I still have that HG 1/100 Serpent Custom on my backlog of kits to build. I’ve built that 1/60 Wing Zero, it was my first project that I started to do panel lining on. I own the entire HG 1/100 and 1/144 Gundam Wing Endless Waltz standard releases of all the model kits. That looks like a great store. I wish I could see it for myself.
I stayed in Tokyo for over 2 weeks and was able to visit this store multiple times. If you're a Gundam fan this is 100% a must visit location. Even if you don't buy anything it's like going around a museum. You'll see all these crazy model kits. If you were curious what I bought, I got a Jesta for cheap!
I like that your favourite Gundam mobile suits are not the typical ones, like Zaku. If you were a character in the UC universe, you'd be a specialist pilot. I recommend that you should make a video about Master Grade kits, as most people don't know the difference between a regular kit and those ones.
Can't imagine a store full of Gunpla kits and it being 2 floors just seems exciting. Cool stuff, hahaha can't get away from The-O kits can't you. congrats on your channel growing!
Shared your channel in my gunpla Discords. Hoping to send more vintage kit fans your way. Also, I made a bonus at work and bought the MG The-O a while back. Now I just need a GGG Paptimus to put next to it.
Omg Ty so much for sharing!!! I’m jealous you got the MG O!!!! The O is definitely one of my top suits of all time. I will get it in my collection eventually!
As someone who barely has access to any model kits, id love to see you dive into the more modern kits since i will be in japan in may and id loke to see what i can expect
Thank you so much for showing me Gundam Specialist and Surugiya in Akihabara. I finally got the MG The-O from specialist, re1/100 Efreet, Rebawoo, and Hamma Hamma from Surugiya. Keep up the great work!
During the Gunpla "shortage" in 2023, I visited this shop and managed to pickup a PBandai F90 Mission Pack for under Retail. Also, unboxing your kits and scotch taping the runners together saves a ton of space. That's how i transport all my kits with me. Last time I fit 3 MGs, 2 RGs, 3 HGs, and an SDCS. On another floor has massive collections of Gashapon, candy toy, and crane game items including tons of Gundam Gframes, Artifacts, Gachas, etc. All for very reasonable prices. Don't mess with finding the right box or capsule, just buy the whole set!
good idea, but this is how you get even more. But box is gone. Buy tons of ziplock bags, and a cheap nipper. Cut off all the parts from the runners but leave a few mm off the runner still attached to the part to cut it quick and careless. (cleanup comes later when building it home). Also leave the Identification (A,B,C etc) of the runner together with the parts it came from. Everything is still organized this way with each runner in one ziplock bag. Now you can easily take home 30kg of pure gunpla parts without any runners and really compact packaging.
What I wouldn’t give to have these stores in Minnesota. I was in Japan last year and being able to go into large shops with as many kits as possible was a real treat
Thanks for bringing us along on your visit to this store. Love to go there myself, but being unemployed at the moment thats a far away dream. That said i will tag along when you visiit other shops and put their adresses in my Garmin basecamp progam, because one should never stop dreaming. Have fun shopping around and doing the other stuf one should do in Japan.
awesome vid! I love your eye for old kits. It shows me some things I otherwise wouldnt have known about. I would def like to see more of this store whether it be p bandai, newer kits or whatever. I am new to this hobby and going to japan in december and using all this for recs! added a number of the kits you shown here to my wishlist im making already XD
Oh this is fun, Suruga-ya has free worldwide shipping basically every weekend, so I have used so much time on their website checking out what they got.
yes I love browsing their website! The store has a few things not on the site though, and it's also nice to be able the check the box condition on person!
I love surugaya for everytime I visit japan and found nothing in retail, and gundam base, Can't go home empty handed - Surugaya shinjuku I go. I don't mind the mark up though but other people will. For example liao ya unit is 6500 yen in mandarake but 8000 yen in Surugaya. All in all there's tax free so u might get it down to 7200 yen or something vs 5800 yen in mandarake. So weigh out ur options. Mandarake is more popular than surugaya cus of the price difference but if u don't mind that - I suggest any gunpla hunters like me who are out of time to just head to surugaya
I love seeing stores like this because it makes my backlog look almost reasonable in comparison. That one floor seemed to be somewhere between 6X and 10X my backlog of over 200.
