L. M. Lloyd

Kotobukiya has always been one of my favorite model houses. They just have wonderful sculpts, and traditionally some great taste in the properties they license. That said, over the years Kotobukiya and I have drifted apart some in our tastes. I am still crazy for wonderful resin sculpts of obscure mechs from little-known side stories and unknown manga. They, on the other hand, have decided to focus, understandable, on a bit more mainstream properties like Final Fantasy and Studio Ghibli. Still wandering around several floors of Kotobukiya shops in the Radikan building was a real treat. I was somewhat disappointed that I never found any stashes of some of their great old resin kits like I had been hoping to, but they did have the complete line of Kotobukiya's cool Modeling Support Goods, which I stocked up on like there was no tomorrow. I will say though, be careful shopping at their store, because a lot of what they have you can find cheaper at other stores in Akiba, and sometimes even right there in the Radikan building. Obviously, the products in the Kotobukiya shops are at full MSRP, and there are plenty of stores that sell for 10% or even 20% under MSRP. Of course Kotobukya does seem to have some sort of frequent buyer club card, which I am sure would be the ruination of me if I lived in Japan, which probably gives you a discount of some kind.

As an added bonus (I suppose) when I was there, they were also giving away a can of really nasty VOTOMS coffee drink with every ¥5,000 spent, so hey, free really nasty coffee in a cool can.