Alternative TitlesEnglish: Polar Bear's Café Synonyms: Polar Bear Cafe Japanese: しろくまカフェ
Information
Type: TV
Episodes: 50
Status: Finished Airing
Aired: Apr 5, 2012 to Mar 28, 2013
Duration:
24 min. per episode Rating:
G - All Ages
L represents licensing company
StatisticsScore: 7.911 (scored by 2923 users)
Ranked: #5702
Popularity: #1065
Members: 15,399
Favorites: 186 1 indicates a weighted score
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SynopsisShirokuma Cafe revolves around a Canadian white bear that quits his boring job and starts a cafeteria near a zoo. He loves telling tall tales and always brags about himself. According to him, he was picked up by a human couple who owns a diner while he was drifting around on an iceberg.
Though he has lost all contact with his Canadian family, he has discovered a new home in serving the diners' clientele, thanks to the kind couple. His café is an embodiment of his personality. The place is always packed with many regulars, animals and humans, who are drawn by his charismatic magnetism.
(Source: Crunchyroll) |
Related AnimeAdaptation: Shirokuma Café
Summary: Shirokuma Cafe: Golden Week Special - Shirokuma Cafe Selection
Characters & Voice Actors
Staff
Reviews
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Caraniel
10 of 12 people found this review helpful
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50 of 50 episodes seen
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| Overall |
9 |
| Story |
8 |
| Animation |
7 |
| Sound |
10 |
| Character |
9 |
| Enjoyment |
10 |
Polar Bear Café (Shirokuma Café): A charming, puntastic show filled with memorable moments – 9/10
PLOT: Polar Bear Café is about the daily lives of a bunch of animals who frequent a café run by the titular Polar Bear, including a panda, a penguin, a llama and a sloth (among many others). There are a few random humans thrown in there too – the perma-smiling Sasako, the bumbling zookeeper Handa and the panda obsessed florist Rin-Rin, but the cast is mainly animals. Animals that no one bats an eye at when when they’re casually wandering about town buying groceries, or working in a bakery or running a bar – they’re fully integrated into society. And yet there is a fully functional zoo where a number of the characters actually work! You kind of take this strange setting for granted after a few episodes – it just works.
Polar Bear Café is a show I couldn’t watch without a smile on my face (trust me I desperately tried when watching the later half of the series on my own in public, being caught grinning and giggling like an idiot when there’s pastel renditions of wild animals emitting showers of sparkles and hearts on my screen is not fun); the show just thrums with feel-good vibes. It’s also consistently hilarious, and displays excellent use of puns, parodies, basic comedic timing and the usual tsukkomi/boke routines. The series uses all the run-of-the-mill s’life situations (festivals, onsen, road-trips, all the holidays you can think of) but simply having the characters be animals puts an interesting spin on things, as they have a unique outlook on things. I don’t usually get on well with s’life shows, but I adored Polar Bear Café – it just balances the mundane with wit so well.
The characters are probably what kept me coming back to the show so much – the central quartet of Polar Bear, Penguin, Panda and Sasako just have superb chemistry and play off each other brilliantly. The side characters are also wonderful and all get their own episodes to shine – my favourites have to be Polar Bear’s long suffering childhood friend and bar owner Grizzly and poor overlooked but utterly charming Llama.Polar Bear Café also has “The Feels” in spades – it just gets under your skin and forces a reaction out of you with alarming frequency. After 50 episodes these characters feel like old friends and I was desperately sad to see the series end, I do hope we get more at some stage.
ANIMATION: The animation is by Studio Pierrot and is very simple but serviceable. The animals are well drawn and surprisingly expressive given many of them lack the usual facial features humans rely on to determine emotion (just where are Penguin & Panda’s eyes anyway??). The over all look of the show is quite soft and pastel, and there is creative use of sparkles, bubbles, hearts, flowers and sweatdrops to punctuate gags or emotion. On the flipside the humans in general are actually terrifying in their inexpressiveness – Sasako in particular has completely dead eyes that are rather unnerving. The show also experiments with unusual visuals in its many EDs – stop-motion, live action, shadow-puppets and paper cut-outs all get a turn, and it is clear that the staff had a lot of fun making this series.
MUSIC & VOICE ACTING: The cast of Polar Bear Café has to be one of the most star-studded I’ve ever encountered. Everyone seems to be a noteworthy name – the central quartet consists of Jun Fukuyama, Takahiro Sakurai, Hiroshi Kamiya and Aya Endo – but the extended cast reads like a who’s who of popular seiyuu! They all seemed to have lots of fun working on this series as well, as the chemistry is brilliant and the acting is really excellent on the whole. A few actors even voice a number of different side characters giving them completely different voices and displaying their range well.
Another thing of note is that there are a lot of different EDs for this series and each of them is an image song, sung in character by the seiyuu – resulting in some truly wonderful songs. I particularly loved Panda’s ‘Bamboo Scramble’ by Jun Fukuyama and Llama’s ‘Llama Mambo’ by Daisuke Ono, but all the song are special in their own way. Even the OPs are pretty damn good, but I’ll always like the first OP best.
