Foreigner’s Heart Broken After Told Large Statue in Tokyo’s Anime Capital is Fake

Japanese Twitter user @runndy_music was walking in Akihabara — the center of otaku culture in Japan — when a male tourist approached him to ask for directions.

The traveler showed him a picture of a train going under the skirt of an anime schoolgirl, according to SoraNews24.

“A foreigner in Akihabara asked me where this statue is,” the Twitter user wrote, “and when I told him that the image is a CG Photoshop, he looked so sad that my heart broke for him.”

Another user left a comment with embedded images showing the actual place, and there was no gigantic anime schoolgirl in sight.

However, the exact model, known as Arina Shinyokohama in Akihabara, does exist and is reportedly on display at Kaiyodo’s museum in Shiga Prefecture.

The actual model was sculpted by Ooshina Yuki, but the photoshopped version was created by photographer and photo manipulator Yoshinobu “Tamaki” Kimura.

The photoshopped Arina went viral in 2005, with many people believing it was an actual girl on top of a train.

 

The picture was part of Tamaki’s 2004 montage of his figurine collection. But images of the model were taken from three different angles, fooling many Western netizens into thinking it was real.

It’s unclear if Tamaki was the one who made the pictures go viral or if another person shared them online.

Some netizens felt sorry for the foreign traveler:

Featured Image via Twitter / @runndy_music (Left), Twitter / @bouzu_3 (Right)