Interest

Legend of the Galactic Heroes Café Opens in Tokyo

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Café opened at Tokyo's Tea Room 2525 on Saturday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Yoshiki Tanaka's space opera novels. The café is now serving Yang's tea, Frederica's crêpe, and Alliance pancakes (with the Alliance's symbol on top in powdered sugar) for 600 yen (about US$7.80) each.

The café is also displaying costumes from the newest stage play that is opening in Tokyo this April, and it is playing music from both the stage play and the decade-long anime adaptation. (Actor/singer Ryūichi Kawamura, pictured right, not only produced the music in the play, but he will also star as the Free Planets Alliance officer Yang Wen-li.) The first 100 people who buy tickets to the play at the Nico Nico Shop, one floor above the café, will receive an autograph from Tanaka.

Also on display are anime cels, posters, figures, manga, novels, and ship models. The websites Anime! Anime! Japan and Nicheee! posted photographs from the café.

The café will run from January 21 to February 4, and again from March 24 to April 4. The stage play will have an April 14-22 run in Tokyo, followed by performances during the April 28-29 weekend in Osaka. Tea Room 2525 is on the second floor of Nico Nico Douga's headquarters in Tokyo.

The 10 main novel volumes and four side-story volumes in the Legend of the Galactic Heroes saga have sold 15 million copies and earned Tanaka a Seiun Award. Besides Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Tanaka also wrote the original novel inspirations for The Heroic Legend of Arslan, Ryoko's Case File, Sohryuden - Legend of the Dragon Kings, and Tytania anime projects.

Director Noboru Ishiguro (Macross, Orguss, Megazone 23) and his Artland anime studio spent over 10 years adapting the novels into a theatrical and video anime franchise with over 100 installments. A stage play already ran in Tokyo last year. While the novels, anime, and Katsumi Michihara's manga adaptation have not been officially released in North America, the Japanese company GameOn announced in 2010 that it licensed the global rights to a browser-based online game.

Source: Anime! Anime! Japan

Images © 2010 Legend of the Galactic Heroes Play Executive Committee