Osaka: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. You can see such shotengai in real life Osaka as well. Also uses exclusively Kansai-ben.
Hiroshima: In This Corner of the World. It made me cry 3 times!
Fukuoka: Manga Bambino! An Italian food manga with a ca. 22 year old protagonist. I dearly dearly loved this manga when I was around the same age. The protagonist is from Fukuoka. This manga was one of the reasons that inspired or motivated me to learn how to cook properly. I liked everything about it: the drawings, the story, the content, the characters, how to navigate the world as a young adult.
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is probably under-appreciated, as it's overshadowed by some of the studio's more popular titles (including, of course, the juggernaut franchise of Evangelion). It's one of those works that feels inextricably linked to its setting; despite being another wildly imaginative Gainax series, the richness it draws from Kansai history and tradition is impressive.
A suggestion for Kyoto along similar lines: The Eccentric Family (both the original and sequel seasons).
Both the eccentric family and the night is long… are based on novels by Tomihiko Morimi, and have a similar flavor. He’s sort of a champion of an ideal of a magical Kyoto, centering around nightlife and private clubs. And I believe there is talk of a third novel of the Eccentric Family. I love the anime adaptations of his work, the novels themselves in translation I do not care for.
I loved In This Corner of the World! It's a really good take on WWII in Japan told from the eyes of an ordinary housewife in Hiroshima.
For Fukuoka, I also remembered that the recently aired Buddy Daddies is also set in Fukuoka. Two assassins end up taking custody of a little girl who is the kid of one of their targets. The kid is super innocent and cute, and from what I've seen, it's more about bringing up a kid (the checklist for things to prepare on day 1 of kindergarten seems very real) in Japan. Can recommend!
Note that this article shouldn't necessarily be used as a way to find new things to watch; there are some clangers in there to avoid.
I also need to call out Takayama in Gifu prefecture, which is the basis for the fictional Kamiyama from Hyouka, an absolutely wonderful school-life-cum-mystery series from Kyoto Animation.
It would also be remiss of me not to mention Zombieland Saga, where a mad idol producer resurrects dead entertainment stars as zombies to form an idol group to revitalise Saga prefecture.
Hyouka and Zombieland Saga are both really good shows. I especially loved Karatsu in Saga prefecture when I visited it back in 2019.
Apart from Yuri no Ice, Karatsu is also very aware of Zombieland Saga. I walked up to the tourist information desk at Karatsu station and asked if they had a map with spots for Zombieland Saga, and the guy not only got me one, but also marked a few additional spots while guiding me like "You know that scene in episode 1 where the girl was walking in the rain? That's this bridge right here", and lots more which even I didn't remember! I was really impressed how much knowledgeable he was.
> Note that this article shouldn't necessarily be used as a way to find new things to watch; there are some clangers in there to avoid.
Are there any “much watchers” in the list? For someone who is visiting Japan later this month, has been a couple of times before, and has some (very!) basic language?
Well, taste is subjective and all that but out of that list, I'd say these are fairly objectively successful and popular if you're willing to take that as a rough proxy for "good": Haikyuu, Yuru Camp, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, Girls und Panzer, K-On, Haruhi, and the Shinkai films
I personally also quite like Hanasaku Iroha, Barakamon, Natsume Yuujinchou, Night is Short and Summer Time Rendering
Kinda depends on what you're looking for, e.g. Haikyuu is very much a sports anime and does a lot with the tropes of that genre. If you just want to watch a single good thing that has a bearing on a locality in Japan and isn't a project in and of itself (cough Haruhi cough) or otherwise cult, I'd say just watch Wolf Children.
FYI for "The Shinkai films" it's Your Name and 5 Centimeters Per Second.
The first is the second largest domestic box office ever for Japan (after Spirited Away) while also being critically acclaimed.
The latter is quite well received critically, but was less popular (without spoiling anything, the ending is somewhat divisive). Still at a 63 minute runtime it's well worth watching, IMO.
Also, I'll second the Wolf Children recommendation. Everybody in my family liked it, and that's rather rare for a film.
Also note that anime is not even remotely a realistic portrayal of Japan and should not be used as such like the article is proposing.
It used to be a common phenomenon for western "otaku" to think anime represents life in Japan, then travel there and come to find out that it's deeply racist and xenophobic, has an extremely repressive criminal justice system, a strong "we did nothing wrong in WW2" attitude, and so on.
