An immersive Japanese manga experience is opening in NYC
Anime lovers residing in New York, rejoice! This fall, Kodansha, one of Japan’s largest publishers of manga, will debut a special immersive pop-up experience dedicated to all things anime at 45 Grand Street near West Broadway in Lower Manhattan.
Kodansha House: Where Manga Meets will officially open on October 4 and welcome guests on Wednesdays to Sundays between noon and 9pm through the end of October.
There will be lots to do at the pop-up, with activities and programming spanning in form and topic. You’ll get to look through a robust manga library, for example, and meet fellow fans. Other activations include live discussions and trivia nights about your favorite anime, movie screenings (Akira, Blue Lock, Ghost in the Shell and Blame! are already on the schedule) and dress-up scenarios where you will get to suit up like popular characters before posing against a projected anime background. You’ll basically feel like an anime star in no time.
A mere look through the various scheduled activities makes one thing clear: the organizers really want fans to get together and are hoping that the experience will be about much more than grabbing merch showcasing anime stars. As a matter of fact, the already-announced “speed friending event for fans to find their perfect manga-loving match” sounds absolutely delightful
Considering that Kodansha is behind hits like Sailor Moon, we can only imagine how popular the temporary destination will be this fall so heed our advice and try to get there towards the beginning of the month, before word spreads about the fun to be had in there.