Overall I just have to reiterate who utterly charming this show is – it’s a wonderful show to watch if you need cheering up (just avoid watching episode 44 for that purpose – it’s a proper tearjerker). When I first picked up the series last Spring I never would have imagined it turning out to be this good – always a joy when that happens. So yes Polar Bear Café is a show I’d highly recommend picking up – it deserves much more love! read more
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shizuma_yin13147
77 of 128 people found this review helpful
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15 of 50 episodes seen
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| Overall |
10 |
| Story |
10 |
| Animation |
10 |
| Sound |
10 |
| Character |
10 |
| Enjoyment |
10 |
Well, this review will be brief but I'll go straight to the point.
Shirokuma Cafe is an excellent anime even if it lacks the usual action-adventure-romance stuff in most anime nowadays. It's calming and makes me feel at ease, all the while making me laugh and squeal at how cute some of the characters are. And I'm shocked to realize that very famous seiyuu are voicing the characters, but it makes me like Shirokuma Cafe even more. It's simple but great. That's all I'll say.
Recommendations
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Using the restaurant theme but actually can take place in any settings, Shirokuma Cafe and Working are pretty much situation comedy that happen to take place in restaurant and coincidentally share the common activity of arubaito (part-time work.)
Shirokuma cafe take a safe route of all-age and genders appeal. I double dare anyone to come up with demographic group that can't watch this.
Working is a male-oriented show that have lots of girls (as usual) and happen to appeal to female too due to it's neutral standing between male and female emphasis. It is made from female-mangaka manga that serialized in late-teen to adult mangazine, but pretty much anyone can read it with no parental advisory.
Both are peaceful slice of life show with cafe/restaurant as setting. Also have the same trio-seiyuus (Jun Fukuyama, Hiroshi Kamiya and Daisuke Ono).
It's basically the same as Working!!
Jun Fukuyama, Hiroshi Kamiya, Daisuke Ono and Yuuichi Nakamura are in this. However, instead of Inami most of the characters are the types of people that will kill you.
The idea of working part time at a local place for income and fun becomes an element presented in both series.
It makes a good usage of comedy that is entertaining and has a lot of fun dialogues to inspire humor. In fact, it creates entertainment with the interactions between the main characters at their working environments.
Both series also follows a slice of life like format without a direct linear story; some of the VA are also the same for the main characters in both series.
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While not entirely similar, both series has the premise of working at a local area to make a living. The characters from both series live their common lives in a slice of life like pattern.
There is also some animals from both series.
The atmosphere from both these series is also light and pleasant to get into. With that, they have tons of comedy and fun moments.
similar style of nice, laid back everyday comedy with quite big cast and talking animals
Business with talking animal(s) and Comedy
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Opening Theme#1: "Boku ni Invitation (ボクにインビテーション)" by JP (eps 1-26)
#2: "Rough & Laugh" by Clammbon (eps 27-38)
#3: "You&Me" by Saki & Rie fu (eps 39-50)
Ending Theme#01: "Bamboo☆Scramble" by Jun Fukuyama (eps 1-5)
#02: "Grizzly-san no G★ROCK (グリズリーさんのG☆ROCK)" by Yuuichi Nakamura (eps 6-9)
#03: "Mizuiro (みずいろ)" by Aya Endo (eps 10-13)
#04: "ZOO tto ne! (ZOOっとねっ！) " by Katsuyuki Konishi (eps 14-17, 44)
#05: "Michinoku Shiiku Blues (みちのく飼育ブルース)" by Wataru Hatano (eps 18-22)
#06: "Zokkon! Penko-san (ぞっこん！ペン子さん)" by Hiroshi Kamiya (eps 23-26)
#07: "Kimama ni Panda Mama♥ (気ままに パンダママ♥)" by Toshiyuki Morikawa (eps 27-30)
#08: "Llama-san no Llama Mambo (ラマさんのラママンボ)" by Daisuke Ono (eps 31-35)
#09: "Largo (ラルゴ)" by Kishou Taniyama (eps 36-38)
#10: "Bamboo rendezvous ♥ (バンブー・ランデヴー♥)" by Kana Hanazawa (eps 39-42)
#11: "PANDAHOLIC!!" by Tokuyoshi Kawashima (eps 43, 45-46)
#12: "My Dear" by Takahiro Sakurai (eps 47-50)
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OppaiSub [OppaiSub] (Brazilian Portuguese)
Related ClubsSlice of Life Club , Shimono Hiro FC, Emotionally Attached, The Canada Club, Hanazawa Kana's Fans!, The Fukuyama Jun Fanclub, Shirokuma Cafe Fanclub, ♥ Coffee Lovers Unite! ♥, Tomokazu Sugita Fanclub, Beefachu's Army of Delicious Souls, ★Josei Anime★, Kamiya Hiroshi fanclub, ♥Yuuichi Nakamura Fanclub♥ [member cards are available], Grizzly Fanclub, Daisuke Ono Fan Club!, Hiroshi Kamiya & Daisuke Ono Fanclub, The Nonaka Ai Association, - ~ Miyano Mamoru Fanclub ~ - , Scrumdiddlyumptious Food in Anime
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