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Polar Bear Café Anime Inspires 10 Video Shorts for 10th Anniversary

Anime news website Animate Times began streaming the first of 10 video shorts on Wednesday to celebrate the 10th anniversary for the anime of Alola Higa's Polar Bear Café (Shirokuma Café) manga.

New shorts will debut every Wednesday. The first five shorts will be available on Animate Times' YouTube channel, while the last five will be available within the Animate Times section within the Amazon Prime Video channel.

Takahiro Sakurai, Jun Fukuyama, and Hiroshi Kamiya all return to reprise their roles as Polar Bear, Panda, and Penguin from the anime. Toru Hosokawa, the script supervisor of the anime, also returns to pen the scripts for the new shorts.

The anime premiered in 2012, and Crunchyroll streamed the anime.

Higa began the Shirokuma Café series in 2006. The manga serialized in Shogakukan's Flowers magazine until it moved to Cocohana in 2014 under the name Shirokuma Café: Today's Special.. Seven Seas Entertainment licensed the manga in English, and it will release the first volume in January 2023. The company describes the manga:

Polar Bear has a penchant for puns and runs a serene café frequented by humans and animals alike. Regulars include a panda who has a part-time job being a panda at the local zoo, his keeper (who has a crush on the café's waitress), and a pretentious penguin. Join the colorful clientele through the seasons in this comforting and humorous manga about daily specials, romantic complications, and quirky workplaces, a tale that inspired a 50-episode anime adaptation. This 4-volume edition of the complete manga series–in English for the first time–will include bonus color content!

Sources: Animate Times' YouTube channel, Comic Natalie