>>86533219It's a confluence of things.
The Visual Novel industry pivoted hard from PC to mobile, and the sharp increase in production quality (and cost) and marketing power meant that most indie/doujin VNs were driven underground. That shifted that whole market out of Akiba.
The anime industry's hard pivot to massed LN adaptations means the majority of old anime fans are pressed out of the hobby while newer fans centralize around LN publishing because that's the primary material. And the preponderance of these cheap advertisement adaptations and scarcity of well-funded or successful originals means much less merch and secondary media coming out of mainstream shows.
All of this comes together to mean that anime fans either stop being anime fans or stop going to akiba for anime stuff. It had already been ailing for years, even a decade ago folks were sounding alarms when the bluray transition was hurting businesses. But the pandemic lockdowns drove a lot of small companies out of business and cut into the coffers of bigger ones, and as things slowly close down it creates a compounding effect where everything still around suffers from the area having less and less draw. When there are no cafes then suddenly fewer people show up to shop at the department stores, and when there are no department stores then fewer people show up at the restaurants, etc. This sort of thing happened all over big cities in lots of attractions that weren't anime or subculture related, just because a few little businesses going out of business during lockdowns triggers a domino effect
