Bungo Stray Dogs 文豪ストレイドッグス x Animate Cafe
Find out what goes on inside a Bungo Stray Dogs Animate Cafe in Japan! Back in May 2019, I visited the Bungo Stray Dogs (Part 3) x Animate Cafe and Animate Gratte Cafe x Bungo Stray Dogs
*Please note that the Animate Cafe Collaboration Campaign for Bungo Stray Dogs has ended.
To celebrate the start of Season 3 of the Bungo Stray Dogs anime, Animate Cafe ran a cafe collaboration from May 8th to 25th June 2019.
Seeing how the Bungo Stray Dogs x Animate Cafe 2019 fell within my travel dates to Tokyo, I knew I just had to visit it at least once during my trip. ^ ^
After all, one of my very first anime-themed food experience in Japan was actually from Bungo Stray Dogs. It was waaay back in 2016 with a Ranpo drink at the Animate Truck @ Ikebukuro and Namja Town!
No need for guesses on who my favourite character in Bungo Stray Dogs is 😊
Note: By the time you read this post, Season 3 of the Bungo Stray Dogs anime should have ended in Tokyo.
Page Contents
INSIDE THE BUNGO STRAY DOGS ANIMATE CAFE
The Tokyo campaign was held at Ikebukuro Animate Cafe 3 (Note that there are 3 different animate cafes in Ikebukuro) which was located in a building next to the big Animate store in Ikebukuro. Animate Cafe 3 is located on the 3rd floor. (In 2018, I went for the Attack on Titan x Animate Cafe collaboration campaign. Read about it here).
So, I’ve always known Bungo Stray Dogs was popular (I’m a fan!) but even I was slightly taken aback when I climbed the stairs and arrived outside the cafe doors.
While waiting in queue, do remember to get your reservation number and photo ID ready. An Animate Staff will be checking your reservation details and hand you a “tag” which you would return upon settling your bill. For more information on Animate Cafes, check out my post: Animate Cafe (How to & Tips)
Mine was Number 20!
To provide a better experience for everyone, they were ushering us into the cafes by batches. (There really was quite a lot of people in the queue). I was in the second batch so I had to wait at the door for a couple of minutes which is fine because it gave me time to take a snapshot of the cafe interior.
And here’s my table for 90 minutes! Look at how cute the table mat is. Alas, Animate Cafe doesn’t sell and/or give them out as menu novelties unlike other anime cafes.
MENU & COASTERS
As with all animate cafes, a staff will usher you to the table and hand out a menu to you after you are comfortably seated. They will proceed to give you a full and proper welcome while politely asking if you have been to the cafe before. ^^
It was also then that I found out from the staff that Animate Cafe has recently introduced a new stamp card for Animate Cafe visits starting from April 2019. (Note: Refer to the post on Animate Cafe Stamp Card for more details. Click on the title of the post. )
In a nutshell: Every 2000 yen spent gets you a stamp. Every 5 stamps collected will earn you a special reward in relation to the cafe campaign you have participated in.
In this instance, when I reached the 5th stamp at the Bungo Stray Dogs x Animate Cafe, I received 2 random coasters. (It might be different for other campaign collaborations) Do note that the stamp card is not applicable to the Animate Gratte Cafes and at selected campaign cafes
Side-note: If they had introduced the card last year, I would have filled up at least 2 stamp cards! (2018 was a crazy year where I visited at least one anime cafe a day for both my trips to Japan lol)
Another bonus for the Bungo Stray Dogs (Part 3) x Animate Cafe campaign, every 2000 yen gets you a free random sticker. There are a total of 10 designs.
However, for some weird reason, I kept getting Chuuya and Elise stickers. (I had like 3 Chuuya and 3 Elise stickers!) I wanted a Ranpo sticker!!! But alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Oh well~
Click on the photos for a larger view of the menu.
For this particular Bungo Stray Dogs x Animate Cafe campaign, there were a total of 20 different types of coasters you can receive from ordering the food and drinks. That’s a whole lot of coasters to collect!
