Find out what some of your favourite seiyuus wished for this Tanabata at Shirokuma Cafe!
Title: Polar Bear’s Cafe (Shirokuma Cafe しろくまカフェ)
Date: 5 April 2012
Genre: Comedy, slice-of-life, fantasy
Rating: Highly recommended. This is a seiyuu-phile’s dream! And for any one who likes animals.
Official site: http://shirokumacafe.jp
Based on a Japanese manga series by Higa Aloha ヒガ アロハ. It revolves around the everyday lives of a group of animals mingling with humans at a cafe run by a polar bear. An anime adaptation by Studio Pierrot. It was one of my favourite animes aired recently. Funny and heart-warming. I enjoy how the mangaka incorporated each animal’s characteristics into the plot and when they interact with one another. The animals live, work and play just like humans beings. Each episode contains 2 short stories and can be enjoyed pretty much by itself. However, they do build up our understanding of each character as the story progresses. Sometimes rather silly but never fails to make me chuckle in amusement.
The seiyuu cast is also a seiyuu-phile’s dream too! Starring all the popular seiyuu like Fukuyama Jun, Sakurai Takahiro, Kamiya Hiroshi, Ono Daisuke, Morikawa Toshiyuki, Hatano Wataru, Taniyama Kishou, Konishi Katsuyuki, Nakamura Yuuichi and more! And they did a fabulous job bringing each animal’s unique personality to the front. Reminds me of an older animal-centric anime, Damekko Doubutsu だめっこどうぶつ.
Shirokuma Cafe manga
Character information of the anime (from Wiki, edited to remove most spoilers :D)
1) Polar Bear (シロクマ, Shirokuma) Voiced by: Sakurai Takahiro
A polar bear who runs the Polar Bear’s Cafe, popular with both humans and animals. He has a habit of making bad puns with his customers.
2) Panda (パンダ) Voiced by: Fukuyama Jun
A lazy, kind-hearted panda who enjoys lazing around and eating bamboo and generally orders iced coffee at the cafe. He is obsessed with all panda products and has a tendency to point out his own cuteness.
3) Penguin (ペンギン, Pengin) Voiced by: Hiroshi Kamiya
A frequent customer of the Polar Bear’s Cafe and friend of Polar Bear who generally orders a cafe mocha. He generally serves as the tsukkomi (つっこみ. The “straight” or deliberately unfunny partner in a two-man manzai comedy routine.) to the antics of Polar Bear and Penguin. He has a crush on another penguin named Penko.
4) Grizzly (グリズリー, Gurizurī) Voiced by: Nakamura Yuuichi
A grizzly bear who is a childhood friend of Polar Bear. He runs a bar in the middle of town and has a rather fierce personality, though occassionally shows a soft side.
5) Llama (ラマ, Rama) Voiced by: Ono Daisuke
A llama who likes grass.
6) Sloth (ナマケモノ, Namakemono) Voiced by: Taniyama Kishou
A sloth who occasionally visits the cafe.
7) Full Time Panda (常勤パンダ, Joukin Panda) Voiced by: Konishi Katsuyuki
An older panda who works full time at the zoo.
8_ Penko (ペン子) Voiced by: Yahagi Sayuri
A female penguin who works at a bakery near the Polar Bear’s Cafe. Penguin is madly in love with her.
1) Human: Sasako (笹子) Voiced by: Endo Aya
A human girl who works part time at the Polar Bear’s Cafe.
2) Human: Handa (半田) Voiced by: Hatano Wataru
He works at the zoo. Although he is quite popular with the animals at the zoo, he doesn’t have as much luck getting the attention of women.
3) Human: Hayashi Rintaro (林 厘太郎) Voiced by: Kawashima Tokuyoshi
A flower shop owner.
Back to the Tanabata wishes :D You can click on the names to get to them!
A bubble pops up to show the wish.
Wishes from seiyuu and staff…
More wishes from seiyuu and staff…
And more…
Not sure if they will remove the tanabata special so visit the site soon to check out the rest! :D The site’s content is quite interactive and you can enjoy listening to the voices too.
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It’s surprisingly my fave anime of the last season along with Kuroko no Basket, and it’s sure worth the watching. The animals are so amazing, the voices are awesome, stories are very funny and animation is pretty decent. Not mentioning I love Grizzly x Shirokuma XDD
@planck-chan: Me too! My top three last season is Shirokuma Cafe, Kuroko no Basket and Fate/Zero.
