HOW ANIME TRANSFORMED A SMALL FISHING VILLAGE INTO A SACRED

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HOW ANIME TRANSFORMED A SMALL

FISHING VILLAGE INTO A SACRED

ANIME PILGRIMAGE SITE

By Selva Ganesh K

mysticquill.blogspot.com


Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture — 119km from Tokyo, where fishing boats once defined the horizon and mandarin orange farms dotted the hillside

Anime is now a key player and important part of global pop culture. We all assumed every Japanese town would be as flashy and modern as Tokyo — but there are still villages and towns with ageing populations and nothing to do, as youth moves to big cities for jobs and careers. Numazu was the same — a small but beautiful fishing village, with mandarin orange farms growing on the hillside, fishing boats dotting Uchiura Bay, and a view of Mt. Fuji from Shizuoka Prefecture, just 119km from Tokyo.

 

With an ageing population and teens moving to big cities, everyone thought the same thing was going to happen here as it had in other towns — until 2016. But in 2016, everything changed when nine anime girls turned the fishing village into a sacred anime pilgrimage site.


Love Live! Sunshine!!

 

Aqours — the nine idol girls of Love Live! Sunshine!! whose story mirrored the real struggles of small-town Japan

Love Live! Sunshine!! is part of the Love Live franchise — a continuation from Love Live School Idol Project, where 9 girls try to save their school from closing because student enrollment has fallen too low. To save the school and prove themselves, they participate in Love Live competitions. They formed a group called Aqours, made up of 9 unique girls, each with a contrasting personality but sharing the same goal.

 

And just like me — it motivates millions of people who come from small villages or towns who want to show success and prove that even they can achieve something. That is why otakus from around the world travel to this sacred site, where their favorite 9 characters worked hard and achieved success in the same Numazu and Uchiura — to show respect to the very place where those characters lived in the story.

 

Nine fictional girls carried the weight of a real town's future. And somehow, it worked.

Before the Sunshine


Mt. Fuji viewed from Numazu — the city was known locally for its port, seafood, and proximity to the iconic mountain. Internationally, it was essentially invisible.

Before Love Live! Sunshine!! premiered, Numazu attracted around 4.02 million tourists in 2015 — respectable numbers for a mid-size coastal city, but nothing that suggested a cultural renaissance was coming. The city was known locally for its port, its seafood, and its proximity to Mt. Fuji. Internationally, it was essentially invisible.

 

Everyone assumed that choosing Numazu was accidental — but it wasn't. It was a well-planned, deliberate decision to transform the town into an anime destination. The pilgrimage began before the first episode even dropped. When Numazu was revealed as the show's setting, there was already a surge in fans visiting places like Uchiura Bay and the Izu Mito Sea Paradise Aquarium. Locals started noticing strangers with cameras comparing phone screenshots to street corners. It was strange at first. Then it became something else entirely.

 

By 2017, from April to September alone, about 2.90 million people visited Numazu — an increase of roughly 570,000 from the same period the previous year.

 

From Quiet Town to Global Destination

As Numazu had 4.02 million tourists in 2015 before the broadcast of Love Live! Sunshine!!, it moved up to 4.15 million in 2016. From April to September 2017 alone, about 2.90 million people visited — an increase of about 570,000 from the same period the previous year. The city tourism information desk also saw a surge in visitors, with many sharing how the anime had inspired both their children and themselves.

 

The rise of tourism brought a wave of events across Numazu and Uchiura Bay — stamp rallies, 'Find Our Numazu' campaigns, and various activities designed to inspire otakus to explore every beautiful corner of the town.


Anime pilgrims comparing screenshots to real Numazu locations — a scene that became increasingly common from 2016 onwards

The Locals Didn't Just Welcome It. They Joined It.