The tiny model kits are really tiny modek kits, not keychains. They sold em as candy toys some decades ago, they are basically shrinked version of the original Gunpla lineup and you could actually build them. They were randomly boxed in a RX-78-2 sleeve, I found an Acguy.
I missed this store last month while I was in Akihabara; the corridor there was quite difficult to find. I was trying to find the Armored Core Rayleonard 03-Aaliyah Supplice Decoction; but I managed to find it in one of the other Surugaya's in the area tucked away on a top corner shelf. Felt insanely lucky. The thing is beautiful 8)))
I almost missed it when I was in Japan 3 months ago. But what a wonderful shop, not only for Gunpla but for all plastic model kits. This shop and the one in Osaka as well. Thanks for the video !
@@pixxellie If you went to Osaka and the Den Den neighborhood, you probably got in Suruga-ya without noticing it. I know that's what happened to me :D. It was only near the end of my trip to Japan, while in Tokyo that I started to pay attention to the names of the shop (rather than just walking and buying kits on the go).
@@pixxellie There are Surugayas and other shops "supported by Surugaya" all over Japan, including the flagship store in Shizuoka (the company itself is headquartered there). It's worth hitting up a few of those instead of rubbing shoulders with foreign tourists in Akihabara. Don't forget the Bookoff Super Bazaars and the various Kanteidans.
Those older Gundam Wing kits hold a special place in my heart. Takes me back to when i was a kid praying Toys R Us would have those models and also DBZ figures in stock 😂
Thanks for the video, I was also there (3) weeks ago and got to buy some vintage Macross model kits! My April birthday trip was to Tokyo and it's an amazing country, I would love to live in Japan. I started traveling overseas when I was a teenager, and have lived outside the US since 2004. I have one of the largest anime collections in the world, mostly Macross/Gundam/Zoids/Evangelion etc. More than 400 boxed kits/magazines and another 200 airbrushed/decaled/weathered plastic/resin kits on display. I have a huge collection of super rare kits from Wonder Festivals as well.
Hi, I stumbled upon your channel by chance, and after watching some of your videos, I subscribed immediately. The reasons behind this decision are: Firstly, your talent shines through in each video. Secondly, your demeanor is polite and engaging. Thirdly, the content you present is consistently interesting. However, THE most significant reason for my subscription is your professionalism. Unlike many other channels that resort to showing excessive skin or engaging in unacceptable behavior to attract more viewers, you maintain a high level of professionalism throughout. I have immense respect for that. Please continue the great work! PS, please, i hope you can talk/show some Ma.k (Maschinen Krieger) kits, if you come across them.
I had that very Wing Gundam Zero when Wing first came out on Toonami. My parents bought it for me for my birthday from Japan, and it arrived the day before. This was when Online shopping was in it's infancy, so looking back I'm surprised it arrived at all.
I don’t think I’ve been to this store, but maybe. It’s been 10 years since I went last to Japan, but I’ll defo go here next time. I’ve got a bunch of these older kits, already built them 20 years ago. The Alpha Azieru is a cool kit.
Absolutely excellent video Pixx ! Thank you for the tour. Just going to Suru has been a grail of mine for quite a while (let alone all the kits). I was hoping you’d find some old B-Club stuff in there to show off so next time if you’re there that’d be cool to see (if they have any on hand, that is) otherwise keep it up 👍 I look forward to to your next video. Ps, I could watch ten hours of you digging through kits so please make your videos longer, lol 😂
Thank you so much!! Unfortunately they didn’t have any resin or garage kits at this location, it was strictly plastic models as far as I could tell! Maybe I’ll do a video on a mandrake location next! (I also want to go back to the gundam shop from my last tour vid again and see if stock has changed)
Hey nice video, I just subbed. There's a large population of Gundam fans who are into Metal Builds, can you do a video on any shops you would recommend in Tokyo for metal build, top of my head I can think of Radio Kaikan and Mandarake only.
I did a video on the gundam specialist shop, that store has a crazy selection of metal builds. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CiD6MqfZOYo.htmlsi=rNKe3jVPeuPeznzW
My partner got one of those tiny kits last trip! It is an actual model kit, a 1/288 scale z'gok. The proportions are modeled after the old 1/144 original kit, but half size on two little runners. I hope you can get that Wing Zero 1/60 before you head back!
