Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) X Animate Cafe

**Please note that the information in this post here is as accurate on 16 September 2018. Animate Cafe X Attack on Titan Season 3 Part 1 campaign has ended.

Update: To celebrate the start of the anime Season 3 part 2, Animate has announced that they will be having another Attack on Titan cafe collaboration in June 2019! (Refer to the end of the post for more information. ^ ^)

So back in September last year (2018), I made an extremely last-minute trip to Tokyo for the JoJo Bizarre Adventure’s Exhibition (click me!) and the JUMP Exhibition Part III. (You can read about my experiences by clicking on the title itself) which were both absolutely awesome!

Naturally as part of the trip, I started looking up for potential anime cafes and/or events which I can go for and I found out that Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人 Shingeki no Kyojin) was having a cafe collaboration with Animate! (Yay!)

The campaign was held at Ikebukuro Animate Cafe 3 (Note that there were 3 different animate cafes in Ikebukuro. In 2020, there are now 4 animate cafes in Ikebukuro.) which was located next to the big Animate store in Ikebukuro. Please note that for the 2019 Animate Cafe, it’s at Ikebukuro Cafe 2.

As this particular collaboration campaign required no reservations, i.e. you can simply just walk-in, I decided to swing by it after shopping at Animate Ikebukuro. ^ ^

Perhaps due to it being a weekday afternoon (around 4pm?), there wasn’t much of a crowd when I visited the cafe. I was promptly showed to a table by friendly staff and to my lovely surprise, they had placed an English menu (so thoughtful!) on the table alongside the usual Japanese menu! (LOL What gave it away that I was a tourist?)

CAFE MENU

Here’s the English Menu (so helpful!): Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Attack on Titan Animate Cafe 2018 English Menu

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Attack on Titan Animate Cafe 2018 English Menu_02

Attack on Titan Animate Cafe 2018 English Menu_04

Here’s a snapshot of the Japanese Menu:

Although I can understand the Japanese menu with my somewhat rusty Japanese skills, it still takes me slightly longer reading through it than it would be if it was in English/Mandarin.  The only downside to this was that the English translation covered up the “name” of the food/drink items and I had to refer to the Japanese menu to see which food/drink item belongs to which character.

They’ve also included a copy of the Animate Cafe rules in English too. Maybe it’s a growing recognition that a lot of overseas fans are keen to experience such anime cafes as well? Anyway, it’s a good development and I hope to see this in more cafes in the years to come. 😊

Here are the rules of Animate Cafe in English! (Click on the photos to enlarge them)

AOT Animate Cafe Rules (English)

AOT Animate Cafe Rules (English)

FOOD/DRINKS

I ordered the “Shingeki’s moon watching (gazing?) parfait” which was a parfait with Almond Jelly, cornflakes, some pieces of mango, mango ice-cream, rice cake ball, a small rabbit shaped cookie, some whipped cream, a few raspberries and a character Monaka (it’s like a thin wafer and I got Mikasa! Although I really wanted Levi or Erwin). On the positive point, you can’t really go wrong with parfait, taste-wise.  It was pretty good.

For the drink, I went with “Mikasa’s Berry Drink” which is a Cranberry drink with chassis syrup, soda water and mixed berries in it. It’s surprisingly refreshing.

As with all Animate Cafes, you get a random coaster (12 designs in all for this particular campaign) with each menu item ordered. I really wanted Erwin and/or Levi but as you can see from my photos, you’ll know who I ended up getting for coasters. (It’s still good though but it would have been better if I could have gotten my favourite characters).

By the way, Animate did this pretty cool thing too where they had invited Attack on Titan (AOT) fans to submit ideas for possible food/drinks item to be added to the menu. Find out which made it into the menu here: https://blog.mingeki.jp/2018/08/27/cafe/  (The page is no longer valid).

THEME/DECOR

Anyway, moving on… if you noticed from the various photos that there seems to be a lot of lanterns, moons and rabbits scattered throughout the cafe, as well as part of the characters’ designs, you are right!

I guess because the campaign started in mid-August, they went with the theme of the Mid-Autumn Festival! 😊 (Side-Note: Animate Cafe with Hunter x Hunter (Part 3) was also having Mid-Autumn Festival themed food/drink items at the same period. Check out my post: Hunter x Hunter Animate Cafe on the cafe experience if you are a HxH fan! I went for Part 1 and Part 3 respectively.)

GOODS/MERCHANDISES

To be perfectly honest, you can’t come to an anime themed cafe and not be tempted to get some exclusive merchandises now, can you?? I mean look at what’s on sale here!

