If you’re an anime or manga fan who’s spent time in Japan, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve spent money at Mandarake. One of Japan’s best chains for used and obscure otaku media, a trip to Mandarake is part history lesson and part treasure hunt, and their amazing selection all but guarantees you’ll find a bunch of items to add to your collection.
Now, though, instead of dropping a fat wad of cash at Mandarake, the chain wants to give a chunky financial gain to you. And no, not by selling your old anime merch to Mandarake, but by doing something much more anime protagonist-like: helping them bring some villains to justice.
Early in the morning on October 22, at about 4:30 a.m., a group of men approached the exterior of the Mandarake Grand Chaos store in Osaka’s Nipponbashi neighborhood. The shop closes at 8 p.m. and doesn’t open until noon the next day, so the staff had gone home by then, but video of the group was captured by a Mandarake security camera that points out towards the parking lot that borders the shop on its back side.
After making sure no one was looking their way, one of the men pulled out a can of paint and began spraying the back wall of the Mandarake building. His friends then added to the graffiti, with a total of either three or four people (hoods and hats make it difficult to tell exactly how many) vandalizing the store.
Makoto Yoshihira, manger of the Nipponbashi store, filed a damage report with the Osaka police the same day after seeing the graffiti, and while the police are on the case, he’s also looking to call upon the collective knowledge of the otaku community, and has put out a 300,000-yen reward for information leading to the identification of the vandals.
“We’re not going to take this lying down and just cry ourselves to sleep,” Yoshihira said. “I want them brought forward to apologize and pay for the damages,” and online commenters are similarly disinclined to let the taggers get away with what they did.
“If they’re caught, they should have to pay the cost for cleaning up the graffiti and the reward money themselves.”
“Can’t let this slide. Gotta find them and make them pay.”
“There’s a line between what is and isn’t acceptable mischief, but graffiti is a straight-up crime.”
“They’re no better than dogs or cats pissing on a wall to try to mark their territory.”
“I’m really curious about that cute creature crawling along the top of the sign at 2:58 in the video.”
As of this writing, the vandals are yet to be caught, and the reward offer is still in effect.
Shop information
Mandarake Grand Chaos / まんだらけ グランドカオス
Osaka-shi, Naniwa-ku, Nipponbashi 4-12-6
大阪市浪速区日本橋4丁目12-6
Open noon-8 p.m.
Email: grandchaos@mandarake.co.jp
Telephone: 06-6636-7077 (after connecting, press 6 to speak to a staff member)
Source: FNN Prime Online via Hachima Kiko
Read more stories from SoraNews24.
-- Retail store warns a shoplifter to return the goods… or have his identity exposed online
-- Halloween vandals trash Tokyo ramen restaurant’s meal ticket machine, prompting ultimatum【Video】
-- We preview Japan’s first-ever Nintendo Tokyo, Capcom Store and Shibuya Pokémon Centre megastore
© SoraNews24
16 Comments
Login to comment
sakurasuki
If they can provide better camera angle of his face, so far it doesn't appear foreigner at all.
Gaijinjland
If graffiti were a crime, Banksy would have been arrested a long time ago and his/ her/ their “artwork” would not sell for millions of dollars. Also it’s not the hoodies and hats that make the “artists” hard to see, it’s the masks!
DR TAKAFUMI
It momonga. Traditional japanese animal
Don't do fast decision. Don't know
Rodney
The best thing about Japan is everything is not covered in graffiti.
(I went to the Banksy exhibition and it was fantastic.)
it’s possible, back in the day I possibly could of sprayed political statements, but scrawling your pathetic street name or your loser gang name on every available public surface renders you a xxxx. A neighbour of mine in Europe used to go out at night and spray with stencil, “and I’m proud to be gay”. He was caught once by police, they told him to “carry on”.
wallace
I don't like to see graffiti everywhere but there should be some places for it.
Banksy is wanted by the British police.
Patricia Yarrow
I have noticed in Tokyo (and suppose for the rest of Japan) that graffiti is generally neatly applied on agreed upon surfaces such as utility box doors and certain lampposts. It is nice that instead of being strayed all over the place, which is messy and unsightly, it is tidily framed like in an art gallery. Somehow, this gives it a more artistic flair.
TokyoLiving
I hope they catch these crooks soon.
wallace
Banksy is in Ukraine.
szero25
How about we focus on punishing most of the white collar and corporate criminals and politicians in Japan?
Seems like as long as you steal money from thr public and through taxes it fine but if you spray paint something or steal some food they throw the book at you what a hypocritical load of garbage.
thepersoniamnow
Surely the cops are looking at street CCTV cameras to see what vehicles and or places they went to.
If they wanted to find them, they would easily.
WA4TKG
That’s hysterical, it’s a mouse crawling along the top of the steel beam.
This video is useless for ID’ing purposes, and remove all the tags from around the video itself, it takes away from the point of the video and looks ridiculous.
falseflagsteve
It used to be easier to find criminals before this mask wearing lark was the norm. Young lads like this wearing masks at night would likely be stopped by the police. Some premises used to require no face coverings for security reasons now some insist on them, the world has gone mad, it’s lost the plot.
JTC
A Pointless exercise, (apart from self-promotion), there's graffiti sprayed on walls of the buildings opposite too...
Would be better to invest in wall coverings that don't allow aerosol paints to gain a foothold, and simply wash off.
As for the "kids", tagging the walls - they need proper art lessons, they're nowhere near the likes of Banksy, they should be shamed for being only able to produce such rubbish, and should, when caught simply be forced to clean up the walls that they, and their fellow comrades have tagged during daylight hours... that may make them think a bit before doing it again.
Jenna Mary Ellen Kelly
good on the graffiti artists. Mandarake should be shut down. They openly display child porn. Sickos.