Mandarake, a weird otaku heaven

A place like Mandarake (まんだらけ= mandaraké) isn’t really for everyone, and depending on your interests, it could be very interesting or insanely boring. To begin Mandarake is a chain of shops that specializes in used anime, manga and game goods. They also have an area for cosplay costumes (Not used) and they are one of those shops known for its retro merchandise (but of course the hardcore gamers of the internet argue that it’s not that good at it.) but for a regular person like me, their collection of retro games and consoles sent me on a trip down memory lane.

There are two Mandarake shops in Osaka, but I have only been to this one in Shinsaibashi (Since I haven’t been to Umeda yet). The only thing I hate about this shop is that the isles are so narrow they can’t even fit two normal people (which is also the case with Donki)

(I know that it is lame to include apologies in blog posts, but taking photos isn’t allowed in shops so some of the photos are blurry)

Rows are rows of manga, for two floors, one of them dedicated to female audience… if you know what I mean.

Used games for every console, and I found stuff as recent as Pokemon X and Y. The prices vary according to the condition of the product though.

When I said every consoles, I meant EVERY consoles

Retro games need retro figures, there were many of these, ranging from Doraemon to Gundam and everything in between

This is the buy back counter, people bring their old stuff around, but I don’t know how it exactly works for things other than game consoles (because I only asked about those)

Okay, there is also a cosplay floor, but I couldn’t take pictures, because they had a sale on some stuff on the same floor (I fancied one of the Kotetsu figures from Tiger & Bunny) so it was crowded (also the phone ate some photos up).

Another thing is that there are many salespeople are in cosplay especially on the cosplay and Female Audience floor.