Character café – the café linking to modern Japanese culture

Character café – the café linking to modern Japanese culture

To attract different types of customers, there are many kinds of concept café in Japan, including pet café, maid café, etc. Among those, the most popular one should be Character café.

Character café, as the name implies, is a kind of café by applying animation as the main theme, in order to attract the fans of the anime. In Japan, Character café was visited by thousands of fans every day.

The café is usually fully decorated by using the anime characters or the main scenes as the motif, so when the customers enter the café, they can feel like entering the anime world. Not only the decorations, but the menu is also re-designed, which is full of the characteristics of the anime.

For example in 2018, the Character café collaborated with the popular anime Pokemon was opened from March. The café was decorated with many Pokemon FRPs and the menu was designed for the fans, such as the curry set by using Pikachu’s image. The café is opened almost every year to promote the new movie or the new game to be released.

This kind of anime collaboration is one of the pillars of the whole anime market. But of course, not just only in Japan, but the huge market has also extended to overseas. In view of this, many famous IP is now actively entering the nearby countries. Such as in China, Square Enix had the grand open of its Character café in Shanghai in December 2018. Inside the café, many famous IP from the games by Square Enix, such as Final Fantasy, was used as the main decoration and attracted many fans would like to line up outside the shop.

On top of this kind of themed café, there are a lot of restaurants collaborating with anime to attract fans in a certain period of time. For example in Hong Kong, a restaurant called Satay King is always having their shops to collaborate with different IPs. They collaborated with Monster Hunter World in Feb 2018 and with another famous IP Evangelion in July the same year. These collaboration makes the restaurant famous in anime collaboration and attracted many different anime fans.