JAPAN TODAY



 

Dragon Ball is a big franchise. Though it started as a manga, the anime adaptation of Akira Toriyama’s sprawling intergalactic martial arts epic started airing less than two years after the first chapter was published, and there have now been more than 20 "Dragon Ball" theatrical anime, dozens of video games, and one live-action Hollywood version that many fans of the source material are still trying to scrub from their memories.

One thing there hasn’t been, though, is an entire shop just for "Dragon Ball" merch. That’s going to be changing, though, as the franchise’s official website has announced that the first-ever Dragon Ball Store will be opening in Japan soon.

As one of the most continually popular anime franchises of the past four decades, "Dragon Ball" merch, in and of itself, isn’t all that hard to find in Japan.

Between the series’ long history, fanbase that stretches from little kids all the way up to adults, and the fact that new "Dragon Ball" anime and manga are still being made, though, there are far too many cool "Dragon Ball" items to fit into a sub-section of a general anime specialty shop, so the Dragon Ball Store should boast an especially wide selection.

The announcement also promises that the shop will have limited-edition merch that won’t be available anywhere else in the world.

▼ So far, the closest thing there’s been to a Dragon Ball store is the Jump Shop, where it shares space with the other titles from manga publisher Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump anthology.

With Japan’s passionate fan communities, plus a large number of visiting foreign travelers being fans of the otaku arts, there are shops for some of the most prominent publishers and production houses, such as Nintendo and Studio Ghibli. Dedicated shops for individual series, though, are less common, and are often popup affairs.

The Dragon Ball Store’s announcement makes no mention of it being a limited-time event, however, so it looks like it’ll be joining the Pokemon Center as one of the few individual series with its own permanent store.

Currently, the only opening date/location information that’s been revealed is that the Dragon Ball Store will be open this coming fall and be located somewhere within Tokyo, though the city’s high-tourism neighborhoods of Shibuya, Akihabara, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro seem the most likely.