Why Mikasa Ackerman Carries a Nagoya Guidebook

Mikasa Ackerman Attack on Titan JR Central Oshi Tabi Postcard

A Tourism Campaign Card from Central Japan

This postcard was produced for JR Central’s “Oshi Tabi” tourism campaign — a collaboration between Tokai Passenger Railway, operator of the Tokaido Shinkansen, and the production committee behind Attack on Titan: The Final Season. “Oshi Tabi” combines “oshi” (one’s most beloved character) with “tabi” (journey or travel), packaging the idea of exploring a region alongside a favorite anime figure. The campaign was designed to promote tourism to the Nagoya and Tokai area of central Japan.

On this card, Mikasa Ackerman holds a fictional “Nagoya Guidebook.” The left edge of the card is designed to mimic a spiral-bound notebook, carrying the guidebook concept through the visual. Her iconic red scarf appears, but her outfit is entirely civilian — a brown jacket, a pink long dress, and a white shoulder bag — rather than the Survey Corps uniform she wears in the series. This costume was created specifically for the campaign and has no counterpart in the manga or anime. Distribution was limited to stations and campaign windows along the Tokaido Shinkansen corridor, outside standard retail channels.

Attack on Titan and the Character at the Center

Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) is a manga by Hajime Isayama, serialized in Kodansha’s Bessatsu Shonen Magazine from 2009 to 2021 and collected across 34 volumes. The anime began under Wit Studio and moved to MAPPA for The Final Season, which aired in multiple parts from late 2020 through 2023. The copyright notice on this postcard reflects that Final Season period. With over 100 million copies in circulation, the series ranks among the most widely read manga of the past two decades.

Mikasa Ackerman is one of the story’s three central protagonists — a descendant of the Ackerman clan and one of humanity’s most capable fighters within the narrative. Her red scarf, a gift from Eren Yeager early in the story, is one of the franchise’s most consistent visual symbols and appears on this card even in her casual outfit. She regularly places near the top in official character popularity polls, both in Japan and internationally.

Where This Card Sits in Japanese Anime Merchandise Culture

Railway and anime collaborations have been a common feature of Japanese regional tourism marketing since the 2010s. JR Group companies and private rail operators produce campaign-limited goods that tie popular characters to specific travel destinations — and these items typically stop circulating once the campaign period ends, since they are not distributed through standard retail.

Collectors who focus on paper ephemera treat campaign postcards as a distinct category from mass-produced merchandise. The specific character of this card comes from its origin: a regional railway company, rather than a toy or merchandise manufacturer, issued it during a campaign tied to one of the largest anime properties of the past decade. Add a campaign-exclusive costume design and a built-in regional limitation, and the postcard occupies a fairly narrow corner of the broader Attack on Titan merchandise landscape.