And perhaps to make it more interesting (or more profitable), they split the coasters designs into 2 groups: the regular drawn anime designs (Food/Dessert) and the chibi-sized drawings (Drinks)
Image taken from the official Bungo Stray Dogs Animate Cafe website: Coaster designs for Food/Dessert
Image taken from the Bungo Stray Dogs official Animate Cafe website: The Chibi coaster designs from the Drinks menu!
What this meant was that each featured character of Bungou Stray Dogs now had two different coaster designs! To collect both designs of a character, you’ll need to order from both the food/desserts and drinks menu. (Note: Coasters are given to you randomly.) Of-course there’s still the possibility of trading with other fan girls and getting extra coasters by filling up the Animate Cafe stamp card but that’s an exception rather than the norm.
So not surprisingly, most of the fellow fan girls (including moi) that day all ordered at least one food/dessert and one drink.
Speaking of food and drinks…
FOOD & DRINKS: MY ORDERS
For starters, I ordered Ranpo’s Iced Caramel Latte and Chuuya’s Orange Sangria (non-alcoholic).
Ranpo Edogawa (江戸川 乱歩) is my absolute favourite in the series, so whenever I can, I’ll always try to order his themed drink/food item at least once! I was really happy that I manage to get his coaster too which came with the Ranpo drink.
As Ranpo’s themed drink was an iced caramel latte, it is rather self-explanatory so I won’t go into the details. Although I realized that Animate always seemed to do the same drink/concept drink for him. Doesn’t it look similar to my Ranpo drink from the Animate Cafe Truck way back in 2016? That was an iced milk tea (I think?)
Chuuya Nakahara (中原 中也) themed drink was the other no-brainer choice for me because… it’s Chuuya ^ ^ I’m really glad that I did so because it actually ended up becoming a Chuuya themed trip for me! (see the “It’s a Chuuya Day” section below for more details)
Anyway, Chuuya’s drink was a non-alcoholic sangria with orange jelly and mixed berries with orange slices.
Doesn’t the colour of the drink just scream Chuuya? I think that’s why they went with this concoction. It tasted pretty good actually.
For my mains, I went with the Armed Detective Agency’s Parade Lunch (literal translation of the Japanese name) and it tasted surprisingly good!
The 武装探偵社のパレードランチ was a lunch plate filled with Pilaf Rice, Fried Chicken, Wiener (Sausage), Hamburger (patty) with Demi-glazed Sauce, Potato Salad, Potato, Ketchup and topped off with a Monaka (an edible thin wafer with printed designs).
It actually took quite a while for this to be served. I remembered I waited about 40 minutes? Anyway, it was worth the wait because…
OMG! I got Chuuya for the random coaster that came with the dish!! (It’s next to Ranpo’s drink in the photo above).
I was really really excited because I couldn’t believe that after managing to get a Chuuya chibi acrylic stand (these were sold randomly in blind packaging), and a Chuuya sticker (again given randomly for every 2000 yen spent) and pre-ordering the out-of-stock big Chuuya acrylic stand, I managed to get 1 out of the 2 Chuuya coaster designs for the Bungo Stray Dogs x Animate Café collaboration in 2019!
That’s a whole lot of Chuuya’s in a sentence, which brings me to my next section:
IT’S A CHUUYA DAY!
Or rather it was a Chuuya themed trip ^ ^ As mentioned, between the random coasters, stickers, acrylic stands and the drinks, I managed to get almost all of the exclusive Chuuya designs/merchandise for the Bungo Stray Dogs (Part 3) x Animate Cafe!
What made it even sweeter was that I managed to get Dazai for the random chibi acrylic stand as well! I definitely let out a squeal or two when I opened the acrylic packages. I mean, what are the chances of getting the both of them?! (Especially since I actually got 3 Yukichi chibi acrylic stands LOL)
Fast-forward a week later, I was at the Animate Gratte Cafe in Okayama (which I totally just chanced upon while sight-seeing in the area), when I realized that Bungo Stray Dogs was one of the campaign collaborations it was having as well!
