The Culling Game merch gap: why the Netflix drop did not bring the goods with it (2026)

Field notes from a month of watching the Culling Game merch situation, written up because I keep seeing the same question in comments.

Netflix put Culling Game Part 1 in front of everyone on 23 July. The problem is that Japan finished watching it on 27 March. Twelve episodes, January to March on MBS/TBS, and the merchandise cycle ran alongside the broadcast — which means it came and went four months before most of the world started caring. That is why the English-language stores you check are still full of Shibuya-arc stock from two years ago.

Three things I found while digging through Japanese listings:

1. Ichiban Kuji is the real gap, and it is structural, not a supply issue. The official BANDAI SPIRITS site says outright that kuji are sold at convenience stores, bookshops and hobby shops across Japan. There is no export channel and there never was. Every kuji prize you see on eBay came out of a Japanese resale listing first, with somebody's proxy fee and margin already stacked on top. Two more Jujutsu Kaisen kuji are listed for September, so this is about to happen again.

2. Prize-line figures are absurdly good value and almost invisible abroad. SEGA Luminasta, Taito FIGURIZM-alpha, MAXIMATIC, Noodle Stopper — these are crane-game and lottery prizes, not retail products, so they are not in anyone's export catalogue. Japanese resale has them at 2,000-3,000 yen. A B-prize Gojo from the movie kuji is about 2,000 yen right now. The sculpts at that price are genuinely better than they have any right to be.

3. Part 2 is confirmed but has no date. It was announced straight after the finale and there is still no broadcast window. Practically that means Part 1 goods are sitting in the quiet trough — the Japanese hype has passed and the next wave has not started. If you were ever going to buy this arc's stuff, the window is open now and it will close the moment a date is announced.

One thing I got wrong early on and want to save someone else from: search in Japanese. Typing "Jujutsu Kaisen" into a Japanese marketplace returns a fraction of the inventory, because sellers write 呪術廻戦. Add フィギュア for figures, 一番くじ for kuji prizes, アクリルスタンド for acrylic stands. My hit rate roughly quadrupled once I stopped searching in English.

I wrote the long version up with the actual live prices and the fee maths here: Jujutsu Kaisen merch from Japan (2026) — it covers which categories are Japan-only, what a kuji prize actually costs versus what importers charge, and the shipping side.

For anyone who has not used a proxy before, the short version is that you buy on the Japanese marketplace through a service that has a Japanese address, then consolidate before shipping. I use OneMall; there are others. The bit that actually saves money is consolidation, not the service fee — figure boxes are bulky and carriers bill on volumetric weight, so shipping five items separately is where the money disappears.

Happy to answer questions if anyone is trying to track down something specific from Part 1.

Pokemon Center Online will not ship to you: the lottery, the domestic-only clause, and what actually

Every few months someone in an anime-merch thread hits the same wall: they find a Pokemon Center plush that only ever existed in Japan, open the Japanese store, fill the cart, and then discover there is no checkout for them. It is worth being precise about why, because the reason changes what you should do next.

It is a delivery-address problem, not a stock problem

Pokemon Center Online (ポケモンセンターオンライン) spells it out in its own terms of service: delivery of products under the service is limited to within Japan (Article 19, clause 4). There is no overseas option at any price, and no amount of patience makes one appear. The international Pokemon Center site is a separate operation with a separate catalogue — it is not the Japanese store with different shipping.

The lottery is the part people underestimate

The Japanese store's own service list includes applying to the lottery for lottery-sale products (抽選販売). That matters more than the shipping clause, because a lottery removes the one advantage a determined shopper normally has. Refreshing at the release minute does nothing; you apply, and you either win the right to buy or you do not. Article 27 also prohibits reselling for profit and registering more than one account per person, so allocation is deliberately one-per-person. Buying one plush for yourself through a forwarding address is an ordinary personal purchase. Building a bulk-buy operation on top of those clauses is the exact thing they exist to stop, and I would not pretend otherwise.

Which lines are actually the hard ones

Pokemon fit — the small seated plush, released in Pokedex order. The appeal is completeness: obscure Pokemon that no mass-market line would touch get a fit release.
Pokemon Dolls and the mocchiri (もっちり) plush — the squashier silhouettes, released in waves rather than kept in stock.
Campaign and collaboration goods — Pokemon Sleep, seasonal fairs, single-store openings. These run for weeks, not years.

The lines rotate. A fit release on the shelf last spring is frequently not orderable this summer, and no restock is promised. That churn, not scalping, is the first reason overseas collectors end up on Japan's domestic second-hand market, where the retired lines actually live.

Searching so you find the stock

Search in Japanese and search the line, not the English name. ポケモンセンター brings back the whole channel; ポケモンfit narrows to the one line. Then add the Pokemon's Japanese name — Rayquaza is レックウザ, Eevee is イーブイ, Dewgong is ジュゴン. English keywords return a small fraction of what is listed.

Then read the Japanese condition wording instead of the photos, because plush hides wear badly in pictures and honestly in text: タグ付き means the hang tag is still attached (the plush equivalent of a sealed box), 未使用 is unused, 目立った傷や汚れなし is no noticeable marks, 使用感あり is visible wear.

Shipping plush is a volume problem

Plush is light and bulky, so international shipping is charged on volumetric weight rather than actual weight. One plush in its own box is the worst value in Japanese proxy shopping; four in one box is among the best. If you are using a proxy that holds purchases (OneMall's window is 90 days), let a want-list fill up before you pay to ship anything.

Fees, without the sales pitch

Service fees are worth checking per source, because they are not one number. Through OneMall: Mercari and Mercari Shops are a flat 300 yen per order; Yahoo! Auctions is 3% of the winning bid with a 200 yen minimum and a 300 yen cap; any other Japanese shop, including Pokemon Center Online itself via their LinkBuy flow, is 5% with a 200 yen minimum and a 1,000 yen cap. For comparison, as of 2026 Buyee charges 500 yen per order, ZenMarket 500 yen per item (800 on Mercari), and Neokyo 350 yen per item. Nobody does this for free, and international shipping is separate from all of it.

The write-up I pulled the terms citations from is here, with the clause numbers and a fuller fee table: Pokemon Center Online Japan 2026: why it ships domestic-only. If you just want to see what is currently listed domestically, the Japanese-keyword search is ポケモンセンター ぬいぐるみ — second-hand listings turn over constantly, so treat any price you see as today's price only.