Where Fandom Goes on Display: Mega Campus in Hongdae

What Changed Inside the Mall by the Station

AK Plaza at Hongik University Station has much of what you’d expect from a mall, with fashion, food and cafés across its floors. In the past few years, several stores have given people another reason to go upstairs. You can see what other people collect and care about.

Mega Campus is on the third floor. On the way up, the colors and shapes in the window stand out from the clothing stores around it.

The first thing you see is a row of small characters under bright lights. You can tell what sort of room you’re about to enter from a distance.

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A Shop Arranged Around Figures

Mega Campus is the Hongdae concept store for MegaHouse figures and character goods. The cases work like small exhibitions. Poses change from one figure to the next, and there are sections for different series. It’s easy to make a circuit without going there to buy anything.

Up close, details such as an expression, a fold in a costume or a particular shade of paint are finer than you might expect. You start to see why people want to collect them.

Visitors take their time at the displays. Some stop in front of a favorite character to take a picture. It’s a familiar thing to do at an exhibition, even though this one happens to be in a mall.

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How Public a Hobby Can Be

There was a time when displays like this felt unusual in Korea. Collecting things connected to anime and fictional characters was often something people did in private or within a small community.

The room now draws visitors of different ages. Families and couples look around without making much of it. It feels like a hobby that has found an ordinary place in the day.

What struck me was how comfortable people were showing what they liked. Buying a figure was only one way to take part.

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Another Store in the Same Building

Animate has a store on another floor of the same building, selling goods tied to Japanese anime, manga and games. The two stores have enough in common to make their presence in the same mall feel significant.

Shops like these used to feel as though they belonged to a few particular districts. Here they’re in a large complex right at a station, where people can come across them on the way to something else.

It makes sense in Hongdae. The neighborhood has long made room for tastes that look very different beside one another.

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The Time People Spend With What They Like

The room itself made as much of an impression on me as the range of products. A shopper can spend time with a favorite series whether or not a purchase is in mind.

A figure can sit on a shelf as decoration. It can also be a way to keep a particular story, character or scene within reach. Seen that way, the cases are full of things people want to remember.

It’s a small sign of a wider change that so many people can walk in and browse without it feeling like an unusual thing to do.

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Part of the View Around Hongdae Now

Near the station, shops selling character goods sit among street performances, restaurants and cafés. The subcultures these stores serve have become another part of a district long associated with music and fashion.

Mega Campus makes the change visible in one room. Some people came out with a purchase, some just looked, and both seemed perfectly at home.

Inside AK Plaza, it felt easy for someone to say what they liked without having to explain the hobby first.