Shirokuma Cafe

Probably one of the most chill anime around - er no pun intended.

Polar bear's cafe is a slice of life comedy about a lazy Panda who spends his time at a Polar Bear'a cafe. Polar Bear Cafe begins when Panda discovers PBC after chasing a butterfly whilst looking for jobs to apply for. Even though he isn't hired to work there, he still frequents it as a patron and friend of Polar Bear

The setting is a small town Cafe in Japan where humans and animals co-exist.

Aside from Panda & Polar Bear there's also:

Penguin whom enjoys coffee but Polar bear seems to ... enjoy messing with him via puns (see below)

Sasako: a girl employed to work at the cafe as a part timer

And a few others who come and go.

Since this is a comedy, I will discuss the humor in great lengths rather then the overall plot. The humor of PBC is very odd. Perhaps it's because its a very Japanese oriented show or maybe it's aimed at a more mature audience?

It isn't odd in the sense of something random like Bobobobo, but rather odd in the sense of the TYPE of humor depicted.

One of the main jokes that is consistently used is Penguin asking Polar Bear for something and him getting it confused due to Japanese wordplay puns. One example is asking for Okwari (seconds) and PB coming with sunflowers (Hiwari) or a watermelon (Suika-Wari) another would be saying please (Choudai) and getting a table (Chabudai).  it's an interesting way to learn Japanese terminology certainly and the gag is funny.

The other type of humor presented is the normal Japanese humor such as PB suggesting panda work on a tuna boat (which is very hard work) or Penguin asking PB to give him a shoulder massage resulting in Penguin getting impaled by PB. It's very simple and easy to grasp humor.

Another example of humor used is Polar Bear wanting to change his cafe so he asks for suggestions with Panda saying he wants to make it "Panda's cafe" whereas they serve just Bamboo themed items, everything is panda oriented and everybody wears a panda outfit, when PB comes back to the cafe and sees this he simply says "change everything back." calmly rather then freaking out.

It's hard to suggest or describe a comedy because the viewer needs to see it for themselves, Polar Bear Cafe is a relaxing charming anime. I don't believe everybody will enjoy it however as some might find it boring or strange.

Audio wise there is no dub, it's completely subtitled with Japanese voices. Light cheerful jazz music plays thoughout the show. The show's intro is also a BANGER just for the record.  Given how simple the Japanese sentence structure used is, PBC is a good way to actually learn Japanese sentence structure as well as some words. They speak slowly and its easy to grasp for non Japanese speakers.

The animation is very realistic and done by Studio Pierrot. It isn't heavy on fluidity but it's very realistic in terms of art style. It doesn't use heavy shading to gather this effect but rather heavy amounts of detail unlike most anime. The art style also focuses on blank backgrounds during scenes to focus on the individual or depicts an image such as floating bamboo to get a message across to the audience. You have to see a picture of the show or watch a clip to understand what im talking about. It's a very unique realistic art style.

Do I recommend Polar Bear Cafe? I recommend you give it a try for yourself if you enjoy laid back slice of life comedies.

If you're looking for something with more action, depth or wackiness..I wouldn't suggest this.

It has goofy moments but nothing you'd see in a Shonen type comedy. Nothing involving bodily harm or yelling.

I personally thought it was cute but also rather boring and lacking substance. Im going to give it a mixed response because it isn't for everybody. I can understand the appeal however.

It gets a 6 because it's just dull and there's no real reason to watch it unless you need a laugh or want to change it up from the usual Shonen or action anime.

There are better more interesting comedies out there and easier and less time consuming ways to learn Japanese.

It isn't bad. It's just fine for what it is. A slice of life comedy about a Polar bear's cafe.

To me, this wasn't really worth watching, not even as background noise. Yet, I can't bring myself to hate it, it's just so incredibly unremarkable. It's not funny, it's not exciting, it's not interesting, it's not annoying, it's not irritating, it's just dreadfully monotone. Everyone talking in slow motion, nothing even remotely creative happening, the low-quality animation...

It has literally nothing whatsoever to offer to my tastes. It's supposed to be a relaxing comedy or something along those lines, but I personally simply do not understand how the jokes are supposed to be funny. I can see where the jokes are told, but every single one ... falls flat to the super slow paced, monotone story and voices. Nothing happens, even compared to other slice of life stories, this one is so incredibly uneventful, filled with cheesy and unimaginative jokes at best.

I can't bring myself to recommend this to anyone, but at the same time I believe some people out there will enjoy this complete lack of pace and it's so damn unoffensive, or rather just unremarkable in every way, that I won't give it a lower score than this. It's bad, but I managed to power through it as background noise.

What makes me most surprised is how they could possibly make 50 episodes of this. Maybe they just went on with it since it was relatively easy work with all the super stiff animals and often simple animals, they barely even move even compared to other anime and a lot of them look the same.