Yay for Grizzly x Shirokuma <33 XDD
Last episode we have a bit of Grizzly, and next week he’ll be there, I can’t wait! <3 Penguin-san and his harem of Penkos made me laugh as I didn't in much time!
Ah a friend of mine also told me to watch Fate/Zero, as I'm not a Saber fan never thought of watching, maybe I should give a try later. Also I liked Tsuritama, cute, colorful and happy! I like Saint Seiya Omega cos of its nostalgic feeling (plus Kamiyan voicing Shun! <3). Sakamichi was a big deception to me, I expected more, and I'm not talking biased as a fujoshi, there were many things in the story I didn't like, also some characters. Besides jazz, there's no much left to make me enjoy. From past seasons I'm still watching and loving Hunter x Hunter, and I like this remake as much as the old 90's series. And this new season we have Hakuouki Reimeiroku, finally! No Chizuru, only our gorgeous bishies! And Ryunosuke! <3
@planck-chan: I haven’t watched the latest episode XD Must do it later <3
OHOHOH I forgot about Sakamichi, it's probably my no. 4th favourite. I enjoyed the drama and music. They had quite a number of fan-service didn't they? :D Especially the Romeo & Juliet-isque feeling when Sentaro climbed into Kaoru's room and had Kaoru pinned under him in the bed lol OMG You should have seen me squeee!!! XD Yeah, I wished some of the characters didn't exist so our boys could have more fun together just playing music (and do even more? XDD) But it provided drama and gave Kaoru and Sentaro a chance to develop and share something deeper with each other that will last them a lifetime. I generally liked the ending cos it was probably the closest to a BL good ending they could muster for the mainstream. But I guess Fate/Zero left a deeper impression on me cos there were so many epic things going on. I watched it cos it was a highly recommended to me. Can't seem to find the previous episodes for Fate/Stay Night now DX
I should catch up with Tsuritama too. I stopped after episode 3 I think? Too busy *_* so I only concentrated on my immediate favs. I watched Zetman because of Yucchi but the anime progressed too slowly and I dropped it. Might pick it up again when I have time just to see the ending. I gotta watch Saint Seiya Omega then since Kamiyan is voicing him, I have double motivation to catch it XD If I only had more free time to watch all the animes recommended to me orz;;
I'm surprised by the quality shown in ep 1 of Hakuouki Reimeiroku. Ryunosuke is gorgeous *o* I think they're given even more budget this time lol~
@ponytale Haha I think I’m the only one who didn’t enjoy Sakamichi that much, even loving all Sentarou x Kaoru scenes and music (but Kaoru most of times irritated me, ok, not as much as the girls) and cute Seiji (gosh Noburin is always the cutest). But it’s not bad, really, it’s just that I personally didn’t like how plot went.
If you wanna hear Kamiyan he’s on episode 12, the only that Shun appeared til now. Shun was always the sweetest Saint, and being voiced by Kamiyan makes all sense.
I also thought the animation was so pretty, all the boys looked wonderful, this show will be worth! Too bad it’ll make us crave for Hakuouki merch, our poor wallets bleeding again!
@planck-chan: yeah, Kaoru is very insecure, emotional and sensitive! I think it’s in-character for him to react the ways he did in the anime. But I agree with you. I wasn’t expecting the plot to go that way too. I was thinking something along maybe Beck (or even K-on lol~) orz;;
I watched the Saint Seiya episode with Kamiyan :D everything looks so retro XD I think it’s pretty cool they maintained the look of the characters. For figure collectors, their collections wouldn’t look out of place even though they were from different time-periods in the series. And penguin-san in Shirokuma Cafe was hilarious XD It’s his fault for not being able to tell all the penko-sans apart lolol~
Let’s hope the good quality persists throughout the new Hakuouki anime XD
@TasukiHoneyBunny: you can watch it subtitled on Crunchyroll.
I just started watching this series. Can’t believe how many familiar seiyus are in it, haha.
@Hannah: yeah so fun to spot XD Who is your favourite animal?
マママハロ！
I cannot wait to see the Penguin episodes. Penguins are my favorite animals!!!
@TasukiHoneyBunny: You’ll enjoy it I’m sure! XD Penguin is in every episode since he is one of the leads lol~
@ponytale: Do you know if there a subtitled version of the anime?
@TasukiHoneyBunny: Thanks yudasin for the suggestion! :)