I had a really hard time deciding between Ranpo and Chuuya and in the end I went with Chuuya because of the incredible Chuuya Day I had at Animate Cafe a week earlier. I was so happy that I did so!
Why?
Because the random coaster that came with the drink was Chuuya!! And it was the chibi Chuuya design to boot!!!! OMG! This was the coaster I was missing!
Note: Animate Gratte Cafes are part of the Animate Cafe Family which serves “printed” character drinks and “printed cookies”. I will be doing an introductory post on them soon, so subscribe or watch out for updates on my blog.
GOODS & MERCHANDISES
One of the things to look forward to at any anime themed cafe is the exclusive merchandises you get to buy. 🙂
For the full list of Bungo Stray Dogs (Part 3) x Animate Cafe merchandise: https://cafe.animate.co.jp/event/bungo-stray-dogs1905/limited_items/?event_shop=
Due to the popularity of Bungou Stray Dogs, Animate Cafe imposed a limit on the number of certain goods you can buy.
For example: You can buy up to 15 can badges; 15 acrylic stands of the chibi series and 3 of the big Acrylic stands per character at each visit. (That’s actually quite generous, seeing how some of the Anime Cafes I’ve been to were much lesser .) I might have the numbers mixed up though, so do excuse me if the limit numbers are incorrect.
Bungo Stray Dogs Animate Cafe also introduced the option of pre-ordering items that were sold out at the cafe to be picked up at a later date! This was really great because when I was there, 50% of the big acrylic stands were sold out!
As the collection dates fell within my travel dates in Tokyo, I was able to pre-order Dazai and Chuuya’s big acrylic stands! Yay! 😊 (Check out the section on “My Loot” to see them~)
I was tempted to get the extremely cute character masking tapes too! But I resisted. I’ve quite a few anime masking tapes back home which I haven’t used finish yet.
To entice allow us to see firsthand how the merchandises/goods looks like, Animate Cafe set up a display cabinet to showcase all the wonderful merchandises we can get from this campaign collaboration:
Click to enlarge the photos.
BUNGO STRAY DOGS ANIMATE CAFE
DECOR/THEME
Here are some random photos of the interior of the cafe:
MY BUNGO STRAY DOGS
ANIMATE CAFE LOOT
Overall, I’m pretty happy with my Bungo Stray Dogs x Animate Cafe loot. Especially with all the Chuuya I have! All that’s missing is a chibi Ranpo acrylic stand!! Anyone wants to trade with my extra Yukichi chibi acrylic stand?
I had a really fun time at the cafe and I hope to go for another Bungo Stray Dogs collaboration cafe soon!
I still can’t believe I got the acrylic stands of both Dazai and Chuuya ! What are the odds of that happening?
Have you been to the Bungo Stray Dogs Animate Cafe? How did you find it?
ANIME CAFES
If you are interested to know how to make reservations and/or to get some tips to help make your Animate cafe experience more fun, check out my post on Animate Cafes (How-to & Tips)
If you would like to know more about anime cafes in general, check out: Anime Cafes … in a snapshot (An introductory post)
GEEKY GOOD GUIDES
I’ve also done up a few guides on purchasing anime goods/figurines and the list will continue to expand. Do check them out as they might be useful for your own fan- collection journeys!
- Geeky Goods Spotlight: Forwarder, Buying Service & Proxy Bidding (Anime Goods)
- Nendoroids – A Guide on Buying Nendoroids
CHECK OUT MY OTHER GEEKY ESCAPADES
- Mister Donut: Pokemon
- Attack on Titan x Aniplus Cafe
- Mob Psycho 100 Anime Review & Thoughts
- Pikachu Sweets by Pokemon Cafe
- Genshin Impact x Aniplus Cafe
Don’t forget to subscribe to my mailing to get first dips on updates, tips and occasional contest giveaways! Just add your email address in the text box below and click subscribe.
If you like this article, do share it on pinterest; Facebook; twitter and other social platforms!
