelligent and sinister gaze. I had to bring him home with me. :)
The Tomytec Diorama-collection is engineered towards N-scale trains and features an extensive range of buildings, scatter-terrain and even trees and people. Rated at 1/150 they are pretty much ideal for your average HG scale Gundam kit although I personally think they work fine with many smaller ranges as well. I have never really liked the 18 meter standard for mobile suits and think they could do well with being downsized a bit. This photo and the following ones come from the Yodobashi department store in Osaka.
Fellow or rather competitive model train brand KATO also serves up a great selection of trains and scenery. Here we look at various vehicles and containers in N-scale of which I picked some up for diorama use.
TOMIX is the model railway brand from Tomytec and here I picked up a couple of straight rail sections, also for use in future photography set-pieces.
Before we go, let's just take a quick look of some of the Gashapon we carried back with us from Japan. My wife who is a diver fell in love with the Frogfish and we had to hammer the machine with a lot of coins before it decided to spit one out. Then I decided that we should try to obtain a crab as well whereupon it chucked out another two Frogfish and we gave up. I kind of wish I had milked the machine a bit further though because the set is really nice. Notice how each figure comes with its own pamphlet, most Gashapon tend to have a generic booklet only.
The wife also picked up a plushie-nudibranch and was happy enough with the first pull so we walked away with a single item from this set only.
This is half a set of pretty hideous-looking Minecraft-themed figures to be handed out as gifts to the younger generation. I'm too old for this stuff.
The wife managed to score four out of the five Tamagotchi-Gashapon with only a yellow one missing. Presumably, the lady with the flashlight jinxed us with her previous antics. Overall though, in general I felt like I did get a fairly good selection of figures out of the machines. I would have expected to see a lot more doubles but I suppose we were just lucky.
I pulled the full set of Capsule Index Part 2 which is thankfully limited to four pieces. It started out badly though with me scoring three Red Gundams in a row but then the other three figures followed one by one. You'll see them in a dedicated review on here before too long I hope.
Here is another set of Sanrio character figures to hang as accessories from your bag, phone or whatever. The wife bought one, proceeded to put it on and within an hour it was lost. I took her back to the machine and we fed it old 1000-yen bills until I had completed the full set with only a minimum of duplicates. However, upon closer inspection one of the figures is completely without a painted face - I have never seen anything like that before. I will try to work my magic with a marker pen on the poor creature.
Here is something that really bugs me. I discovered a machine with the third set of sitting SD-Gundam figures and made three pulls from it. Unfortunately I never came across one of these machines again, I guess it was already quite old. Had I considered this I would have kept pumping coins into it to get the missing Gouf as well; maybe it will pop up one day on Mandarake. Pfff... Anyway, hope you had fun following us around in the Kansai region. Unfortunately we did not have time to take on Den Den-town with its many shops and the two Mandarakes in Osaka - you just will never have enough time, money or suitcase space on a trip to Japan. :)