News

Since its inception, Animate have touted its Ikebukuro main store as the world’s largest anime store. Finally a year after the store opened in one of Japan’s biggest anime areas, the Animate Ikebukuro Main Store has officially been crowned as the “largest anime shop/store” in the world by Guinness World Records. To celebrate the certification, an event was held at Animate Ikebukuro yesterday with voice actor Shouta Aoi (Louis Kisaragi in King Of Prism -Shiny Seven Stars- ) in attendance and Chiaki Matsuzawa emceeing. The event was streamed live and can be watched below. Related: Animate's Flagship Store in Ikebukuro to Become the 'World's Largest Anime Shop' The store was officially certified by Guinness World Records on March 1 after an official from the pub trivia record-keeping company measured the complete area of the Animate Ikebukuro Main Store on February 21. The official found that the store has 8,554.673 m2 of anime,...

The Nes era was full of franchise experimentation. For instance, before Nintendo’s developers figured out what they wanted to do with the Legend of Zelda, they tried to turn it into a divisive action sidescroller. Final Fantasy underwent a similar rough patch with its second entry, and fans have long wondered why its developers made the big changes that they did. Well, we now not only have the full answer to that question but we learned a little more about the ways Final Fantasy 2 could have been an even bigger franchise black sheep.

Recently, Square Enix held an interview series hosted by announcer Chiaki Matsuzawa and attended by Final Fantasy alum Hironobu Sakaguchi, Kazuko Shibuya, and Yoshinori Kitase. The intent was to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Final Fantasy, the release of the Pixel Remaster, and Sakeguchi’s 60th birthday. This interview chronicled the origins of each Final Fantasy...