So thankfully there’s a way to easily gather a complete set.
Studio Ghibli’s films are exceptional in a lot of ways, but one that often gets overlooked is how comprehensively beloved their casts are. For most anime, even extremely popular series, there’ll be one or two characters that a sizeable portion of the fandom finds annoying, off-putting, or otherwise undesirable to have on screen, but pretty much every major member of Ghibli’s ensembles is fondly remembered, even the ones who sometimes clash with the protagonist.
You could say that makes Ghibli characters the perfect choice for character-based gacha/blind-buy merch, since it eliminates, or at least greatly reduces, the risk of getting stuck with something bearing the likeness of a character you don’t like. Case in point: Ghibli specialty store Donguri Kyowakoku’s Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle pin series.
In addition to heroine Chihiro, the Spirited Away set features Haku, Lin, Yubaba, No Face (or Kaonashi, as he’s called in Japanese), spider-armed Kamaji, and Boh and Yu-Bird (in their transformed states). For even deeper cuts, there are also pins with illustrations of the movie’s Lantern Guide enchanted illumination device, plus pins representing the customers at the mystical bathhouse, one for the polluted river spirit and another collectively for “millions of spirits.”
Meanwhile, the Howl’s Moving Castle pins are graced by Sophie, Howl, Markl, Calcifer, Heen, Turnip Head, and the Witch of the Waste.
Like the Spirited Away pins, the Howl’s ones use a high-contrast, retro-comics sort of color scheme that puts a fun spin on the established aesthetics.
Each of the pins also includes a line of dialogue arching above and around the illustration.
▼ It’s hard not to feel a panicked desire to help Calcifer out as the fire spirit tells us, “Oh no, oh no, I’m in danger.”
However, while we said the “Any of these would be awesome!” nature of Ghibli characters’ receptions makes them well-suited for blind-buys, you could also argue that Donguri Kyowakoku’s designers have done their job too well here and created a separate problem. Since they’re all so cool, you might find yourself wanting all of them, but unless you’re incredibly lucky you’re bound to end up buying a few duplicates on the way to assembling a complete set, right? Thankfully, though, Donguri Kyowakoku is offering a solution to that dilemma, as the pins, which were initially offered as blind-buys, are now available as complete box sets for their restock rerelease.
▼ You still get the individual boxes for each pin, but within a separate, larger box.
Each of the boxes contains one each of all ten designs, priced at 4,400 yen (US$29.75). They’re both available through the Donguri Kyowakoku online store (Spirited Away here and Howl’s here).
Source: Donguri Kyowakoku
Top image: Donguri Kyowakoku
Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2)
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