This is where Numazu's story diverges from most anime tourism tales. In most pilgrimage cities, fans arrive, take comparison photos, maybe buy a keychain, and leave. In Numazu, businesses developed official partnerships with Love Live — restaurants named dishes after characters, hotels launched special accommodation packages, buses were wrapped in anime art, and a stamp rally with dozens of participating establishments was established across the city.

 

The city's municipal tourism infrastructure leaned in completely. The Sannoura Synthesis Information Centre, originally funded by the municipal tourism budget as a general resource, became an unofficial headquarters for visiting pilgrims — its entire building eventually taken over by Love Live! Sunshine!! materials. Even farmers got involved. JA Nansun, a local farming collective, started selling anime character goods alongside their famous mikan oranges to draw in more visitors.

 



The Numazu Stamp Rally — the initial run of 5,000 booklets sold out within a month. A total of 20,000 were eventually printed and sold.

The stamp rally became a cultural institution in its own right. The initial run of 5,000 stamp booklets sold out within a month. By year's end, 20,000 had been printed and sold. Nine shops initially participated — by 2018, about 50 shops were part of the rally. A representative from the Numazu Chamber of Commerce noted something remarkable: young people were walking through Numazu's shopping districts again.

Local Numazu businesses — restaurants named dishes after Aqours characters, hotels offering special anime packages, buses wrapped in Love Live art.

Friction, Vandalism, and a City That Held Its Ground

Not everything was sunshine. A city councillor, Ryū Ozawa — himself a fan of the series — acknowledged early reports of visitors approaching students at the real elementary school that inspired the fictional Uranohoshi Girls' Academy. The boundaries between fiction and lived reality were getting blurry.

 

The most visible flashpoint was the manhole covers. Fan-funded, character-themed manhole covers had been installed across the city as a community project. They were eventually vandalized, prompting the city to temporarily pull them. They were reinstalled four months later — this time, with security cameras.

Love Live! Sunshine!! manhole covers in Numazu — vandalized, temporarily removed, then reinstalled with security cameras. A city learning to manage love at scale.

Notices appeared at anime spots: "Leaving behind anime goods and drawing on things forbidden." The city was learning, in real time, how to manage love at scale. But the local consensus remained remarkably positive. Most fans were eager to enjoy the city and support local residents rather than cause trouble.

 

Seven Years Later: New Residents, Not Just Tourists

The most extraordinary part of Numazu's story isn't the tourist numbers. It's what came after. Over seven years, Numazu's relationship with Love Live! Sunshine!! produced not just an influx of tourists but something rarer — new permanent residents who chose to make Numazu their home because of the anime.

 

The fandom built its own community infrastructure. European and international fans organised Discord meetups around Numazu visits, coordinating pilgrimages the same way fans coordinate around concert tours. Numazu became one of the more traveled pilgrimage destinations among overseas anime fans, partly due to its accessibility and the growth of official international hotel and ticket packages for Aqours concerts.

New residents who moved to Numazu permanently — drawn not by work or family, but by a nine-girl idol group and the town that became their home.

And the warmth of the locals became part of the pilgrimage experience itself. Visitors noted that Numazu's residents had an exceptional level of friendliness toward strangers — locals would approach foreign tourists, share their feelings about the vandalized manhole covers, and engage with genuine hospitality. Numazu held its first relocation consultation event for Love Live fans — reservations filled up in 30 minutes.

 

The anime brought visitors. The town turned them into neighbours.

 

Closing

Anime tourism is often discussed as an economic phenomenon — visitor counts, yen figures, stamp rally booklets sold. But Numazu's story is something quieter and more interesting than that. It's about a fishing city that looked at a cartoon, recognized something of itself, and decided to fully become it.

 

The fishing boats still go out at dawn. The mikan farms are still on the hills. But now the manhole covers glow with the faces of nine idol girls, the buses carry their smiles through town, and somewhere in the city, a person with similar dreams — from Thailand or Germany — is standing at a street corner, holding up their phone, finding the exact angle from episode three.

 

Numazu didn't just host an anime. It became one.

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