Can Badges/Acrylic Stands

What was nice about the merchandise section at the AOT Animate Cafe was that they actually split up the can badges and the acrylic stands into two different sets. Each set featured 6 different designs (there are a total of 12 designs you can buy).

The top row was Set A and the bottom row was Set B.

So this meant that the chances of getting your favourite character was 1 out of 6 chances instead of 1 out of 12 chances, which is extremely significant. If you have ever bought stuff that are in blind packaging, you’ll know what I mean. The pain (and money!) of having to keep buying more and more just to get that one character you really wanted and then not knowing what to do with all those other characters that you didn’t exactly want.

But I digress. Trying to keep to a budget of sorts (I had quite a few anime cafes to go to for this trip), I decided to just buy 2 Acrylic stands and I got…

Yup, it’s Levi and Hange. (I wanted Levi and Erwin but I was happy with Hange too)

What was not pictured here was that in my attempt to get Erwin (cos he’s my favourite and how can I just have Levi without Erwin?!), I bought 3 more Acrylic stands and I ended up with 3 Hange and 2 Levi! I had attempted to change with some of the guests at the café but alas, no one was really giving up Erwin (which I totally understand). Although I’m happy to share that after a few months, I finally got my hands on one Erwin acrylic stand! Now he “stands” with Levi (as it should be) on my book shelves. (Scroll to the end to see photos!)

Shikishi Card: Present Campaign

Oh yes, for this particular campaign, there was also a special mini shikishi card you can get if you spent a total of 3000 yen and above at the café (inclusive of drinks/food and merchandises). Each week featured a different character. And yup, I got Erwin. 😊 You can only get 1 card per customer per visit.

Tapestry

Often times, you will find that some of the exclusive merchandises at the Animate cafés are made-to-order, i.e. you have to pre-order them at the café and get them at a later date. Recently, there have been more and more of such special pre-order items (usually tapestries) at Animate Cafes.

For AOT, the designs of the tapestries were as below:

They hung up a sample of how the actual tapestries will look like at the cafe:

Okay, I have no idea why I missed out taking a photo on Levi’s tapestry… but I did! Oops.  But I did take photos of the panels with the same designs so here they are in all their “meat” glory 😉 Who knew the Survey Corps had such hidden talents? LOL

At 8000 yen a tapestry though, it’s really not cheap. Plus, to be honest, it’s pretty strange to see them with chunks of meat. If I were to get one of these tapestries… I rather have them in a more “normal” setting… or with cutlery!

Cutlery?! 

Yup.

Now, personally I found this design to be much more interesting than the tapestry designs because if you noticed, they are all holding different types of cutlery instead of their usual weapons. These are Acrylic stands as well but at 2500 yen a piece, it’s of a considerably larger size than that of the chibi acrylic stands.

As you can see, Erwin’s design was sold out. I’m quite heartened that there are so many Erwin fans in Tokyo!

And that concludes my first Attack on Titan X Animate Cafe visit! 😊 I had a pretty chillaxing time at the café and it was a perfect place to rest after a shopping bout at Animate.

CHECK OUT MY OTHER GEEKY ESCAPADES & GUIDES

• Hunter x Hunter Animate Cafe (Part One)
• Vinland Saga: Anime Thoughts & Review
• Detective Conan Scientific Investigation Exhibition
• Nendoroids – A Guide on Buying Nendoroids
• Geeky Goods Spotlight: Forwarder, Buying Service & Proxy Bidding (Anime Goods)
• Kimetsu no Yaiba Ufotable Cafe

UPDATE: NEW CAFE COLLABORATION IN JUNE 2019

Animate has announced that to celebrate the airing of Part 2 of Season 3 of the anime series, they will be having another cafe collaboration with Attack on Titan! The upcoming cafe collaboration will be held at 2 different cafes; one at the Animate Cafe Shop in Shinjuku; the other at Ikebukuro Animate Cafe 2.

Also, as per the previous café collaboration (the one I had visited in 2018 and mentioned in this post) fans were invited to submit their ideas for an original food/drink item which could be featured in the menu for the upcoming café! The submission period has since ended and it would be interesting to see which of these fan creations made it into the menu! Check out these fan ideas here: https://mingeki.jp/missions/918a4dec-edc7-4938-b7de-4e5dfd277824 (this link is no longer valid)

For more information on the goods and café menu items, please check out the official website for more details: https://cafe.animate.co.jp/event/shingeki1906/

Information at-a-glance:

【アニメイトカフェショップ新宿・カフェ池袋2号店×テレビアニメ『進撃の巨人』Season 3 Part.2】

If you have plans to visit the cafe or have already visited it, do let me know how it was for you! 🙂

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