When a City Partners With Anime: Pilgrimage Tourism, Hometown Tax Gifts and What Actually Works

Japanese local governments (cities, towns, villages and prefectures) run oshi-katsu programs, meaning programs that tap fans’ devotion to a favorite character or person (an oshi). Typical examples are tourism campaigns tied to an anime and hometown tax gifts made from character goods. Running the event is only half the job. What matters is checking how it translated into visits, donations and spending in the area.

The people in charge feel it as something more complicated. Will people really come if we collaborate with a work? Will putting a character on a gift raise donations? Once public money is spent, it has to be explained to the council and to residents. And the local governments held up as success stories have usually stayed with the same work for a decade or more.

This article lines up recent cases from autumn 2025 to summer 2026 and sorts out what these collabs are buying and where they fail. Along the way, it explains the hometown tax (furusato nozei), the scheme under which residents donate to a municipality of their choice and receive a return gift, usually local products.

Local Government Collabs Fall Into Three Types

“Reviving a town with anime” covers three practical types. Each has a different source of budget, a different measure of success and a different way of failing.

The market underneath is moving too. In its survey on the current state of hometown tax donations (in Japanese), Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reports that fiscal 2025 donations totaled about ¥1.33 trillion (roughly $8.9 billion) across about 59.63 million donations. Fourteen local governments took in more than ¥10 billion each.

¥1.33T

Total received

59.63M

Number of donations

13

Local governments above ¥10B

Fourteen local governments each took in more than ¥10 billion.

Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (in Japanese)

With competition over return gifts saturated, it is natural that attention turns to collab products that carry a meaning “you can only get from this place,” rather than competing on price or volume.

The pilgrimage side has its own yardstick. On February 13, 2026, the Anime Tourism Association marked its 10th anniversary by expanding its “88 Anime Sacred Sites in Japan You’d Like to Visit” list to 100 titles. Voting drew about 85,000 votes from about 110 countries and regions, 33% of them from overseas (Weekly ASCII, in Japanese). Pilgrimage is no longer only for fans in Japan.

~85,000

Votes in the 2026 list

~110

Countries and regions voting

33%

Votes from overseas

A third of the votes came from outside Japan.

Source: Weekly ASCII (in Japanese)

The benchmark most often cited for economic effect is a survey by the 16 Research Institute (in Japanese). It calculated that pilgrims to Gifu Prefecture numbered about 1.03 million, spent about ¥23 billion in the prefecture and produced an economic ripple effect of ¥25.3 billion. But that is a prefecture-wide figure in which several blockbuster films overlapped, so it can’t be applied directly to a single work or a single municipality.

What Recent Cases Are Actually Buying

Different types send the budget in different directions. Four local governments that moved from autumn 2025 onward show the difference clearly.

Numazu, Shizuoka x Love Live! Sunshine!!: Renewing a 10-Year Relationship Through Return Gifts

The aim is to turn the supporters of a collab running since 2015 into a continuing point of contact through donations. The collab is with the idol anime Love Live! Sunshine!!, set in Numazu.

As its initiative, from September 18 to December 31, 2025, Numazu City took orders for newly drawn return gifts on the hometown tax portal Anifuru. There were three: an acrylic diorama stand set at the Numazu Imperial Villa Memorial Park, an A4 character fine-graph print with a serial number, and a big towel. From November 28, nine character-specific A5 items were added (Love Live! Sunshine!! official, in Japanese).

The Lab’s take: What deserves attention is less the goods than the structure in which “this year’s new item” has kept coming for more than a decade. For fans, Numazu is not a place you visit once and finish; it is a relationship renewed every year. That is an asset a one-off project can never buy.

Maebashi, Gunma x Maebashi Witches: About ¥15 Million to Buy the Everyday Route

The aim is to deepen understanding of tourism resources and to create a visiting population and a connected population.

The initiatives for the anime Maebashi Witches cut across sectors: a digital stamp rally, life-size panels at five roadside stations, a “Butai Meguri BOOK” guide to the filming locations, character-color lighting at Rinkokaku, wraps and onboard announcement voices for city buses and the Jomo Electric Railway, campaigns tied to restaurants and retailers, and hometown tax return gifts (Maebashi City press release, in Japanese). In its initial general-account budget proposal for fiscal 2025, the city newly allocated about ¥15.245 million to related projects, including wraps for trains and buses and signage (Maebashi City Council materials, in Japanese).

Mayor Akira Ogawa has said that fans from elsewhere in Japan had been visiting Maebashi even before the broadcast began (Maebashi City, mayor’s press conference, in Japanese). Ripple effects have followed, including local companies turning the collab into products and a tie-up with the football club Thespa Gunma.

The Lab’s take: Most of that ¥15.245 million is aimed not at events but at everyday life: buses, trains, roadside stations, restaurants. It buys not a route a fan takes once on a special day, but a town where the work finds you as you walk around. Local governments where seichi junrei (anime pilgrimage) takes root have usually invested here.

Maebashi WitchesOne work, many touchpoints

• Digital stamp rally
• Roadside-station panelsFive locations
• Bus and train wrapsWith onboard voices
• Color lightingAt Rinkokaku
• Shop campaignsRestaurants and retail
• Return giftsHometown tax

The budget went to routes fans meet every day.

Funahashi Village, Toyama x Local VTuber “Oshi-Yu-Fuda”: Putting the Visit Second

The aim is a design that brings oshi-katsu to distant fans first and lets the visit come later.

