Kataban Blog
Mandarake in Nakano Broadway: Nineteen Storefronts, Floor by Floor
The Nakano Broadway route treats Mandarake as three stops: the game shop, the manga flagship, and the toy floor. That is the useful version for a buying trip, and it is also a considerable simplification. Mandarake does not run a shop in Nakano Broadway. It runs a neighbourhood of them — its own floor guide lists more than thirty units spread across four floors, each one a separate storefront with its own shutter, its own signage and its own narrow specialism.
Walking it is disorienting the first time, because the units are not grouped by subject and the corridors loop. This is a photo tour of nineteen of those storefronts, floor by floor, so you can recognise the door you want before you are standing in front of it. Floors are as listed on Mandarake's own floor guide; what each shop stocks is what the storefront itself advertises, plus the shop's own product line where its page states one.
Floor assignments come from Mandarake's Nakano store and floor guide. Product lines quoted as the shop's own come from that shop's page on the same site. Photographs were taken in the arcade.
2F — Games, Cards, Doujinshi, and Most of the Toys
The second floor is the widest and the one most people mean when they say they have “been to Mandarake”. Twelve of the nineteen storefronts below are on it.
Galaxy ギャラクシー
The used game shop, and the one stop on this list that a retro game trip cannot skip. The sign says it plainly — USED GAME SHOP — and the cases along the front are stacked with boxed software rather than figures. Cartridges, discs and hardware from the Famicom era forward, priced individually in the glass.
Card-kan カード館
Trading cards, in a bright red unit with the card displays turned outward so you can price-check from the corridor without going in. Single cards and sealed product both.
Micro-kan ミクロ館
Small things, seriously collected. The shop's own product line is erasers — キン消し and ガン消し among them — along with cheap toys of the 1980s and 90s, pro wrestling material and Ghibli goods. If you remember something that cost a hundred yen when you were eight, this is the unit that has it in a case.
Daisharin 大車輪
Die-cast cars only. The shop states its own range as Tomica plus 1/43, 1/18 and 1/64 scales, domestic and imported vintage included, and the wall of small boxed cars behind glass is the whole shop in one look.
Special 1 スペシャル1
The first of the numbered Special units, and the tokusatsu and robot one. Its stated range is Ultraman, Transformers, current kaiju sofubi, other robot toys including Zoids, Votoms and the Brave series, and garage kits. The red cases out front are lined with vinyl figures at eye level.
Special 4 スペシャル4
PVC figures. The sign spells the specialism out in English on the fascia — BISHOUJO PVC — and the shop lists trading figures, gachapon and prize figures alongside it. Boxed, stacked and lit.
Special 5 スペシャル5
American toys and LEGO, which in practice means the carded action figures a Japanese collector would call アメTOY: Spider-Man, Terminator, the licensed shelf of the 1980s and 90s, hung rather than boxed.
Special 7 スペシャル7
Sofubi and designer vinyl, with a bank of gachapon machines set into the frontage. The open doorway is unusual for the numbered units, most of which keep everything behind glass; here you walk in among the shelves.
LIVE-kan LIVE館
Doujinshi aimed at women readers. The buy-up notices in the window are specifically for 女性同人誌, and the interior is shelving rather than display cases — deep aisles of thin books you are expected to browse standing up.
DEEP-kan DEEP館
The men's counterpart, and the fascia says so: 男性向同人誌・同人ROM＆グッズ・美少女ゲームなど — men's doujinshi, doujin ROMs and goods, bishoujo games. Adult material, so the usual age rules apply at the counter.
Cosplay-kan コスプレ館
Costumes on racks, out in the open at the front of the unit, with wigs and accessories in the cases behind. The shop lists costumes, small props, wigs and collaboration accessories as its range.
UFO UFO
Tokusatsu on disc. The fascia reads TOKUSATSU above the door and the format labels on the glass are Blu-ray, DVD and VHS — the last of those is not decoration, and the tape shelf is a real part of the stock.
3F — The Manga Flagship
The third floor is books, and its anchor is the shop that gave Mandarake its name.
Main Store 本店
The manga flagship: run after run of back issues and out-of-print volumes, with a discount set-book corner along the front. It is also the storefront people photograph, because of what is mounted above the shelving — an oversized figure sprawled across the top of the frontage, legs hanging over the aisle.
This is the shop the route article sends you to for manga rather than games, and the reason it is worth an elevator ride even if you came for cartridges.
4F — Vintage Toys, Rare Books, Model Trains
The fourth floor is the oldest-feeling one, and the least like a shopping centre. Six of the storefronts below are here.
Hen-ya 変や
Impossible to miss and impossible to mistake for anything else: the entrance is built as a red shrine gate, with paper strips hanging from the beam. Its stated range is corporate novelty goods, vintage and antique toys — tin, chogokin, kaiju sofubi — and the Henshin Cyborg family. Showa-era material, presented as if it were on an altar.
Plastic ぷらすちっく
Vintage Japanese fashion dolls and everything that came in a box beside them — dressed dolls in cases, boxed outfit sets, and the plastic doll houses and furniture that Takara and Tomy sold alongside them. Yellow frontage, dolls facing out.
Kaiba 海馬
A bookshop with a very particular reading list, printed on its own sign: science fiction, mystery, juvenile novel series and occultism. The shop's stated range adds subculture titles, art photobooks, spiritual and religious books, fortune telling, UFOs and psychic phenomena. Free-standing shelves, packed spine-out.
Mania-kan マニア館
Vintage manga and rare books, and the presentation tells you the price bracket before the tags do: everything is behind sliding glass, laid flat and faced, the way a dealer displays stock that does not get handled casually.
Special 6 スペシャル6
The robot model unit, and the one Special that is not on the second floor. Its stated range is Chogokin-damashii, Robot-damashii and plastic kits — Macross, Kotobukiya, Votoms, Evangelion — explicitly non-Gundam robot toys. Yellow cases, boxed kits stacked to the ceiling.
Ryusenkei Jiken 流線型事件
Model railways. The sign adds the scale in the corner — 鉄道模型 Nゲージ — and the cases hold locomotives and rolling stock, with larger display pieces mounted above. The name translates as something like “the streamliner incident”, which is the most Mandarake thing on this floor.
What This Means for a Buying Trip
Nineteen storefronts is not the whole of it. Mandarake's floor guide lists more than thirty units in this building, and the ones not photographed here follow the same pattern: one shutter, one subject, no overlap with the unit next door. There is no combined stock list and no single counter — each unit prices and sells its own shelves.
For a game buyer that resolves to something simple. Galaxy on 2F is the shop you came for, and the other eighteen doors are the reason to leave more time than the route article suggests. Look up what you are hunting on Kataban before you go, note the product code (型番), and you can walk the rest of the floors knowing the one door you still have to come back to.