Do you ever find any otome merch for sale where you live?
In my area, the games are surprisingly easy to find. Even before Aksys started localising otome for the Switch, you could usually find the Vita otoge in most gaming shops. In my local game shop, in the Switch section there is a lot of otome. They have the limited editions too. I'm not sure how well they sell, but some of the copies have been traded in, which shows that people are buying them. I thought that the otome fanbase was small, but it's probably bigger than I realise. Other than the games themselves, there is never any merch for sale. Sometimes they sell the DVDs of the anime adaptations, but that's it. Until now, the only merch I had was the stuff that came with the limited edition boxes, and a few drama CDs.
I went to this place that was sort of like a mini convention. Basically, it was just full of vendors selling various pop culture things. I hardly ever spend money at these places, cause they never have anything I like. Because I usually like stuff that was popular years ago, they don't have much that I recognise.
The first stand I went to was run by this man who buys random stuff from Japan to sell over here. I saw some Black Butler merch, and began to rummage through what he had. And somehow, there was otome merchandise! Some of it he had bought years ago, but it had never sold. That's why he was selling it all for such cheap prices. The more popular stuff was a bit more expensive. Sometimes it pays to have obscure interests! Even though most of the merch wasn't for my favourite characters, I bought a lot of the stuff from the games I loved. There probably won't be another chance for me to find it again. It hardly cost me anything, which is great. The vendor even threw in this Black Butler II notepad for free, which was nice of him.
Down below is a rundown of all the stuff I got.
At first, I didn't think much of this vendor's stand, until I stumbled across a pack of badges with chibis on them. The badge on the top I thought was of Toma from Amnesia. I was very surprised to see Amnesia stuff in the wild. Upon closer inspection, I realised that the badges were from Clock Zero. But I decided to search and see if there was more otoge stuff around.On one of the tables was a lot of pillows and towels. Most of it was for the anime Free!, which I want to watch at one point. But suddenly, I saw something that caught my eye. It was a mini pillow of Shu from DiaLovers! It looks like it was made for when MORE, BLOOD came out.
The pillow's double sided, and the art is of Shu's sprites from the game. There is no case over the pillow, and you can't get inside to see the stuffing. I put it on the chair in my room. I could've put it on my bed, but I didn't want the germs from it being on the display table to go anywhere near where I sleep. If it stayed on my bed, I wouldn't be able to see it very well. So it stays on my chair. During my online classes, it's quite nice to hug it.
Other than the pillow, there was one other piece of Diabolik Lovers merchandise. And it was also featuring Shu. Of course I also bought it. This merch is... a "microfibre cloth". It was still partially in its packaging. It's basically the same sort of cloth that you'd use to clean your computer screen, except I don't think you're supposed to use it for that. I think it's supposed to be used as a towel, but I just hung it up as a poster. I don't have much to hang it up with, so I just used some pegs.
The art on this one is really nice. It was probably sold around 2011-12 ish, because this art is from the early days of DiaLovers, at least I think it is. Maybe you're supposed to use it at the beach, or put it on your bed? It seems like it would get ruined easily then. I guess you could wash it, but I wouldn't want to risk this in the washing machine.
At the vendor's stand, there was also a big shelf of books. There were so many art books from various unlocalised otoge. I also recall seeing a Blue Exorcist fan book. On the side, there were some Black Butler notebooks. Then there was a box full of keychains and phone charms, and a booklet full of Uta no Prince-sama trading cards. My friend rummaged through the keychains and said that there was nothing in there that would interest me. Luckily I didn't believe that, and went to look through there anyway.
In the box were a lot of chibi bishounen phone charms. I didn't recognise any of the characters, until I stumbled across a purple keychain. I was like "Is that Harada from Hakuoki?" Sometimes it's hard to recognise characters in chibi form. In the box I also found a similar keychain, which I could 100% confrim was Saito. There were also mini phone charms of Nagakura and Saito again. The vendor told me that these were from gacha machines, and were purchased a long time ago. Even though I like Harada a lot, I bought one of the Saito keychains because I like his chibi design better.
This keychain attaches through the headphone port of your phone. The bit with Saito on is stretchy, and you're supposed to use it to clean your screen. There is a lot of old dust trapped in there, but it's still quite clean. I'm pretty bad at attaching keychains, so I'm glad that all you have to do is plug it in. It prevents dust from getting into the headphone jack, which is good. I don't think it looks that nice on a modern smartphone (not that my phone even has a headphone jack...), it looks much better on a handheld gaming console. I was going to use mine on my PS Vita, but I decided to put it on my Switch because I almost never use headphone with it. It looks so cool, the purple design is very aesthetically appealing. Also, it's useful in that it can clean the screen! Maybe I should've bought all the Hakuoki keychains, but I don't know what I'd do with them all. The mini ones attached with that weird metal beading stuff that I can never figure out how to undo, so maybe it's best I don't have them. They can stay there for the next otome fan to randomly stumble across.
Even though those badges I saw at first were not Amnesia ones, I still ended up finding some Amnesia merch.
The final thing I bought was a pack of Amnesia trading cards. They're based on Amnesia Later, a fandisc I haven't played, but the art's pretty so I don't care. It's not a full set, but there are still quite a lot of cards. Most of them are of CGs from the game, but there's also some nice character portraits. Some of the cards are shiny too! They seem to be good quality. I displayed most of them next to the other otoge cards that were packed in with the games. There were a lot of Shin cards in there, which is great cause he's my favourite.
At first, I thought these were playing cards, cause that would sort of fit the theme of Amnesia. But they're just collectibles. They probably came in blind bags when they were new. My photos are a bit dim, but some of the cards have shiny foil accents. The card design is repeated on the back, but with some of the CG cards they have the alternate CG on the other side. I'm very happy with these, but now I want to play Amnesia Later so badly.
I'm just so glad I managed to find this stuff. It looks great on display in my room, which is now absolutely covered in otome stuff. I have a lot of the cards on my walls, with some self printed posters too. My room looks like your typical weeb room, but I'm quite proud of it.
Maybe I should attend more of these geek conventions. There's probably a lot of otome stuff around. I'm usually not that bothered by merchandise, unless it can be used to decorate my room.
I don't like buying stuff like figures or blind boxes. I especially don't like Pop figures. Recently I bought some Dragon Ball blind box figures. I didn't realise that what you saw on the box was what you were getting, I thought I'd get a random figure each time. I saw on one of the boxes that in that series you could get Broly, who is my favourite character. There were two different types of Brolys available, so I thought there was a fifty percent chance of getting him. So I bought the last figure they had left. Inside was Vegito (who was on the front of the box). The figure was really good quality, so I didn't mind that much.
A week later, I found another box in a separate shop. It had Vegito on the front again, but I still thought that the figure inside would be random. I bought it, and once again, Vegito was inside... I tried to be positive, but I was a bit disappointed. Then, a few weeks later, in another shop, I saw another figure box from the same series. This time, Broly was on the front of the box. Even though I really wanted him, I had already wasted enough money so I didn't bother getting it. On the shop's website, they were listed as "blind boxes" and it said that the figure you got was random. But that's technically a lie. You know what you're going to get from the front of the box. And that is why I'm not buying any blind boxes ever again. At least my Vegito figures look cool. I suppose they can be twins. One of them is in my room, while the other is with my manga on my bookshelf.
Sorry about the ramble there. I know you came to read about otome stuff instead. I think I'm going to get back into otome games very soon. Maybe there'll be some more reviews on this blog sometime soon. Until then, see you next time!
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