Having lived in Japan for multiple years in the past and knowing other foreigners who've lived there for a decade+, I'll say that while it's true it's no anime dreamland and skews insular, one's experiences there will vary a lot depending on approach.
For example if you're running with a younger crowd in Tokyo and have become reasonably adept at speaking the language you'll run into a lot less of that kind of thing — a lot of the time people there just aren't comfortable with dealing with those who don't speak Japanese well, and older individuals and more out of the way cities might be less accommodating of outsiders. Often when I see writings online about having a bad time, it's from jaded Eikawa teachers who've made no effort to learn Japanese or branch beyond their friend group of other foreigners despite having lived there for many years.
That said young people aren't running the government there due to being solidly outnumbered, so national policies are naturally going to be more reflective of its older population.
The one that jumped out was Magical Girl Raising Project, which a younger me might have described as dark and edgy, but me today would call misery porn (it's not actually porn, just to be clear).
Now that I browse again, most are really good, but some are just a bit dull while being great examples of being from a certain place. Not to call it out in particular, but I ended up dropping Robotics;Notes for being kinda dull, despite it being part of the 5bp semicolon extended universe (Steins;Gate et al).
Really nice article with lots of good shows! My personal underappreciated yet awesome and highly recommended ones from that article are:
- Aomori: Flying Witch: Highly relaxing show with lots of nature.
- Wakayama: Summer Time Rendering: A highly highly underappreciated sci-fi thriller that picks up in the latter half and keeps getting better and better, with an awesome ending. Iirc the show was underappreciated in Japan because Disney+ had exclusive streaming rights when it was airing and it flew under a lot of people's radars due to that.
Also, doing pilgrimage for an anime you like provides a really good motivation to actually visit and explore the place. Japan is quite homogeneous but each place has their own charm.
Summer time Rendering was airing on at least BS11 (free channel on satellite broadcast), Tokyo MX and Kansai TV. It was made available on other streaming services like Amazon Prime, d-anime, Abema, etc. after the broadcast ended.
Surprised that the choice for Gunma was not Initial D [1]. The Anime mentions a lot of places and there are few (if any) vehicles in Anime more iconic than the protagonist's Toyota.
I shouted "The AE86 sucks" into a crowd of car folks once. A fight broke out over if the AE86 could actually do what it wanted to in the show. When I was in high school, probably half the school wanted an AE86. They had just come into legal for import status around that time, having become 25 years old.
Yes. While some of the Anime mentioned by the parent may be known to a more general public, that doesn't mean that it is the same for the vehicle.
For those that know the Anime, Takumi's AE86 is really something different. The car has made more than one cameo in other Anime ([1] for example, but I remember in School Rumble too), street race or drifting scenes often involve a reference to the serie[2], and the Internet is full of people slapping Eurobeat songs on top of a random cartoon [3] or their own driving [4][5].
Write AE86 on Amazon and you will find plenty of stuff about the car.
And I saw more than one case of old Toyotas painted up like in the Anime, "Fujiwara Tofu shop" writing on the side include. And I mean in Europe, not Japan.
I watched that film for the first time about a year ago, and it’s one of those anime I’d recommend to non-anime-fan film nerds and “genre” (horror, sci fi, in this case) fans. Lots of anime’s a bit of an acquired taste due largely to stylistic elements and use of tropes, but that one’s got solid cross-interest appeal, I’d say.
The 2022 Anime Blockbuster Movie Suzume by Makoto Shinkai starts out in Miyazaki Prefecture.(https://miyazakian.com/locations/nichinan/suzume.html) We're often forgotten as a destination, even though Miyazaki is a hidden gem as a Surfers and nature paradise.
I'm trying to change that through my Miyazakian website.
Happy to see Slam Dunk mentioned, especially with a recently released film[1] animating (finally!) the last part of the manga. The series has aged beautifully.
I went to see the movie in the cinema without knowing anything really about basketball (European) or about slamdunk and enjoyed it the whole way through
>I never figured out why CMU would have enough name recognition in Japan to show up in an anime.
CMU is a solid computer science and engineering school which has found a way to get its name thrown in up there with the likes of MIT and Caltech (can't tell you how many times I've seen CS-oriented folks praise CMU like it's MIT). It's also possible that someone at the studio has a connection to CMU and wanted to include it.
