Article by forum member Pepe.
Hi all! So I visited the Visual Arts Summer Sale 2014 in Gamers Akihabara yesterday, and thought I’d make a write-up of what it’s all about. I took a whole bunch of pictures but, unfortunately, I only have a low-quality cellphone camera, so please bear with me.
The sale was held at the 5th floor of Gamers Akihabara. For those who don’t know, Gamers is a big chain of anime goods, focusing more on games. The main branch is in Akihabara and has 7 floors. The event was held on the entire 5th floor. The area of the floor wasn’t so big, though, but it was chock-full of Visual Arts goods (mostly Key).
Upon climbing the stairs, you are already greeted with ads about the sale! (pictured above)
And here is the entrance. Big banners of the new artworks made specially for the event.
The basic layout is like, well, a grocery. Multiple aisles of Visual Arts goodies, somewhat organized into items for each series. Going aisle-by-aisle.
Aisle 1: Summer sale features, limited merchandise, and a whole bunch of tapestries.
Summer features, including the TV Animation Perfect Visual Book, mugs, and towels
I cannot stress just how many tapestries there are. It takes up one whole corner of the whole area.
For the Kanade fans out there :P
One of the advertised newer items. I really wanted this shirt, but they were sold out, it seems :(
Random section of Aisle 1 with, well… more tapestries
Aisle 2: Angel beats feature, Mugs, Cospa items, and old Key games feature (Clannnad, Kanon, Air)
Girls DeMo shirts! Look pretty classy, IMO. Even a robe available.
Yup, theme songs of AB playing on the TV. And it seems I forgot to take a pic of the side of this aisle, which had more AB merchandise like keychains and pillowcases, sorry about that :(
Mugs galore!
COSPA merchandise. COSPA is a standalone shop that sells a whole bunch of paraphernalia of a whole lot of different series, so they happen to have a few Key items.
This is supposed to be the feature section for Clannad, AIR and Kanon (because the TV was playing their OPs annd EDs) but they decided to put LB! Items there instead
And this is their aisle… Really sad choices of merch for the older games, I must say :(
This was cute, though!
Aisle 2: Little Busters and Rewrite aisles
3 sections of the Little busters aisle (4, if you count the one supposedly for older series). First section had can badges and mugs. Second section had keychains, pillowcases, and those writing pads (I forgot what you call it). Third section seemed like a KudWaf section plus mobile phone accessories.
Masato bag looked interesting, but I can’t ready any of it, haha.
3 sections for rewrite. First one had mobile phone accessories (including iphone cases), mugs, and towels. Second section had keychains and pillowcases. Third one was playing the Rewrite themes, and featured keyboards! (I know there were also LB keyboards somewhere but I guess I forgot to take a pic as well)
This is a really funny mug, which I am sure Rewrite players will be familiar with ;)
At the back, facing the wall, were a large variety of fans. I already have an AB one that I bought some time ago, so I skipped this section.
Aisle 4: Display cases, other Visual Art’s goods, manga, music, video, and games
Didn’t take a pic of the other Visual Art’s series, because I wasn’t really interested in them. This is a Key community, after all ;)
Kind of random choices for the displays, if you ask me. Ah well.
Manga and artbooks! I was looking for a copy of Track Zero but it seems they didn’t have that one. Also missing is Itaru Hinoue’s artbook.
Music CDs, and blu-ray/DVDs above! Was kind of disappointed in the choices because not much OSTs and they didn’t have the LB Perfect Vocal Collection :frowning:
And the games! Severe lack of older games as well :( And of course, advertisement of Tomoyo After Perfect Edition.
After spending a good hour or so in the venue, I checked out and got myself these items:
Couldn’t resist the Perfect Visual Book, of course xP I quite like the anime art style, probably on par with the VN art. Also got a Rewrite mini-towel, chibimoth keychain, Yui IC card holder (useful for trains in Japan, I swear), and double-sided clear file of Haruka and Koari (I have a sort of clear file collection).
The extra items were the Visual Collection photo, and the stamp card. Stamp Card is basically you get a stamp for every 1000 yen purchase, then every 5 stamps, you can draw a ball from a rotating lottery thing to get a free item. I chose the Sekine/Irie photo because it’s an artwork that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
And that concludes my coverage of the Visual Arts Summer Sale 2014. It wasn’t really a sale (because nothing was on discount orz), but really more of a collection of Key merchandise over the years. My reaction to the sale was simply “I want to buy everything in the store, but I can’t, so I must carefully select what I buy”.
