Bandai Namco Group lines up six stores for Osaka's LUCUA South, its self-styled 'largest' character zone
Bandai, BANDAI SPIRITS, Bandai Namco Amusement and Bandai Namco Experience will open six character-goods stores in stages at Osaka's LUCUA South from November, filling out JR West's overhaul of the Umeda complex with what the group calls the country's largest character retail zone.
Four companies under the Bandai Namco Group — Bandai, BANDAI SPIRITS, Bandai Namco Amusement and Bandai Namco Experience — will open six character-goods stores at LUCUA SOUTH, the Osaka Umeda commercial building JR West is rebuilding, Bandai Namco Experience said in a release.
The stores open in stages: Anpanman Kids Collection and STRICT-G, both run by Bandai, open on the 13th and 11th floors respectively in November. TAMASHII NATIONS STORE OSAKA, run by BANDAI SPIRITS on the 11th floor, follows in December — only its second store in Japan after Tokyo's opened in 2022, according to the release — alongside THE★JOJO WORLD OSAKA and Namco, both run by Bandai Namco Experience and Bandai Namco Amusement on the 10th floor. THE GUNDAM BASE OSAKA, run by BANDAI SPIRITS and Bandai Namco Amusement on the 11th floor, completes the run-up in February 2027.
Combined, the six stores span about 3,757 square metres, according to the floor areas given in the release. The company said the zone will be Japan's largest dedicated character retail area once fully open, and describes THE GUNDAM BASE OSAKA alone as the largest sales floor of its kind in western Japan.
The line-up gives concrete tenant substance to JR West's wider rebuild of the LUCUA complex, under way since midyear, and puts character retail alongside department-store luxury floors as a category developers now treat as a floor anchor in Japan's biggest station redevelopments — the same logic already at work in the Pokémon, Nintendo and Sanrio flagships elsewhere in the country.
Floor area (m²)