Suginami Anime Museum

I took the Kanto bus from Ogikubo station and got off at Ogikubo Keisatusho-mae. The museum was off the main street but can be easily seen as soon as I turned the corner. Outside, the building had pics of various anime on the walls in stone.

The museum itself is located on the 3rd and 4th floor of the building (which looks like a small hotel or lounge. (There were sofas and chairs along with a piano on the first floor.) I headed upstairs and immediately the staff greeted me. She handed me a pamphlet in Japanese and started to tell me some things which I didn't quite yet. ^^; I asked if I could take pics (in Japanese,) and they realized that I was obviously a foreigner and handed me an English pamphlet as well. ^^; Pics were fine (in most areas) and the next question was 'Where are you from?' After the short Q&A, I looked around the 3rd floor which was the heart of the small museum.

The pamphlet had numbers for the various exhibits, so I followed it. As soon as you exit the elevators, you see the circular front desk in the middle.

The pillar had various drawings done by various artists that were involved in the anime's creation.

There is also a 1/12 model of Gundam RX-78-2 that you can 'control' by remote. ^^;

In truth, all the remote control does is make the Gundam emit various sounds. Cockpit opening, takeoff, walking, etc. It was off, but they turned it on for me and gave me the remote. I played around with it a good 3 minutes before relinquishing the remote. ^.^

The first stop (after playing with the gundam) is the glass showcase that had listings of many (if not all) anime from the 70's, 80's and so on until 2008.

They must have to change the panels every year. After that was the 'view' of an animator's office. The 3 tvs show the production process of Jin-Roh from the story boards, sketches by key animators, cel coloring and the 'filming' process along with special effects.

They noted that there are 24 frames per sec. to an anime and at 90 min. feature would have over 140,000 cels.... o.O Also, a single shot can have 6 layers, but a busy train scene had up to 10 layers. Sugoi.... To see the details of the process was interesting. The tvs were all subtitled in English so that was good. (Alot of the descriptions in the museum had english beside it. ^-^)

My favorite part has to be the next exhibit, even if I didn't 'use' it. It was a booth where you could be a seiyuu and dub the voices of various anime clips. The clips were all Astroboy and I got to watch a girl do the voice of Uran, Atom's sister. She was so good! The script was in Japanese of course and I did't even want to attempt a reading of it, even though I think the kanji had furigana. ^^;

The other feature of the museum was the visual lab where you could create the 'traces' for the cels, as well as animate and color on the computer.

That was interesting, but I was more amused when I saw the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood posters on the walls.

I headed to the 4th floor where they had a magical girl exhibit. The exhibition area changes and currently it features pics and info from various magical girl animes from the past, like Creamy Mami and a personal fav (from my childhood,) Perusha.

There were questions that you can answer and fill out on the flier (for a prize I suppose) but since I can't read Japanese and I didn't watch the anime, I coudln't answer anything. ^^;

I walked around the library which had manga and dvds where you can watch at a booth. I drooled over a magazine with Edward Elric on the cover. I never saw that pic bfore, but he wore a slightly opened graysish blue shirt with a necklace and same colored pants. I couldn't take up much details since I was staring at his...chest. ^.^ I headed over to the theater room which was showing the various anime episodes from the magical girls in the exhibit. The one I saw was an episode of Perusha when she met Toby and they went to his world.... The romance was so cliche and dated...that it made me feel nostalgic for simple stories as these. Like when they entered the illusion chamber and Toby said that you can have anything you want here, I knew that she would think of being a bride. And thus, a bridal dress appeared and he was in a white tuxedo. ^^;

The half floor above the 4th floor show some settei sketches from Creamy Mami. There was even a room where kids entered their drawings of various outfits they created for Morisawa Yu.

There was also a 'suckle room' on that floor...which is basically a breast-feeding room. But with an anime title like Creamy Mami and a 'suckle room', I'm starting to feel the floor has an H quality to it...but that could just be because I'm a pervert. ^^;

retrospect

After looking around a bit more, I left the museum. The museum is free since it's so small. But it's still a nice place to visit. I wasn't able to hit it when I was in Japan several years ago. The size is good that you can see everything in a short time and not miss anything or get too saturated. Also, it seems to be a fav of the local kids since there are some that go there to play. It's not crowded at all and if I knew Japanese, I'm sure the dubbing booth and visual room would have been tons of fun.