This was the last gunpla stop i made (alongside jungle Akihabara) before i left Japan last month😢. Ended up with 20 more kits that are currently sailing to get to me. To anyone else if you're in aki hit up this store, jungle Akihabara, and the 7th floor store. You won't regret it even to just see some good kits
the "HG" HeavyArms Custom was my first 1/100 after building almost a dozen 1/144 HGs and no grades about 20 years ago. I would love to go back and build all 5 suits from the OVA, but then i remember how bad the seam lines are on those kits. I also don't know why MG The O is sought after now, the original release flopped because the price tag did not match the build experience. I remember the kit went on heavy discount, where you could pick it up for ~ $70 USD
The minikits were like 1:200. I remember it was sold as a box set so I guess the old owner didn't like GM. You should get your hand on an old catalog with all the old kits and MG up too 100th. I was into gunpla before it was popular so it's weird to see price went up for certain kits. I usually just get the ones on sale from HLJ.
ive been ordering a ton off of surugaya's free shipping weekends to the states, but they've been pushing up the prices gradually every month as the yen keeps taking a beating... i wonder how much cheaper kits are in person. really cool to see all the old kits in the store though, would definitely love to grab a few for projects considering how cheap they are!
I would definitely grab that 1/1200 White Base and a bunch of First Gundam kits. MAN I can't believe the MG The-O is so hard to get now. I wonder if that will happen to the HG Baund Doc.
If it was a MG baund doc I would say maybe, but since it's just an HG I don't think it will ever get as crazy as the MG O. It might go up a little though when it's out of print.
How bad is your backlog? I have like over 350 of all grades sitting in a room now, it looks more impressive than many brick and mortar gunpla stores in the US (since half of them are p-b) one can walk into lol. I think the original FA-78-1 MG is possibly even rarer than the The-O if you don't count the p-b blue variant that was sold a couple years ago. I spotted a couple The-O along with a couple Deep Strikers (another hard to find kit as of now) last year in Japan around this time but never once ran into a FA-78-1 MG. All it takes is Bandai reprinting them and the price will come back down. Personally I would like to get the FAZZ the most at this point and The-O would be the second on that list. Also that Alpha-Azieru you showed at 4:50 is from 88 or 89 that I used to own as a kid. The coolest part of it is that it comes with a 1:550 Nu gundam in the same color as the rest of the kit. It looks silly and stiff by today's standard but it is a piece of history for sure, and it is possibly the smallest scale of Nu gundam Bandai has ever released(smaller than artifact if they ever released a Nu). If I were you I would grab that at 5000 yen since it is also pricey on ebay and not too many copies can be found. There is a updated version of Alpha Azieru right around the end of 90s or maybe even early 2000 which was a lot more detailed and slightly bigger in scale. It also came with small scale Nu and Sazabi but they are not 1:550 small and they are also in fixed dynamic poses which I suppose is kinda cool.
I painted up an lfrith when they first came out! You can see the finished product on my instagram if you’re curious (link in the video description). It was the first HG I ever painted actually and it was an amazing build! The engineering was crazy. I didn’t have to putty anything!
I bought a small zoids kit there last month. Thankfully I opened it because it was empty inside. I went back the next day for a refund and the store clerks eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw it was empty
I really wish I was able to find a mg turn x over there 😭 I had the most luck at the akihabara yellow submarine and mandarake for an mg turn A for 60 usd and a white glint for 40 tho
Oh I actually haven’t been to yellow submarine yet. The Akihabara mandrake smelled really bad, like 1000 of the worlds oldest shoes when I went, so I had to leave lol
@@pixxellie wow I think I didn't notice that smell bc I was wearing a mask, but sorry you did. If you can you should check out the surugaya in shinjuku as well, it had a surprisingly stacked section for kits where I found 2 gm spartans and the hg moonlight butterfly effects. Was only able to get 1 spartan however
I’m both sad and relieved that I didn’t see this before and/or during my Tokyo visit. I wish I got to go to this location but I know I would’ve spent an unnecessary amount of money lol
@pixxellie They don't have it on there sadly. I've done the next best thing and bought a cheap pg zero custom. Gonna have my hands full modifying it to look good 😅
the old Wave FSS kits aren't really worth the time and money any more. Having built them, the technology is really old. the newer Volks IMS FSS kits are better in every way
