Animania is the University of Michigan's Japanese Animation and Culture club! Our monthly screening events strive to bring Japanese animation (anime) to the public eye. For Japan week, we’ll be hosting an abridged screening in the Kraus Natural Science Building auditorium, where we’ll be showing a few episodes from two of our favorite recent anime: Polar Bear Cafe and Haikyu. The screening is designed for ages 13 and up.

Show Descriptions

Polar Bear Cafe: Shirokuma 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)

Haikyu!!: Based off of the original Weekly Shonen Jump manga series from Haruichi Furudate, Haikyu!! is a slice-of-life sports anime revolving around Shoyo Hinata’s love of volleyball. Inspired by a small-statured pro volleyball player, Hinata creates a volleyball team in his last year of middle school. Unfortunately the team is matched up against the ""King of the Court"" Tobio Kageyama’s team in their first tournament and inevitably lose. After the crushing defeat, Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama After entering high school, Hinata joins the volleyball team only to find that Tobio has also joined.

(Source: Crunchyroll)

Cosponsored by the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts & Animania