I Heart Anime — Local services in San Antonio

I can tell that the majority, if not all, of the merchandise comes from AliExpress or similar. The prints aren't original pieces of art, just ripped from the net and printed at a Walmart or print shop (costs about 20 to 30 cents) and sold for $10 each. That's on the cheap side for an anime convention from an actual artist selling their fanart. But not for bootleg prints from Google Images. You can get prints similar to these for less than a dollar on Ali. I can also tell the wall scrolls are not officially licensed merch. I have nothing personal against bootleg stuff, I get it all the time on the Internet because it's cheaper. But the prices here are EXPENSIVE. The wall scrolls are all about $25 to $40... I saw a Boku no Hero Academia t-shirt that I sell at Walmart for $8.98 priced at $32.99... Ramune is $1.98 or so at HEB... I remember it was like $2.99 or $3.99 here. I get this is a tourist trap and rent must be sky-high, but some integrity would be appreciated for the locals who are actually privy to the subculture of anime/manga/cosplay and the merchandise side of things. It's okay to charge a bit more when demand is high, but this is straight up price-gouging. My advice would be to lower the prices to about half and you could pull in some regular customers for the off-seasons as well as for the tourist seasons. A lot of the people who patron the Outlet malls are foreigners visiting on vacation, and they can't get things shipped to them from Amazon and AliExpress like we can. It just seems immoral to charge them so much just because you can. It's a really cool concept for a shop. I was excited something like this popped up, but was disillusioned due to the quality of the items and the...

I was going to the mall to pick up some stuff from Hot Topic (Giorno Giovanna plush that I love so much, etc) I saw this place right next to hot topic, and we where intrigued to go inside. I looked around, they’ve got anime shirts, jackets, lots of posters with good quality and not so good quality. They have a few figures, but nothing I was to intrigued by. I did look at their plushies, and I saw they had a Heaven’s Door plush, I was like OH WOW, I’ve gotta have it. It said $27.99, but when I tried looking to buy it online it was more than that. But it was a little too much for me, so I actually tried bargaining for the price, and the manager allowed me to spend $25 plus a poster. Pretty sweet, I got a Giorno Giovanna poster (because I really love the character.) You can try to ask for a different price with the manager, always worth a shot. The plush is authentic by the way. Cant say the same for the poster, but the poster I chose was high quality. I’ll definitely be checking the place whenever I go to see what other things they’ve got. (EDIT) I did want to mention, some of the stuff they sell is bootleg, but there’s also stuff that isn’t. If it looks cheesy, then it’s probably fake. When I went 9 months ago the reason I didn’t look at the figures is because a lot of them where fake. I just mostly go in the shop to see what they have and if anything catches my fancy. But they do sell fake stuff, so just pay attention to see if the item has the logos of the figure brand or something of that sorts, and I’ve noticed their poster quality went down. I still think you can just check it out. I had a good experience there, so I don’t feel bad about it, but I do realize it’s not the...

Way too overpriced!!! Even though this store has a nice variety of anime collectibles, they are selling them double the retail price. I had a friend recommend this store to me after buying a few figures, so I decided to see this store in person. They had this Sega figure I’ve been wanting for about 4 months now and I was eager to buy it from here. I decided to check online to see if I’m getting a good deal, and oh boy I was not. Dekai anime, Amazon, Funimation, and Crunchyroll were selling it for only $45, at this store they were selling it for 75 dollars!!! They also had quite a variety of cheap prize figures from ban presto, and they were also overpriced. Selling a prize figure for $50 is way too much. For example: They were selling a Mirio figure that I own for around $44.99! Literally HotTopic sells the same exact figure for $23! I’m pretty sure everything is double the price so these people can get a big profit from selling. Moral of the story, don’t buy figures here when you can save money and get a better deal...