The 7 Best Anime Subscription Boxes of 2023

The Rundown

Loot Anime: Best Overall
Nihon Box: The Best Variety
Bam Anime Box: The Best Collectibles
Crunchyroll Crate: The Best New Box
My Hero Academia Box: The Best for Fans of My Hero Academia
Anime Box Club: The Best Customization Options
The Mage’s Emporium: The Best Budget

The best anime subscription boxes provide you with an exciting experience each month. You get a box delivered to your door filled with anime-themed items—toys, collectibles, clothing, snacks, or other merchandise. The items in the box should not be cheaply made gumball machine toys, but rather collectible figurines, apparel, desirable plushies, books, and posters to expand your collection.

A worthwhile subscription box should feel like a good value. Not all subscription boxes are created equally, though, and some boxes provide more value than others. We examined more than two dozen subscription boxes to narrow down the best options for anime fans. Read on to check out our picks for the best anime subscription boxes, starting with Lootcrate’s Loot Anime Box (view on Lootcrate), which has swag for both classic and new anime fans. We also included our picks for the best boxes in other categories, like the best budget anime subscription box and the best box for collectibles.

Best Overall: Loot Anime

When most people think of geek subscription boxes, they think of Lootcrate. The company is known for making a variety of subscription boxes, including pop culture crates, gaming crates, film and TV crates, and limited edition crates. You can find a Lootcrate for everything from Hello Kitty to Harry Potter. The Loot Anime crate costs around $30 for a single month, and the price goes down a couple of bucks when you select a longer plan length. However, the subscription auto-renews unless you cancel, regardless of your plan length.

Inside of a Loot Anime crate, you get an assortment of items themed around manga and anime, like T-shirts, figurines, and collectibles. Each month, the crate has a theme (or episode) that it centers around. Because Loot Anime celebrates both classic and new anime series, you could end up with swag from a newer series like The Promised Neverland, or from a classic series like Dragon Ball Z.

Best Variety: Nihon Box

The Nihon Box has a lot of variety, which makes it pretty fun to open. Its contents are somewhat different from other anime boxes. You get traditional Japanese objects and treats, like dishware or home decor, in addition to anime and manga swag. It costs €30 monthly plus shipping (or about $32 per month), and the price goes down slightly as you subscribe to more months at a time.

The toys in the box feel high quality, as do the dishes and household objects. A typical box may contain a traditional item like a bowl or a utensil in addition to anime-themed items like T-shirts, plush toys, keychains, and figurines. You also get a food item to try in the Nihon box, so you can snack on a treat, decorate your house, and collect anime and manga merch.

Best Collectibles: Bam Anime Box

What’s so special about the Bam Anime Box? The star of the Bam Box is the included celebrity autograph, which is authenticated by Beckett Authentication Services to ensure it’s a genuine signature. In the box, you get an autograph by someone involved in the anime world. The box also contains items like fan art cards, fan art prints, and snacks.

In addition to its Anime Box, Bam has a few different subscription box options, including a gamer box, horror box, and geek box. The Bam Anime Box costs $35 per month plus shipping and handling, and the subscription automatically renews unless you cancel.

Best New Box: Crunchyroll Crate

Another Lootcrate? Yep. The anime streaming service Crunchyroll partnered with Lootcrate to create a new anime subscription box that costs around $30 plus shipping and handling. Each of the items in the crate are centered around Crunchyroll titles like Haikyu!!, Black Clover, Mobile Suit Gundam, and more.

The Crunchyroll Crate provides collectibles, figurines, T-shirts, toys, and other merchandise. When you sign up, you indicate your T-shirt size and the number of months you want to include in your subscription at a time. Keep in mind that your subscription will automatically renew unless you cancel, regardless of how many months you pay for at once. Also, because this is a newer subscription box, we haven’t had much opportunity to see what each box includes and the quality of the items.

Best for Fans of My Hero Academia: My Hero Academia Box

If your favorite anime series is My Hero Academia, this box by CultureFly might be for you. Each My Hero Academia subscription box costs $40 when billed quarterly or about $36 when billed annually. You also pay a little extra for shipping and handling, and your subscription auto-renews unless you cancel. In the box, you get a variety of official merch, and each box includes apparel, accessories, collectibles, stationery, homeware, and decor, so you get a pretty good variety. The spring box included a lightweight jacket, in addition to a hat, a mug, keychain, figurines, cards, and artwork.

This box comes quarterly instead of monthly, so it’s a great option for a fan of the show who only wants a box every so often.

Best Customization Options: Anime Box Club

What we like about Anime Box Club is that the brand understands anime is huge with several genres and sub-genres. Someone who likes a show like Pokémon won’t necessarily like a show like Tokyo Ghoul, and, just because someone is a fan of an anime series doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a fan of manga.

Anime Box Club allows you to choose up to three possible genres for your box, and then you receive unique items themed around anime within those genres. In every box, you get a volume one manga, statue, and other anime merch like plushies, jewelry, wall scrolls, or figurines. The box costs between $45 and $60, depending on how many items you want to receive and for how long you want to subscribe.

Best Budget: The Mage’s Emporium

Primarily for manga fans, The Mage’s Emporium is made by Cratejoy. For a monthly price of $39 (less if you pay for three, six, or twelve months in advance), you get five used manga books to add to your collection. The books are for ages 16 and up, and they may or may not be volume one manga books. You can contact the brand if you want books for younger readers, and they may be able to oblige though.

If you’re more into toys, they also offer a $23 subscription box where you get a mystery Funko Pop and a mystery Funko Dorbz. However, these may or may not be anime-themed, so you could end up with a Marvel character.

Final Verdict

Loot Anime is great for someone who likes all anime but not as great for someone who only likes a few specific series. If you want more of a niche box, look at the My Hero Academia Box or Anime Box Club.

FAQs

What Are Anime Subscription Boxes?

There are many different types of subscription boxes you can buy. You can get one centered around makeup, food, or, in this case, anime. To get a box, you sign up for a subscription—usually monthly—and you receive a box to your home containing anime goodies. Depending on the type of box, the anime goodies might be books, clothing, collectibles, food, toys, artwork, or a combination of all of those things.

What Kinds of Anime Subscription Boxes Are There?

The most popular type of box is the geek variety box (only, it’s anime themed). It almost always contains a T-shirt and some sort of figurine. Other items can include a poster or card with a picture of a character from a series, a mug, hat, pen, manga, and other swag.

Other anime boxes are more niche—they may revolve around a certain series, like the My Hero Academia Box. Some boxes focus on snacks, some focus on autographs, and others focus on manga. You can find a box for just about anything. It might not provide the perfect items centered around the exact shows you watch in every box, but you can certainly find an anime box that has the right vibe.

How Much Do Anime Subscription Boxes Cost?

Most boxes cost around $30 a month, or about $35 to $37 once you include shipping and tax. However, you can find boxes as cheap as $23 a month (that’s the cheapest box we found that was any good), and some boxes cost more.

About our Trusted Experts: Erika Rawes has more than a decade of writing experience. She currently writes for Lifewire and Digital Trends where she’s tested roughly 130 products for various reviews and guides.

How We Chose the Best Anime Subscription Boxes

To choose the best anime subscription boxes, we considered a number of factors. Of course, we looked at what comes in the box. Are the items anime-themed? Can you get these items anywhere, or is there some level of exclusivity? Is the quality of the item? In addition to the box’s contents, we also looked at things like affordability, customization options, ease of cancellation, shipping cost speed, and packaging quality.