Imagine you’re walking through a shopping centre when you see a bubble tea cafe decorated with fake pink flower arches and blu-tacked Polaroid photos. Nothing out of the ordinary here – this could be any suburban mall boba stall. The outside of this one in Manchester, UK just happens to be decorated with IKEA cabinets filled with anime figurines, some of them wearing corsets and bunny ears.
If you tilt your head up, you can see the shop banner of Animaid Cafe, decorated with anime girls in maid costumes. One holds a platter with a single bubble tea cup in the centre; another winks. On a sheet by the door is a list of “cafe etiquette” rules, number one being: “No touching or asking to touch the maids”. Toto, we’re not in Afflecks anymore!
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It was this list of rules that prompted the wrath of local councillor Joanne Harding, who tweeted: “What fresh hell is this in Manchester? This makes my fresh [sic] crawl.”
OK, I know what you’re thinking: ‘It’s a weird sex thing! Look at the frilly dress!’ Or maybe you thought what Graham Linehan thought: ‘Manchester has opened a Hooters for incels.’
Ah, yes. Graham Linehan, the man who wrote Father Ted and The IT Crowd (fair play) and now writes a Substack about, er, “gender woo”. Surely he would never say anything wildly presumptive and unfair about women! Or their jobs! Without even going to the place in question!
Well, I did. I found the heart of the story. I ordered the sexist boba milkshake and I liked it, OK?
I will cut to the chase: There is not really anything extraordinary about the Animaid Cafe. It is not a Hooters for incels. It is not a pervert paradise. There were no adult baby diaper lovers that I was aware of. It is basically just a board game cafe for weebs (i.e. non-Japanese people who are Japanese culture super fans).
When I visit on a cold, drizzly Thursday, a TV in a corner is quietly playing anime. A clutter of Pocky stick cardboard boxes sits nearby. Every so often someone puts a quid in the claw machine and tries to pick up an anime plushie toy. No one, myself included, is successful.
I have never been to Japan, or one of the traditional maid cafes from which Animaid takes its inspiration. But supposedly, you’re usually greeted with the words, “Welcome home, master!” There are no such greetings here in Manchester.
I first arrive at the cafe around 1PM and it is empty. The maids on duty, 21-year-old manager Vic and 18-year-old Eva, are chatting to a friend who works in one of the other outlets inside Afflecks. Eva is wearing oversized skater jeans under her maid dress. She later takes them off and adds cat ears to her head.
At the Animaid Cafe, the maids don’t really interact with the patrons any more than they would in any other hospitality role. Aside from their uniform, there’s only one discernible difference I notice – patrons can choose to pay £3 for a Polaroid photo with the maids. It reminds me of the tweenage girls I went to school with, cherishing photos with the half-naked Abercrombie boys as a memento of their big day out to London.
Eva first started working at the Animaid Cafe when she was 16, after painting a large mural of anime characters on one of the walls. The cafe now requires its staff to be 18 or over, a new rule inspired by Eva and other staff members’ own experiences.
“We just didn’t think it was suitable for anyone under 18, mostly because some people get the complete wrong idea,” she says. “Some of the news articles that have come out recently saying we call people ‘master’ and stuff… We don’t do that. It’s nothing like that. If they actually came here and visited, they’d know that.”
I ask about the perception that the cafe must be mostly frequented by lonely young men. “Maybe the odd person,” she answers, “but I feel like you get that in most places. They’re not doing anything different here… That’s why we have the rules list, just to be safe.”
The typical Animaid customers are young people and kids, Eva adds. “They’re just so nice. They’re like the staff, really – love anime, love boba. Sometimes they want to watch anime on the TVs or they’ll come in for one of the cosplay events we’ve organised. And we can just all be friends with each other and talk about shows together.”
Eva is also keen to defend the frilly maid outfit. “People are always like, ‘Were you forced to wear the uniform?’ But one of the main reasons I wanted to work here was the uniform. If I ever can’t be bothered getting changed, I just won’t wear it. I prefer it, though – it’s fun. Also, the only thing that makes it a maid outfit is the apron.”
During my visit, the cafe fluctuates between near-empty lulls and moments of business, with gaggles of sixth-form students coming in to share milkshakes and browse the figurines after school. I speak to three separate adult couples, all of them anime super fans, who have sought refuge under the fake pink flowers for an afternoon bubble tea date. It’s not exactly Playboy Mansion for the socially awkward.
Martina and Simone are a couple visiting the UK from Milan, Italy. “I love Japanese culture,” says Martina. “I’m a weeb person. I love anime, bubble tea. In Japan, maid cafes are part of the culture, but I think they’re a bit misunderstood in the West.”
Jack and Natalie are British, but grew up in the Canary Islands, where they met and started dating. They’re over for a Panic! At the Disco concert, and were recommended Afflecks and Animaid Cafe.
“Where we’re from, being into anime – you’re kind of considered a weirdo. It’s nice to come here and feel a bit more accepted,” says Natalie. “I think the critics clearly don’t understand or respect the idea behind it, or the people who have tried to make it a nice social place.”
“It’s just a cute kawaii thing,” adds Jack. “It’s not sexual, or anything like that.”
Manager Vic has worked at the Animaid Cafe for a year, and wears her hair in a bright blonde pixie cut with thick black makeup sweeping in dramatic angles around her eyes. “All the menus, we do ourselves,” she tells me. “All of the cosplay events, we run ourselves. The stock, everything, we all put our own ideas into it, even the decor, the painted murals, it’s all done by the maids. It’s a labour of love we’ve all worked on together.”
She says that the reputation of the store as a home for the geeky male gaze is one of the only downsides of the job. “People have this perception that we’re only here to be looked at or subservient, but we don’t do that at all,” she argues. “And it’s different from maid cafes in Japan. We’re in Manchester, not Tokyo, and there are cultural differences.”
At 21, I also had a hospitality job, working in a village pub. It was a job I enjoyed, but I would be mildly sexually harassed by customers almost daily and it was a senior male staff member whose harassment tipped me over the edge. When I told my other manager what happened, I was taken off the rota.
All of which is to say, maybe the moral panic stirred up by Animaid Cafe is misplaced. It’s easy to baulk at the idea of a daytime eatery needing to tell customers not to harass the staff and jump to the conclusion that it must pose a threat to women, like Hugh Hefner with a bag of quaaludes and a taro milk tea. But, with a little critical thinking, you might come to the conclusion that I did: that a workplace run almost entirely by women, with a uniform chosen by the staff, which explicitly bans patrons from touching or trauma dumping on waitresses, might be a safer place to work than, say, a village pub on a Saturday night.
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