i am extremely happy i get to be in japan while yuri!!! on ice is airing so i can experience the going to the store and having its music playing, seeing the stairs, the posters, actual kubo-sensei’s drawings and signature on them, but i hate, idk how to phrase this, how the industry works here??
the other day to go to the yoi exhibition and take those pics i had to wake up at 5 am to get to nakano by 7 am (which fun fact, i went to nakanoBU instead of nakano bc my friend sent me there instead by mistake), and apparently there were people queuing since 6 am. freaking 6 am. and we had to wait til, minimum 12, in our case it was 14:30 to see the exhibition (for which they gave you 15 minutes) and then if you wanted to buy merch, which we did, we had to wait til 18:30, and guess what!!! by the time our turn finally came (20:30) the items we wanted (and even the ones we didn’t) were all sold out. so basically i waited 10 hours with the previous hours of commuting for a 15 min exhibition and no merch.
even in spain if you want to go to El Prado, you may have to queue for a million hours (not really tho, it’d never reach this level) if you show up just like that, but you will actually get inside and get what you waited for, or you can just buy the tickets online with no lottery beforehand for you to have the chance to purchase the tickets.
now regarding the actual merch, there were stores around with badges and shit and, just have a look yourselves
27 bucks (which is still 3200 yen for me bc that’s the currency i use so it doesn’t get any cheaper for me) for a tiny lil badge. and that’s viktor bc they know viktor’s everyone’s fave so they make his stuff way more expensive. meanwhile you have otabek’s for 800 yen, for instance, but still 7 bucks for a shitty badge, it makes me so mad, and the thing is people will buy this, that’s why kubo-sensei warned fans about being careful with their money, bc those making money out of this know they can just sell a fucking bag of popcorn with viktor’s face on it, WHICH IS ACTUALLY A THING SOLD IN THE ANIMATE STORE
and we’ll stil buy it. i saw this girl this morning with a yuuri bag full of viktor’s badges, including all the ones above, so that girl’s bag costed at least 100 bucks, just taking into account its decoration, not even the bag itself. and tbh it makes me mad but also sad, bc when i buy merch i usually feel so chipper, i remember having the shittiest week and finding a mp100 folder (350 yen, still crazy expensive for other places but cheap af in here) and feeling so much happier, seeing ojamajo doremi keychains (700 yen) on the shelves and feeling super excited, but with yoi there’s no spontaneous fortunate discoverings, it’s a very thought trough way of emptying our wallets and, in my case, draining the joy out of these things
that’s the yoi animate café they got going on rn, and i thought i could just line up and get some food/merch, but as my friend informed me you have to go to the webpage first, apply for a lottery, then maybe if you’re lucky get a ticket, and then if you do, you’ll have to queue there for a fuckton of time to eat/drink whatever you purchased standing on the street with a tray on your hands in front of the animate store. and the actual café inside a building was no better given that, again you had to apply for a ticket with the same process and wait, and the actual café was just a normal room with some posters on the walls and 1300 yen katsudon which costs 370 yen in my uni’s cafeteria
idk, it’s just being aware of how they’re taking advantage of people’s passion like this to charge those prices, bc charging 3200 for a badge like that is nothing but taking advantage, and just the whole system bring me tf down