I can give him a pass for Digimon -> Summer Wars, since it's understandable why he might want to explore the same space again with full length and without the restrictions being part of a then-major kid's franchise brings.
I haven't seen Belle, so can't comment on that one.
Definitely Kyoto. TFA's rec of Night is Short certainly isn't wrong, but the classic Kyoto anime pilgrimage rec is the precursor show, The Tatami Galaxy. You can locate pretty much every scene from the show: https://jamesofwalsh.com/2015/05/17/tatami-galaxy-and-kyoto/
I should write up my explorations sometime as I think it was more detailed than any of the ones I can quickly find on Google in English, e.g. going out to the Keage Incline. It was a great excuse to wander around Kyoto, a great city.
While I'm talking about the Kyoto area and anime, I've got to add that if you've seen Chihayafuru, go to Omi Jingu (近江神宮). Otsu is right there and Lake Biwa is neat anyway. I was able to watch some live karuta, chat about the show and the game, buy some cards and very poorly attempt to play with them (sorry, haven't actually memorized 百人一首 yet!).
i actually visited sendai for haikyuu! i enjoyed my time there a lot - there's a lot of beautiful day trips available like matsushima and yamagata - but i wouldn't recommend visiting it for haikyuu. sports stadiums are not that interesting from outside and most of the actual locations in the manga are based on a small town deep in the countryside.
I think they accidentally created a perfect idea for a new anime called "47" where some character on a motorcycle or for some other method/reason takes a trip to all the prefectures in Japan, one per episode, to show the highlights of each location.
I'd watch the heck out of that if the story was decent.
And knowing there would be 47 episode keeps people hooked. They might even use some weird concept like teleporting or like "quantum leap" where they are stuck inside each prefecture for a day or week before they can leave.
While that does seem like a nice idea, I highly doubt it'll materialize because of the sheer cost of ロケハン(location hunting). Atleast some of the key staff would need to visit every prefecture in Japan to take photos, gather local material(a lot of which might not exist online), which would cost time and money; both things the anime industry lacks.
Collaboration between different studios is also not viable because barring some exceptions (PA Works in Toyama, Kyoto Animation in Kyoto/Nara), almost all the studios are concentrated in Western Tokyo.
Unless, if the anime was crowdfunded. Maybe.
(I don't currently work in the industry; I'm just voicing my personal opinion.)
Interesting idea. If I were ever to travel to Japan, I'd visit a lot of the cities and towns that are mentioned in Murakami's books, including those that were affected by the gas attacks.
Kinda surprised they didnt take Zombie Land Saga for Saga prefecture. It's literally made to promote the prefecture. Plus its a wonderful anime with lovely characters
If someone is looking for more recommendations based on anime they've watched and their locations, here's a 2019-version in Japanese (there's a huge number of videos in Japanese it seems, I just took a random version).
Why is it always Japan and anime? It'd be nice to see articles like "32 Telenovelas for 32 States of Mexico" or "16 Home Renovation Shows for 16 Bundesländer of Germany" every once in a while.
Ever play Civ 5 and get the message how another country is annoyed that their citizens are all wearing blue jeans?
Anime is popular, subculture wise, and people who like it would most likely grew up on the internet. Thus more news about Japan would spread online. We see the same thing with Korea now with kpop, kdrama.
Compare that to Mexico or Germany, where is their cultural influence? Food yes, drinks yes. But there's virtually no media being published on the same scale as Japan. Nor is it constantly talked about.
Japan and anime are a bit special as well, because they tend to always animate their home country or include it in some manner.
I'd say Japan also lost much of their culture during a process of westernization, before and after WWII, but the resulting amalgamation was much more potent (especially memetically) than the mess that China ended up with after Mao.
Osaka: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. You can see such shotengai in real life Osaka as well. Also uses exclusively Kansai-ben.
Hiroshima: In This Corner of the World. It made me cry 3 times!
Fukuoka: Manga Bambino! An Italian food manga with a ca. 22 year old protagonist. I dearly dearly loved this manga when I was around the same age. The protagonist is from Fukuoka. This manga was one of the reasons that inspired or motivated me to learn how to cook properly. I liked everything about it: the drawings, the story, the content, the characters, how to navigate the world as a young adult.