The initiative was a digital product called “Oshi-Yu-Fuda” (“oshi bath tag”). It pairs the electronic bath ticket for the Funahashi Kaikan’s Satsuki no Yu hot spring with a digital bath tag for each VTuber, the virtual performers who appear as animated avatars, plus limited voice lines for buyers. It costs ¥4,980 per item (tax included) and is run by Alyuum Inc. The first release was announced for August 26, 2026, and the latest, a collab with Sasara Mei, was announced for September 3, 2026 (Alyuum press release, in Japanese).

The operator has indicated it will expand the roster of participating VTubers in turn.

The Lab’s take: The core of this project is that the bath ticket has no expiration date. It turns “I can’t go, so I won’t buy” into “I’ll go someday, so I’ll buy.” And because the village-run hot spring is a public facility, supporting it doubles as supporting your oshi, a structure only a local government could build.

Tatebayashi, Gunma: A Different Kind of Result, Eight Years in a Row

Tatebayashi City was selected for the 2026 edition of the “88 Anime Sacred Sites in Japan You’d Like to Visit” for the eighth year in a row (Gunma Prefecture announcement, in Japanese). The idea is to treat continued appearance on the list as the result itself, rather than any single year’s visitor count.

The Lab’s take: The hardest thing about a local government collab is carrying on through staff transfers and changes of mayor. A format that renews an external certification every year is a practical weapon for securing continuing budget inside city hall.

Patterns That Succeed and Patterns That Fail

Line up the four cases and it becomes clear that design, not budget size, separates the results. By angle:

The failure most often cited is the stamp rally in Minokamo City, Gifu Prefecture, with the anime Nourin. In November 2015, criticism gathered over the depiction of a female character on the promotional poster, and the poster was recalled and redesigned. A city official has commented that nothing concrete has moved on a collab since the recall (Money Post WEB, in Japanese).

The issue was not whether the work itself was acceptable. It was that the poster went up in public facilities and stations, places that people who never chose that work also pass through. In other words, zoning, the deliberate decision about where particular imagery appears, was missing from the design. The same artwork would probably not have been an issue in a specialty shop or on a dedicated website. The incident is said to have prompted local governments to develop guidelines afterward.

Another typical pattern is a project that races ahead with no resident consensus. When local shops and transit operators say “we weren’t told,” there is no framework to receive the fans who do come, and the project fades away by the next year. The same structure shows up in case studies of oshi-katsu marketing failures.

For Planners: From Launch to Evaluation

The gap between what works and what trips up shows up directly in the order of planning. In practical terms, there are seven stages.

1. Choose the type. Decide first whether the main axis is pilgrimage, hometown tax or digital perks. Doing all three at once is too heavy for the first year.
2. Confirm the contact point. Who do you negotiate with on the work side, the production committee or the publisher? For a VTuber, the agency or the person? Settle the contracting party at the start.
3. Explain to residents and businesses first. Shopping associations, transit operators, lodging facilities, roadside stations: share the plan before the announcement.
4. Put zoning standards in writing. Which media, which artwork, how far. For public displays, write the standards down before production starts.
5. Decide how to measure visits. Digital stamp rally logs, facility admissions, lodging statistics. You can’t recover this once you’ve started.
6. Build one entrance for distant fans. A return gift or a digital perk will do. An outlet for people who can’t come in person helps the announcement spread.
7. Leave room to renew next year. Don’t spend everything in the first year; design the continuation.

1. 01Choose a typePilgrimage, tax or digital
2. 02Confirm the contactCommittee, publisher, agency
3. 03Talk to residentsBefore the announcement
4. 04Write zoning rulesMedia, artwork, limits
5. 05Decide measurementLogs, admissions, stays
6. 06Open a distant doorGift or digital perk
7. 07Leave room to renewDesign next year

The order of planning is the order of avoiding failure.

Pre-Planning Checklist

• You can write in one sentence which of visiting population, connected population or spending in the region is the main purpose this time
• You have confirmed the contracting party with the production committee or management agency
• You have documented zoning standards for public displays inside the local government
• You have explained the plan to shopping associations, transit operators and lodging facilities before the announcement
• You have decided how to measure visitors and route numbers before the start
• You have prepared a way for distant fans to take part
• You have considered a form that survives staff transfers (external certification, regular budget)
• You have decided whether to have an outside body calculate the economic effect

Notes From The Oshi Lab: A Local Government Must Not Buy a One-Time Festival

When we get a consultation about a local government collab, the first thing we check is not the budget but whether the project will still exist next year.

Fans look at local governments more strictly than they look at companies. A company campaign is understood to end, but when a local government takes up a work, fans read it as a story that this region cares about the work. So when a project ends after one round, what people remember is not a finished project but a region that wasn’t serious. That Numazu has kept going for 10 years, and that Tatebayashi points to eight straight years on the list, is trust you can count.

One more thing. Maebashi’s ¥15.245 million went to transit and roadside stations, which says that what shapes the result is not how flashy the event is but the density of everyday life: riding the bus, resting at a roadside station, taking a hot spring bath. The more often people meet the work in daily life, the more the place changes for fans from somewhere you go to somewhere you return to. Hometown tax gifts and digital perks bring numbers only when they are designed as tools for renewing that relationship every year. For a region, oshi-katsu is a way of building a relationship before it is a way of attracting visitors. Creating one reason to last 10 years moves more money in the end than launching a festival once.

Related articles: What Is Oshi-Katsu Marketing? / Case Studies in Oshi-Katsu Marketing Failures / How to Plan an Oshi-Katsu Event / The Oshi-Katsu Market Size, 2026 Edition