I decided to make a pilgrimage back to Animadness (my semi-local anime/pullip store today) as I was planning on visiting Requiemart anyway and it isn’t that much farther to go to Animadness from her home. Animadness is located in Waltham, Ma for those curious. Anime shops in New England area are kind of rare and I have traveled ridiculous distances to check some of them out sight-unseen and some were well disappointing, so I decided to post some pictures up in case anyone was wondering if they were worth the trip or not. The owners are actually pretty nice, they recognized me from my few previous visits during the pullip meets.
The store isn’t actually very large, but they manage to cram a lot into a small space.
They sell a wide variety of anime products including plushes, figures, pillows, pullips, gashapon, wall scrolls, posters, as well as some manga, cds and dvds even a handful of handmade clothing (not cosplay type clothes but somewhat lolita-ish).
I took this one as we were checking out (we being my travel companion and I as I am incapable of going such a distance without getting lost, you can actually see my companion’s Joker hat in the pic). They keep the pullips behind the counter, they have a pretty good selection of pullips including some extreme rarities like Leprotto and Noir. Their prices are fairly reasonable especially for the new releases, prices tend to be somewhere between Pullipstyle and VOTD‘s prices plus you get the benefit of actually just being able to get one immediately for instant gratification. I didn’t actually buy a pullip or dal today, I decided to buy Phoebe yesterday and since I had purchased a lot of dolls recently I decided not to get another one today.. I did kind of buy a mini pullip Aggonya but mini pullips don’t count right? They are small so they don’t count..
They had a fairly large number of different gashapon in front of their register area, I ended up picking up a Vocaloid petit nendoroid at random on impulse while I was checking out and ended up getting this one. I was pretty happy as she is pretty cute and it had been ages since I bought something blindbox other than re-ment.
They had a pretty impressive wall of plushes. I like a good anime plush but there wasn’t really anything overly tempting today 😦
I didn’t bother photographing certain areas of the store as they were kind of uninteresting to me and well dvds and cds are kind of dull to photograph anyway (plus there were a few people browsing in those sections at the time that I didn’t want to disturb ^^; ).
They had a fairly nice variety of figures, they had everything from Sega Prize figures to Shuraki figures to Max Factory figures. They do have some newer stuff like the Max Factory Miku but I think most of their stuff is slightly older fare like a year or two old which is nice if you happen to miss a slightly older figure.
They do have a display case of figures, I had a very hard bad time of leaving this figure at the store…
She’s gorgeous but I have already spent an obscene amount of money so far this year, on dolls and figures so I ended up on ultimately passing on her I’ll probably pick her up next time if they still have in stock though.
Couple of things I wouldn’t have minded in this case but honestly unless I absolutely love a figure these days it isn’t coming home with me, no room left at this point unfortunately.
Couple of things I had been on the fence about in this picture that I was glad to see in person, it’s nice to be able to see things in person sometimes..
That said this figure is even more gorgeous in person so I will have to acquire her at some point.
Even more figures..
They did have a number of figmas and nendoroids unfortunately all the pictures of took of the area didn’t turn out so well ^^;
At this point you are probably wondering what I actually bought. I was actually pretty well behaved today, I have making an effort to cutback after recent excesses I was kind of proud of myself. I ended up buying three Tenga Toppen Gurren Lagann pillows (Nia, 14 year old Yoko & 21 year old Yoko) as I was getting rather bored of my current pillow harem of Kanu (Ikki Tousen), CC (Code Geass) and Suzumiya (Melancholy of Suzumiya). To answer your next series of questions yes I am female, and yes I actually sleep with anime pillows in my bed, I actually sleep with them in my bed as well as a billion anime plushes and don’t use them for other nefarious purposes (ie. none of mine are love pillows).
Front
Back
They are not exactly the best pictures but finding a spot with enough space to photograph them was problematic plus my apartment is beyond trashed at the moment ^^;
I got Papette from Requiemart a bit later in the day but I also got the previously mentioned petit nendoroid, little pullip Aggonya, a Gundam kit and the Saber Lily nendoroid at Animadness. The Saber Lily nendoroid was the last of the Saber nendoroids that I didn’t actually own ( WF Armor Saber, Saber Lion, Hetare Dark Saber, Hetare Saber and the not actually Saber Konata cosplay nendoroid) so I had to have her, honestly she was my second choice though I would have bought Rasberyl instead but they were sold out of her 😦
I spent a total of slightly over $200, somehow the math didn’t quite add up when I was going over it in my mind on the walk back to car (unlike at Anime Boston carrying three body pillows a couple of blocks back to one’s car kind of raises a few eyebrows) upon review of the receipt I discovered that I had actually received a 15% discount and I am not exactly sure as to why but the amount saved basically equaled the cost of one of the pillows so I am not going to complain especially when there is a free pillow involved. I picked up the Joker figure at a comic book shop on the way home, it is getting harder and harder to find Joker stuff I don’t already own ^^;
Oh my god, I need to go to this store LOL but I could easily go bankrupt here. Even so…. *A*;;;;
Oh yeah, and how’s the pricing at this store? Is it over the top, is everything close to the retail prices online, or is it cheaper than usual?
The pricing is pretty reasonable, for the most part it is what you would find online maybe a little less/more depending on the figure. They do have a site but that lists a lot of their inventory and pricing but you aren’t able to order from their website yet anyway http://www.animadness.com/ I am not sure how often it is updated with new stuff though as their focus is on their actual store.
I was kind of surprised the store was as well stocked as it was on my first visit there during the fall but they keep on getting more and more stuff in. It is very easy to go a bit overboard in spending when you have the stuff right in front of you, especially for me as I am a bit of an impulsive shopper ^^;
Thank you for the info! I wish I could order from the store considering how far away I am from this place ;A; oh well, maybe someday~!
I went to Tokyo Kid and was a bit disappointed as you know (although I did see a few exciting items). But this store seems like it has A LOT more of what what I’m looking for in a store. I may have to try it out.
” it’s nice to be able to see things in person sometimes”
I agree, sometimes that’s the difference between passing on a figure and realizing how absolutely wonderful it is.
Tokyo Kid is a neat store, it has a lot of the fundamentals but if you are active online then you have probably already seen everything (I did a post about Tokyo Kid with pics and everything before).
It’s good and bad, I can be impulsive sometimes more in a real store than online….
Lucky! I wish there were any form of anime shop at all around here, but unfortunately I live near Chicago, and there isn’t anything at all. There’s just this one lone shop up in Arlington Heights with this grumpy old asian man that sells bootlegs.
It’d be amazing to be able to walk into a store with anime goods. ~ One of these days I’ll have to go to one when I’m on a trip.
It’s been years since I have been to the Chicago area, the only store I can think of offhand has long since closed down unfortunately ^^; I do have a few friends in the Chicago area, let me ask around and see if they know of any place. I know Puddle (doll convention) is held fairly close and that there is a Japanese bookstore somewhere nearby.
Normally in the states the highest concentrations of anime stores tend to be near colleges, most major colleges have a comic book shop/anime shop lurking somewhere nearby finding them can sometimes be a pain though.
When I used to go on vacation more the first thing I would do when I got in the hotel would be to crack open the phone book and start looking for comic/anime stores.
Try Mitsuwa in Arlington Heights, not a whole lot there but at least there is something there from what I understand.