About

Restaurants with Anime Themes Across Latin America refers to a subculture trend across Latin American countries in which restaurants have paintings and themes inspired by anime shows such as Dragon Ball, Knights of the Zodiac, Naruto and others. Heavily influenced by 90’s Japanese animes, the trend has no clear starting date, but posts and restaurant pages can be found on Facebook dating back to 2011.

Origin

The relationship between anime and Latin American countries goes back to the 60s and 70s, when some of the most popular Japanese animations were broadcast on television. One of the reasons anime stood out in LatAm is due to the lax censorship standards. As this July 2019 article from CRB explains, “where the English dubs of series like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball had to be censored on US TV, Latin American fans got to see all the violence and sexual content intact.”^[1]

Another reason is related that Brazil is home to the largest population of descendants and Japanese outside Japan. with more than 1.6 million^[2] Japanese and descendants (data referring to 2015)

The massive popularity of shows like Dragon Ball, Pokémon, Naruto and others inspired some fans to open businesses with the names and themes of their favorite animes. On October 24th, 2011, one of the first anime-inspired coffee shops joined Facebook^[3], the Tanoshii Neko restaurant in Jalisco, Mexico. The restaurant describes itself as a place to “share with more people the taste for Anime, manga, video games, comics, movies, and much more.”

Later in 2013, other restaurants began to post anime content on social media, especially on Facebook and Instagram. A Peruvian restaurant named “Naruto Japanese Food”, which joined social media in May 2013, offers Japanese food with special anime-themed rooms.^[4]

Spread

The popularity of anime in Latin America^[5] continues to persist to the present day. As the CRB article details, the LatAm audience on the anime streaming service Crunchyroll, “holds the position of 'second biggest' market worldwide, just behind the United States.”^[1]

The Brazilian restaurant Goku Lanches shown below, opened business in November 2018, offering burgers with aesthetics inspired by the Dragon Ball main character Goku.

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This Mexican pancake restaurant called Pokké-Crepas, which opened in November 2020, offers Pokemon-themed food.

Ichiraku Ramen Restaurant Franchise In Colombia

Discovered by Naruto fans worldwide after a Reddit post from October 2020, the Colombia-based Japanese food franchise ‘Ichiraku Ramen’, calls itself “the best Japanese anime-themed restaurant.”^[6] In addition to serving ramen, the restaurant also has a variety of dishes inspired by other animes.

With four establishments across Colombia, the place also accumulates fans on social media, having 400,000 thousand followers on Instagram and 675,000 on TikTok (as of August 2022).^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References