Tower Records on Wicklow Street (off Grafton Street) in Dublin City Centre, has in recent years become the best stocked store in the country selling anime.

The anime section of the shop is, appropriately, upstairs at the back (right next to the porn - classy!). Despite the internally out-of-the-way placement of the section, from the outside of the store anime posters can be seen plastered across the first floor windows.

As usual, prices are a little uncomfortably high for most individual DVDs; but the prices of boxsets are generally becoming more reasonable. They also tend to stock the newer series; a prime example being the first few Eurkeka 7 DVDs, which had only recently become available in region 2, or the thinpack release of GiTS:Standalone Complex.

There are quite a number of region 4 releases (Australia, NZ and Latin America) stocked there, which generally means a different distribution company to what we’d be used to from American and UK releases, so be wary. Some of these releases are of a lower quality than their region 2 and region 1 counterparts (2.0 audio instead of 5.1, 4:3 aspect ratio rather than 16:9, etc), which is reflected in the price.

There is a selection of “Essential Anime” sets, repackaged ADV releases of various classic shows. This repackaging means forgoing fancy boxart, slips, and extra DVDs, but it brings down the price of a boxset significantly.

As far as merchandise goes, there are a small slection of plushies and figurines; I recall Inuyasha, Naruto, Spirited Away and Laputa, as well as a few different anime wallscrolls.

As usual, you will always get better deals online, but if that isn’t an option (it really should be, considering the introduction of 3V cards), then this is the best reality-bound place to get anime.