Why you should experience Oizumi Anime Gate in Tokyo, Japan.
Oizumi Anime Gate is a concentrated public tribute where Higashioizumi's railway plaza becomes an open-air encounter with characters that span several defining generations of Japanese manga and animation.
Set above Oizumi-gakuen Station's north exit near the pedestrian deck and just steps from the commercial streets of Higashioizumi, the installation unfolds through filmstrip-shaped gateways, life-size bronze figures and graphic displays embedded directly into a heavily used pedestrian route. Atom, Maetel, Tetsuro Hoshino, Joe Yabuki and Lum turn the deck into a succession of recognizable encounters whose scale encourages close inspection beyond conventional public sculpture. A chronological display extends across 29 Nerima-connected animated works, and a graphic wall follows changes in Oizumi through photographs associated with local film and animation production. The result is a public installation where fictional characters, chronological displays and the physical movement of the station plaza make Nerima's animation culture immediately visible within daily urban circulation.
What you should know about Oizumi Anime Gate.
Oizumi Anime Gate is best known for bringing five life-size bronze characters from four major works connected with Nerima into a permanent public installation conceived as the gateway to Oizumi, the district promoted by Nerima City as the birthplace of Japanese animation. Nerima City developed the installation alongside the redevelopment of the Oizumi-gakuen Station north exit and the completion of the pedestrian deck connected with the new LIZMO Oizumi-gakuen complex. Public access began on April 4, 2015, following an unveiling attended by manga creators Leiji Matsumoto and Rumiko Takahashi alongside Makoto Tezuka and representatives connected with the featured works. Osamu Tezuka's Atom represents Astro Boy, whose television production emerged from Tezuka's Mushi Production in Nerima, and Matsumoto's Maetel and Tetsuro Hoshino represent Galaxy Express 999, whose creator lived and worked in Oizumi for more than half a century. Joe Yabuki connects the installation with Ashita no Joe, created by Ikki Kajiwara and Tetsuya Chiba, both longtime Nerima residents, with its 1970 television adaptation produced by Mushi Production. Lum completes the group through Urusei Yatsura and Takahashi, whose manga career developed through decades of work in Nerima.
The surrounding displays convert those individual character monuments into a broader chronology of Nerima's relationship with moving-image production. Three film-shaped gates organize the pedestrian route, and a separate symbol monument announces Oizumi's association with the origins of Japanese animation. The Nerima Anime Chronology uses individual frames from 29 works connected with the ward to move across successive periods of production, placing the bronze characters within a much larger local creative history. A graphic wall along the covered southern passage shifts the focus toward Oizumi itself through photographs and imagery tracing the district's development alongside film and animation production, including references to Toei's local filmmaking infrastructure. Nerima City subsequently extended the public program through augmented-reality character photography and design manholes featuring characters including Maetel, Lum and Joe Yabuki. Oizumi Anime Gate has also remained part of the ward's animation programming, serving as one of the venues for Anime Project in Oizumi 2026 more than a decade after the installation opened.
How to fold Oizumi Anime Gate into your trip.
Oizumi Anime Gate works as the anchor for a daytime progression through botanical scholarship, local government history and the industrial development of Japanese animation across Oizumi.
Begin at Makino Memorial Garden, occupying the former home and garden of botanist Tomitaro Makino, who lived here from 1926 until his death in 1957 after devoting his career to Japanese plant taxonomy. Nerima City converted the property into a public garden in 1958, preserving vegetation associated with Makino alongside his study and the Suekozasa bamboo he named for his wife Sueko, and Tokyo subsequently protected the property as the former residence of one of Japan's foundational botanical scholars. Continue to Site of Former Oizumi Village Office, where a monument preserves the administrative history of a municipality created in 1891 through the consolidation of several earlier villages. A two-story wooden village office rose here in 1922 and handled local government until Oizumi Village was incorporated into Itabashi City in 1932, leaving the commemorative stone at Oizumi Nakajima Park as physical evidence of the independent municipality that preceded the modern district. Conclude at Toei Animation Museum, operated by a company formed as Toei Doga in July 1956 after Toei acquired Nichido Film and transferred its production studio to Oizumi in January 1957. The studio completed Little Kitty's Graffiti that May, followed in October 1958 by The White Snake, Japan's first full-color theatrical feature animation, and entered television production with Ken, the Wild Boy in 1963; the museum now presents production processes and works spanning that corporate history as Toei Animation marks its seventieth anniversary in 2026. The progression moves from Tomitaro Makino's three decades of botanical work through the administrative life of Oizumi Village into the studio that produced The White Snake and generations of subsequent animation, connecting scientific scholarship, municipal formation and screen culture across the district surrounding Oizumi Anime Gate.
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