KONNICHIWA! I’m Emi, the writer.

TV anime “Osomatsu-san” has been greatly popular among young women in Japan.
I’ve visited the “Osomatsu-san” themed season-limited special cafe!

What is “Osomatsu-san”?

“Osomatsu-san” is a TV anime series aired from March, 2015 till March, 2016, based on the original manga “Osomatsu-kun” created by Fujio Akatsuka. It was the third TV anime adaptation series after 27 years.

The protagonists are the sextuplets: Osomatsu, Karamatsu, Choromatsu, Ichimatsu, Juushimatsu, and Todomatsu. While they were kids in the original manga series, this anime series is about their adulthood. They are now over 20 years old, with no job nor girlfriend. It’s a fast-paced comedy show with their humor rather slack and surreal.

Their appearances being cute and the good-looking VAs doing their voices, it has attracted a lot of young female Japanese fans in their teens and 20s, and its popularity so-called “Osomatsu-san fever” swept throughout Japan. Even after the show is over, its popularity is lasting and many companies still come up with new collaboration plans.

Osomatsu-san Cafe Report

Branches of season-limited Osomatsu-san Cafes, on the motif of the popular TV anime “Osomatsu-san”, are now open in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka. All the branch shops are reservation-only, and it has been so popular and crowded that you can hardly make a reservation on weekends. I visited the Osaka branch shop with Naoko on the editorial staff of MANGA.TOKYO!
The venue in Osaka is on Oodoori, close to Ota-road in Nihonbashi, aka, Osaka’s Akihabara.
The day we visited was rainy, but there was already a long line of people waiting outside when we got there. The customer-base was 100% young female. Male fans may feel a bit hesitant to enter it.

After waiting for 10 minutes, we finally got inside the shop.
The sextuplets in a coffee cup welcomed us.

The whole shop is filled with the sextuplets and all sorts of “Matsu (pine trees)”.
This wall is decorated with anime scenes, looking like their photo album.

The next wall is the illustration of the sextuplets striking poses all over.

The bar counter is decorated with a mask of Juushimatsu.

Juushimatsu’s masks are seen everywhere.
After you order your food, you can freely take photos, using props for photo taking, and enjoy your waiting time till your dish arrives.
Other customers were taking photos and checking out the merchandise on sale too, and I heard their happy “Kawaii!” shouts constantly while I was there.

Dishes too cute to eat

In this cafe, they have six different original dishes on the menu for each character of the sextuplets.

Every customer receives one random place mat (total of 4 kinds) and one random coaster (total of 6 kinds) as free gifts.

Here are the place mat and coaster I received.
It’s an illustration of sextuplets posing as “good-looking idols”.

I won a coaster of Juushimatsu!

Naoko won this place mat and coaster.
Its orthodox style of sextuplets is cute!

The oldest brother, Osomatsu’s coaster.

This is a pre-order benefit, sextuplets’ Cafe Latte.
Latte art of each character looks really cute.

Cafe Latte

They have 6 different kinds of cafe latte, and you can choose your “Oshi-matsu”(meaning, your favorite-matsu, your most favorite character in the sextuplets) for the latte art.
Since I received Juushimatsu’s coaster, I chose Juushimatsu.
Naoko chose Osomatsu for her latte art.
You can eat the character part too. You feel a bit sorry to eat them, though.
The Cafe latte they serve is not too sweet, and I enjoyed it a lot as someone who don’t use sugar.
The yellow powder poured around the milk foam had neither taste nor scent, and the red powder tasted like some kind of berries and a bit sour.

Sandwiches

In 10 or so minutes while enjoying our cafe latte, today’s feature, our dishes arrived!

I ordered the “Juushimatsu’s Mouth-wide-open Sandwich”.
It came with a mask of Juushimatsu and the appearance had quite a lot of impact.
The sandwich contained roastbeef, tartar sauce, green leaf lettuce, tomatoes, and horseradish with onion sauce. The bread has a little pattern of pine tree colored yellow, Juushimatsu’s signature color. The roastbeef tasted great!
It was served with some french fries and coleslaw salad, too.
As Juushimatsu’s signature image is swinging a baseball bat in a baseball uniform, the french fries had small snacks shaped like a baseball bat and a ball on top. These snacks were tasteless, but the plate had little red characters saying “十四松 (Juushimatsu in kanji)” written with red hot spicy powder.

Curry

Naoko ordered “Karamatsu’s Painfully Hot Black Curry Rice ~ with Pear Lassi~”.
As the dish arrived, “Kawaii!”, my voice came out before I even thought about it.
It came with this Karamatsu’s signature item “tacky sunglasses” to put it on him.
Karamatsu’s curry is too cute to eat. It took a while for Naoko to decide where to start eating, but she finally decided to go with his ears first.

*Naoko’s thoughts*
You can choose your spice level between 1 and 3, but “painfully hot” title scared me a bit and ordered 1, the least spicy. It wasn’t as spicy as I was scared.
The curry roux is black-ish, probably using squid ink. You may want to remember you’ll have black teeth after eating this. With big chunks of vegetables, it tasted great.
The face is made with rice, and the hair part is made of black colored sweets. The eyes, nose and mouth were drawn with cocoa powder.

Drinks

I ordered “Matsu-Cotton-Candy Soda ~ with Rosemary scent ~” for my drink.
There is a big green cotton-candy shaped like a pine tree on top of the glass. It has rosemary and syrup inside the glass. The glass next to it has soda to pour on this.

You pour soda on the cotton-candy to melt it before drinking.

There is a knack in doing this; you’re supposed to pour soda in the center of the cotton-candy, little by little. The cotton-candy fizzling down smaller looks like magic and it’s fun!
This is how it looks after you pour soda.

I melted too much cotton-candy with soda, and it was a bit too sweet for me as a Japanese, but the after taste of rosemary was very fresh and I could actually gulp it repeatedly.

“Female Otaku Business” economic prospects from Osomatsu-san cafe

There were a few things which surprised me at this cafe.
We both ordered only one dish and drink each, but many enthusiastic fans were ordering two dishes, drinks and desserts too. These prices are by no means cheap. Two girls in their low teens sitting next to us had a lot more orders than 2 could possibly finish on their table. They were so fired up and skipped breakfast for this, even said they were planning to skip dinner that day too.

Moreover, a lot of female customers were buying limited items at the shop, and probably some were spending close to 10,000 yen per person, including their lunch. I guess what I saw is the so-called “Otaku girls”, the hardcore fans showing their greater purchasing power.
Lately, a lot of corporations and local governments in Japan are paying huge attention to the market of the “Female Otaku Business”. One of the distinctive characteristics of the female otaku is known as “once they decide to love a show or certain characters, they are extremely loyal to them for years”. As long as these loyal otaku girls support “Osomatsu-san”, this boom will likely last for a long while.

Final Comment

How do you like it?
The whole shop was decorated with Osomatsu-san, all the food and drinks were so cute that we hesitated a bit to eat and drink them, and we enjoyed the Osomatsu-san world to the fullest. I’m so satisfied with it! I also experienced a nice surprise to see the real purchasing power of the otaku girls.

In Japan, cafe and restaurants collaborated with anime are really popular now. Which anime’s collaboration cafe are you most interested in?

MATANE! See you soon!
Official homepage: https://osomatsusan-cafe.jp/