America: A Paradise of Bootlegs

※This is a repost of an article originally published on November 7, 2024.

　Let's visit an ordinary shopping mall. Sometimes it's the places that aren't tourist attractions that reveal what a place is really like. So I headed to the sort of mall in Seattle that's just local enough to have a Round1—the kind of place neighborhood regulars actually use.

　As it turned out, I learned quite a lot. First of all, opening hours are... flexible. It's a mall about the size of a suburban AEON, yet the doors casually opened about ten minutes after the posted opening time. Even then, the individual shops only started getting ready, so although it officially opened at 10:00, business didn't really begin until around 10:15. Well, nobody's in a hurry at a local shopping mall anyway. There's something oddly pleasant about the collective attitude of, "Eh, close enough."

　What surprised me most, though, was how completely lawless imported Japanese pop culture had become. Some stores were practically 100% bootlegs. Walls of mysterious merchandise featuring what looked like AI-generated illustrations of Naruto or Goku, printed with glitter and sold as "art." When it came to figures, you had to inspect each one carefully to determine whether it was an outright counterfeit made from stolen molds. In a strange way, it almost made shopping more interesting—you actually needed an expert eye.

　Mikus whose faces somehow looked slightly swollen, or whose skin tone was just a little off. I'll admit something in secret: I found that subtle imperfection... kind of charming.

　Prize-figure bootlegs are almost impossible to prevent. You can't realistically monitor factories in China twenty-four hours a day, and eventually the molds leak. Even KAngel has fallen victim to it. Of course, the counterfeiters can never quite reproduce the delicate balance of the original paintwork or proportions, which is why the results usually look... well, like this.

　Still, the average American customer who wanders in probably doesn't mind. "Wow! Cheap Jump and Ghibli merch!" They buy something during a casual afternoon stroll, take it home, and happily display it without ever noticing that anything feels slightly off.

　The shop staff, meanwhile, were delighted to see me—a Japanese anime fan. They genuinely seemed to love anime and manga. Selling bootlegs and loving the source material apparently coexist just fine in their minds. To them, those are simply two separate issues.

　This one literally says "Gojō Satoru" in hiragana. At this point it almost starts to feel like contemporary art—a satire of mass consumerism. The store also displayed statues of Christ and Buddha, though judging by the quality they were almost certainly fake as well. Counterfeit statues of Christ. There's almost something artistically provocative about that.

　Whenever you see a figure shop overseas with names like "Tokyo" or "Japan" slapped on the front, chances are it's dealing in bootlegs. Japanese branding sells figures. Yet it's complicated. The people running these shops often do genuinely love the works they're selling. I don't think they even see what they're do as especially wrong. Honestly, I don't really feel angry about it either.

　My English-speaking followers have raised the issue too.

　One person told me that if they ordered the official KAngel figure, the shipping alone would cost an additional ¥10,000.

　So fans overseas are caught between two frustrations: their dislike of bootlegs, and the painful cost of international shipping. When a prize figure suddenly costs thousands of yen just to ship, it's not impossible to understand why some younger fans decide, "Fine, I'll just buy the cheap fake." Of course, it's not really anyone's fault.

　The reality is that, despite the popularity of Japanese pop culture, it still isn't big enough to support official specialty stores across Europe and North America on the same scale. That's really the heart of the problem. Back when I lived in Okinawa, people made a huge fuss when the prefecture finally got its very first Animate. Hopefully things will improve someday.

　At one game shop, I found the overseas boxed edition of NEEDY STREAMER OVERDOSE. The genuine article. It had just been released that month. I wonder how well the real angel will fare in the English-speaking world. Maybe I'll display a counterfeit statue of Christ right next to the official English release.