the vast majority of anime use real places as not only inspiration but exact frames so theoretically
if you tried hard enough you should be able to pinpoint the exact locations that your favorite
scenes took place and that's where i come in today's hunt is my dress-up darling let's begin by
taking some measurements not like that there are two train stations that get prominently featured
so i want to see how far apart they are so we can get a sense of just how spread out this
anime is going to be the first one is ikebukuro station so I'm guessing the whole show will be set
somewhere in that neighborhood but as we've seen in the past that is not always the case
so already we can see that they are pretty closely following reality even the pattern
on the floor and the yellow line as you see here is all the same so I'm guessing this scene took
place somewhere right around here let's just drop in and take a look oh yeah they say i can
already see it in the distance there's that orange sign okay we're gonna scoot down here
they named it weckers but in the real life it's called becker's so let's try to get as close
to this angle as we can sorry Mr. sweeper you're gonna be in our shot a little bit
while we're here there are some shots in the show that are inside the train station so
look at this we might be able to get right down onto the platforms oh no this is
that's one of the most annoying parts about google maps in japan is that there's a lot of underground
tunnels and malls and subways and there's just no indication when you're dropping your guy down
if you're gonna be on the street or like at the earth's core and because google has literally
everything if you know how to search for it i found a picture of the exact sign from the anime
okay back to our measurements we want to figure out just how far iwatsuki station is
from ikebukuro station they're only 28 kilometers apart but for now let's find this
east station exit guess that's about as east as it gets okay so this is fairly close i
guess but it's not right oh wait there's the sign oh this is it here we are that's
cool you can even see the yellow sign here and everything so this is this is not bad at all
i love japan so much what a beautiful building for a random train station in
the middle of nowhere when watching this show something very insignificant stood out to me
but i think it's really going to help us find where most of these scenes take place and that
is this little statue of an owl that is a very unique little statue that there's no
way they would have just made up so let's go saitama owl statue okay no it's not that sight
oh there it is see it's as easy as that so that is definitely it so we'll come back to that later
that'll be really easy to find why are there so many owls in ikebukuro i guess we'll just start
as basic as it can get and start searching up schools so there really doesn't actually
seem to be that many schools around here at all interesting i could be totally off base
with using uatsuki station as my starting point Japanese schools are so much nicer
than canadian schools so he's getting on the train at ibatsuki station and then riding it to
school which means it theoretically could be anywhere this is actually very similar this
building off to the side and then there's also this black fencing along here so I'm hoping we
can get a closer look at this but would he have had to get on a train to ride to here yeah there's
no transit between those two places so it's pretty unlikely that this is gonna be it this
isn't bad either but this is kind of the general shape of all Japanese high schools the tall
black fence is so distinct but you can't like search google maps for tall black fence or maybe
yeah as i was saying oh i guess here's something we could do if we start at this station
and then follow the train line in one direction we can see what stops he could have been going
to this fencing is very similar no that does not look right does it is that also just a universal
fence no this doesn't look right they just all have this fence with bushes out front don't they
wait did i just brute force it i did no way
i was just clicking every single high school along the train that he gets on and this has to be it
there's a black fence and a brick road let me see i am the luckiest little meat on the planet holy
how far is this from iwatsuki because i went along that line for quite a while an hour and
20 minutes that is quite the commute this better be a good school he must have done really well
on his entrance exams so from here we should be able to find pretty much everything else
in the area that we were looking for so this looks like where he got pushed over by that girl
right and is there like a bus stop down this way it sucks because i can't actually
get onto the sidewalk to get the exact right angle but that's not too far off
this is pretty similar to what what I'm seeing in the anime that is the bus
schedule right there that is in the anime their attention to detail never ceases to amaze me
now what about this corner that he's hiding on could that be
this potential oh yeah look at these hmm so in the anime it's like a straight 90 degree corner
this has a bit of a flat part here but this is identical so not too shabby not too shabby
let's figure out where this mall is that should be relatively straightforward oh right we had the
owl photo hotel parkside oh look at that we were right at it okay yeah this looks
right there big building with a round pillar on the front top middle bottom
oh i'm right next to it okay yeah here we are hotel parkside's a little more
prominently featured than in the anime but that is
I've even got a bit of the family mart in that shot there we go
next let's try to find the convention center no but i don't think that's what i'm looking for
morning city is not the real name okay there's some pretty distinct buildings
in the background here let's see if we can just find something like that oh there's
a place called sunshine city that has to be it that is a classic anime switcheroo
oh i was in the exact right spot i was just looking at the wrong side of this building go me
am i right I'm inside cool okay here we are ton of shots i want to grab here
and lastly i want to recreate the journey from the ramen shop to ikebukuro station there's some
really cool shots of the streets at night it was really beautiful instead of starting
at the ramen shop we'll walk our way back from ikebukuro station and japan is so cool
i want to see what is this this would be a main square of an entire city like Vancouver or Toronto
or something but this is just like a random spot in Tokyo there's dozens and dozens of these it's
so awesome sorry enough of me being a weeb what are we looking what are we doing here again
right so is there like an overpass with a tunnel around here somewhere above ground they're walking
at ground level while the road goes down this might not be as easy as i thought i jumped the gun
again like i always do oh this is exact spot look at me go oh there's not a lot of google street
view coverage though see what we can do here works out a little bit for that i suppose oops nope what
have i done oh so there is google street view coverage here okay well we did need to get down
to the tunnel so this is gonna work for me as well can you imagine just like innocently walking to
work one day and then you end up in some weaves video on the internet poor people man poor people
there's a couple more angles from here i want to get and this is one of them i think it's
looking a little different maybe this is on the other no no because there's those v's
this one might be cheated quite a bit actually unless there's a tunnel on the other side as
well oh weird oh this is the tunnel they must have been in then okay so that is a
darn shame I'm not actually going to be able to get a very good angle on this but this is the spot
that's also a shame that i can't get out on the overpass there's a lot of cool shots from there
and I'm guessing that is what's right next to her head which would make her very short
where does this tunnel actually go does it just pop out over here somewhere this is where it's
gonna get tricky again because there's so many tight little alleys a lot of which i don't think
actually have google street view coverage we might be out of luck like they usually
could have come from anywhere here i guess what i could do i could search for ramen there's probably
10 000 ramen restaurants here but it's not exact
but it is except for the the what is that called shingles is that that's a disease shingles
no not shingles what are those things called roof tile oh they are called shingles
why is there a disease named after a roof or was the roof named after the disease anyways whatever
came first there's no shingles on this roof if you have any ideas for anime you'd like to see
me hunt down the locations for let me know in the comments and if you like this video I've got a ton
more like it you can watch here thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next next time