This is a guide for all the nerds 🤓, geeks and anime 🎮🗡️🖥️ fans out there hoping to navigate Osaka city for anime goods and other points of interest. 

Tokyo isn't the only city for all your anime shopping and cafes, so jump in and I'll show you!

Anime in Osaka

Thanks a lot for purchasing this guide for your future (or current) trip to Osaka!

Here are some cafes that are permanent and may interest you:

Of course, when we talk about geeking out in Osaka, we MUST make a stop to the infamous Den Den Town:

There are some cafes that sometimes have anime or character collabs, and you should keep an eye of these cafes:

As a fan, you probably already know the Animate Cafe will have tons of anime and things they rotate in and out of. There are three animate cafes in Osaka:

SWEETS PARADISE is a sweets buffets all over Japan that may sometimes have some big name anime collabs as well. 

公式スイーツパラダイス[SWEETS PARADISE]スイーツと軽食が食べ放題のバイキング

I encourage you to navigate through the website, look and see if your anime is under a collab and check to see if an Osaka location has this collab available:

You can easily spend a day here, exploring the reseller shops, manga stores and everything else in between. Here are some nearby stores outside of Den Den Town you can also check out:

If you are visiting the Osaka station/Umeda area, there are also a lot of shops to visit:

I know many people associate the playground of anime to Tokyo, and rightfully so - as many events and flagship stores and museums are actually in Tokyo. But when it comes to shopping and cafes, Osaka is not too shabby either.

In fact, you can find a lot of the same huge anime shops here in Osaka too. And sometimes there may even be stock of something you were looking for in Tokyo.

I hope I can help you pin out some of these stores to save you some time and stress!

There is an Animate store in Umeda as well, but personally, I do find it rather lacking. 

You can also find Animate at Kyobashi station and Tennoji station in the city, so if your hotel is in the area, it may be worth checking out.

Anime art exhibits sometimes can pop up for a limited time too. Osaka doesn't really have any permanent specific museums or exhibits like they do in Tokyo, but you can sometimes find limited time exhibits that tour the country quite often.

Whether its an anime you are interested in will be up in the air, of course. But generally, you will find these at our Department Stores:

These department store exhibits are usually up in their "event spaces" on the top most floors, near the top floors. This is just a general tip nationwide, actually!

You can also find some bigger exhibits near our big conference center, ATC. However, this is a bit of a trek from the city center. So please check the website first before you head on over!

Again, Osaka doesn't really have HUGE anime events like Comiket or AnimJapan in Tokyo. But we do have some fun events that are smaller in scale.

This is our biggest cosplay event of the street and it takes place in Den Den Town around March for one weekend. It's usually super crowded though on the main street and almost every time I've been there, I have been stuck crowdsurfing with very little way out. Stay in the smaller side streets is my recommendation!

「日本橋ストリートフェスタ2023」開催見送りに関するお知らせ

We actually do have a Comic Con that takes place in our biggest convention hall in the city, INTEX OSAKA (near ATC Hall). I've actually never been so I cannot comment on this.

東京コミコン2022

This is basically our Comiket of Osaka. I've been a couple of times, and personally - I'm not a huge fan. Unlike Comiket where there's still a bit of variety since it's so big. Comic City is purely doujinshi. And usually doujinshi of things that are only popular in Japan at that point in time. So if you're mostly a casual fan, don't really know what the newer anime are and can't read Japanese, there's very little for you in store here. 

COMIC CITY大阪 124｜event_info

You can also sometimes find some exhibits here in Abeno Harukas Art Museum in Tennoji: