I sometimes think they do it on purpose.

Okay look, we finally released this thing overseas, aren’t you guys happy and want to buy it?

Looks inside: $180 USD figurine of Shinji Ikari, in his normal school clothes

I am literally never gonna overpay for that

See look, the people overseas don’t buy our stuff, so let’s just stop caring about them.

It has to be intentional at this point. Imagine if the Japanese people didn’t automatically side with big businesses because of their society and heard the prices we had to pay for the stuff they get at like, a quarter of the price.

and $13 USD per Manga book is hardly sustainable.

TBF I have a couple of manga in both English and Japanese and the English copies are larger and nicer. Also, they have to pay translators. Still wish it were as cheap as it is in Japan, but at least they aren’t throwing all of the price difference into stockholder pockets.

As for the merch, 90%+ what I buy is Gunpla and fortunately that’s only a little more expensive in the US. It is more expensive though, and it’s not like they’re sending us higher quality kits. I guess international shipping isn’t free. My condolences if you’re into the stuff that actually is overpriced though; I don’t want to give the impression I don’t think some things actually just cost too much. And an even bigger problem is availability; there’s tons of stuff that’s only available to buy in Japan, sometimes in-person.

Edit: I also think the manga thing is at least partially economy of scale; I’ve seen some of the more popular manga like Demon Slayer going for closer to $5/volume in a box set.