Why some series are not on this site
This site lists places you can stand in. For a lot of major series that works: Shibuya is really in Jujutsu Kaisen, Uji is really in Sound! Euphonium, Karatsu is really Hasetsu.
For some of the most popular titles in the world, it does not work at all, because the story is not set in Japan. There is nothing to visit, and pretending otherwise would waste your time and money.
This page covers what is actually known about those worlds — separating what the creators have said from what fans have worked out, the same way we separate official and fan-identified locations everywhere else on this site.
Fullmetal Alchemist
Amestris is not a real country and no real town was drawn as one.
What the author has said is more specific than "European-looking". Hiromu Arakawa has described building the setting by reading about industrial-revolution-era Europe, and Britain in particular — research from books, not location scouting. The military hardware borrows from later periods again, with equipment closer to the mid-twentieth century than to the 1800s. Xing, to the east, is drawn from China.
So the world is a deliberate composite of periods and places, assembled from reading. There is no single town that "is" Central City, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.
What does exist: the two live-action films were shot on location in Italy — Volterra, Florence and elsewhere. Those are real places you can visit, and they genuinely appear on screen. They are film locations rather than models for the manga, which is a different thing, but it is an honest one.
In Japan: nothing permanent. Exhibitions tour occasionally; there is no museum, no themed area and no author-hometown site.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
Nothing has been officially identified, and we are not going to invent it.
What is observable: the naming is overwhelmingly German — characters, spells and places — and the architecture drawn is central European, with stone walls, timber framing and orange-tiled roofs. From that, a large amount of fan writing concludes that Germany is the model, and some of it names specific towns.
That conclusion is reasonable. It is also not something the creators have stated. There is no published location scouting, no named town, and no official map. Compare this to Ponyo, where Miyazaki actually lived in Tomonoura for three months while working on the film — that is a documented connection. Frieren has an atmosphere, not an address.
If you want the closest real-world equivalent to the look, the timber-framed towns of southern Germany and the Baltic coast will get you there. Just know that you are following a fan reading, not a location list.
In Japan: nothing permanent. Collaboration cafes and exhibitions run from time to time and then end.
The same is true of several others
| Series | Setting | What exists in Japan | |---|---|---| | Attack on Titan | Fictional walled world | Real sites in Hita, Oita — the author's home town | | Spy×Family | Fictional divided Europe | Nothing permanent | | Hunter × Hunter | Fictional world | Nothing permanent | | Bleach | Fictional Karakura Town | Nothing permanent | | Saint Seiya | Greece and elsewhere | Nothing permanent | | One Punch Man | Fictional City Z | Nothing permanent | | The Promised Neverland | Fictional | Nothing permanent | | That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime | Fictional other world | Nothing permanent | | Gintama | Fictional Kabuki District | Nothing permanent | | Space Battleship Yamato | Space | The Yamato Museum in Kure is about the real battleship, not the anime |
Attack on Titan is the interesting exception. The story is not set in Japan, but the author is from Hita in Oita, and the town has built genuine sites around that — bronze statues of the three children below a 94-metre dam wall that stands in for the wall from volume one, and a museum. The connection is to the author, not the story, and it works.
What to do if your favourite is on this list
Do not build a trip around it. You will end up in a shop.
Two things are worth doing instead:
- Go to the source. The Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum in Takarazuka explains where the whole medium came from, and almost every series you like descends from it. It is 700 yen.
- Pick up an official-goods stop rather than a pilgrimage. For most of these titles the merchandise exists even where the locations do not, and it slots into a day you were spending in Tokyo or Osaka anyway.
Then spend the actual travel days on a series that does have somewhere to go. There are more than forty on this site.
Why we do not list overseas locations
We considered adding European locations for these works and decided against it, for two reasons.
The first is accuracy. For Frieren there is nothing official to list, and listing fan inference next to documented sites like Tomonoura or Shiratani Unsuikyo would make both look equally reliable, which they are not.
The second is that this site is built for Japan — the maps, the transport advice, the accommodation and the routes all assume it. A pin on a German town would come with none of that, and a travel guide that cannot actually help you get there is not a travel guide.
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