The Japanese Anime cafe with real maids hidden inside Afflecks
Inside you'll find rare anime dolls, imported Japanese snacks, milkshakes named after famous characters and stacks of comics which you can read for free
Hidden inside Afflecks is a magical Japanese anime-inspired maid cafe where you can watch films by Studio Ghibli and buy drinks inspired by famous anime characters.
First opened in 2019, the cafe is the only one in the UK of it has kind and has had various different iterations over the years – first starting life off as a shop downstairs before moving onto the second floor.
Based inside its current unit for two years now, in the past few months, its owners have expanded the space to add on a proper Japanese-style sakura cafe behind the shop – complete with upside-down umbrellas hanging from the ceiling and its very own sakura tree.
Neon lights and anime murals cover the walls, there’s a stage covered in plants, ring lights that customers are welcome to use for filming, and, in one corner, a bookshelf filled with anime books that the maids have found in charity shops.
Customers, the maids tell us, are welcome to pick any of these up for a read whilst visiting. The cafe also offers a service to customers to come in and resell their old anime comics to the cafe for a much better price than they might get elsewhere.
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On our visit, we meet two of the cafe’s seven resident maids – Ria and Gia. Both are dressed in cosplay Japanese maid outfits, Maid Gia also has furry black and brown cat ears on her head, whilst Maid Ria is sporting black and red dragon wings.
They are keen to stress that, whilst the cafe does draw its inspiration from Japan’s maid cafe culture, unlike in Japan in no way are they wanting to be fetishised.
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Over there, customers commonly call the maid’s “Princess” and vice versa are called “master”. Here at Affleck’s, the focus is more on having fun – not on sexualising the intimacy between customer and maid.
“In their cafes, […] master and princess is like kind of like fetishist names […] we don’t want any aspect of fetishising anything, we don’t want any Asian fishing or anything like that because it’s just disgusting.”
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“We just want to have fun and dress like maids and sell Japanese merch without hurting anyone,” adds Gia sweetly.
Both maids’ enthusiasm for Japanese anime and manga culture is infectious – and as they start to explain more about the fantastical worlds that are created within it, where people are born with pink hair and devil horns, where someone might be half-cat, or have superpowers that see them shoot stars out of their hands – it’s easy to see how you could become immersed.
It’s pure fantasy at its very best. They tell us about Death Note, where you write someone’s name in a magical notebook and it kills them, and about another character who has the power of being trans – where they can inject themselves and change gender.
It’s all brilliantly weird, “the weirdest stuff you can think of” says Gia.
As well as selling food and drink inspired by their favourite anime characters, which includes a list of milkshake specials loaded with the likes of chocolate, raspberry, fruit pearls, tapioca and cream, the cafe also sells authentic figures that are collector’s items in their own right.
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“All of our stuff is straight from Japan which we feel like gives more of an immersive experience, so if you could never travel to Japan you’ve literally got it right here,” says maid Ria.
The shelves are packed with boxes of different figures from the comic worlds, as well as Japanese snacks from the likes of Hello Panda. There’s also a fridge filled with different flavoured drinks that pay tribute to some iconic characters, including a blue-haired Sonic.
For now, the food offering is limited to snacks that you can buy to eat in the neighbouring cafe – but the maids tell us they’ve got plans to introduce hot food as soon as possible and hope to start selling bowls of ramen and cookie dough, adding an immersive element into the service.
Ria tells us, “In Japan, they serve little omelettes and then the maids come over and like draw in your omelettes like smiley faces, that’s the kind of stuff we really want to do in the future.”
“We’re getting this kitted out as a proper kitchen, we’re going to do cookie dough as well yes omg we have a red velvet flavour, a death by chocolate flavour, birthday cake flavour – I’m really excited for that – bubblegum. It’s like a cookie dough ice cream and that will be the first kind of food that we serve instead of just like a snack you buy off the shelf.
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“We’re just looking to put it somewhere.”
“In this cafe it’s just always like gradually growing. A lot of places open and it’s like BAM! But yeah we’re always growing and that’s what’s nice, taking new ideas and that’s what’s fun about it,” adds Gia.
The maids also tell us about their plans to have a proper maid cafe in the future out on the street, where they can stand outside and welcome customers in “with like the windows all pink and frilly, like a little castle.”
Designed for like-minded people with a shared interest in anime, the cafe has been set up to be suitable for all ages where fans can socialise and initiate new friendships,
All of its maids are anime fanatics and experts too, and with their help owner Rio has created a safe space for anime fans where guests can watch anime, play video games, and transport themselves to cosplaying heaven.
Over the Halloween weekend, the cafe will be hosting a special event to tie in with the annual Manchester Anime and Gaming Con.
Feature
Liam Broady is on the comeback – here’s why you need to watch out for him at Wimbledon
The Manc
Local tennis player Liam Broady is quietly rising back up the ranks on the ITF Tour, and here’s why we think you should watch out for him come Wimbledon 2026 this summer.
He is physical proof that the ATP Tour ranking means so much to a player’s career.
The Stockport-born tennis player has suffered many injury setbacks since turning pro in 2014. With a host of ankle and back injuries plaguing his playing career, he has had to turn to the ITF (International Tennis Federation) Tour to climb the rankings once again.
He is currently placed at 283* on the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) Tour after reaching two semi-finals in the space of a month.
With wins on two of Portugal’s hard courts in Faro and Santo António, the 32-year-old has climbed from rank 303 at the start of the year to under the threshold in less than three months.
His hard work on outdoor courts is paying off as his seeding is slowly improving, and his opponents are becoming less of a challenge.
For the unititated, the ATP ranking is decided by a points system that determines your playing level, and therefore who you can possibly draw, with lower seeds getting tougher games as they need more points, and vice versa.
These point tallies factor into every win, loss, serve, and shot as it propels you up or down the table.
With an injury over Christmas, the Stopfordian Team GB player came back stronger for the start of the annual tournament calendar and now looks to be in fighting form on the ITF Tour.
He’s definitely had to tackle some obstacles over the years, both on and off the court…
Competing solely on outdoor hard courts to gain his fitness levels back is necessary, but the grass courts – his speciality – will come around with time and consistent form, with Wimbledon being his home tournament and his highlight of the competitive calendar.
His career best ranking was 93, after becoming the first British wildcard entry to beat an ATP top five player in 2023 when defeating Casper Rudd on Wimbledon’s centre court.
His win against the Norwegian in round two sent him into the top 100 rankings for the first time, and into the shining spotlight alongside British tennis stars.
The adverse effects of time away from the tour are clear to see with Broady’s peaks and dips in the table below; this means taking a hit to player motivation, game-to-game momentum and teamworking within doubles pairs.
Liam Broady’s career rankings progression chart. (Credit: ATP Tour)
It is a likely situation for players to neglect their doubles career without the added stress of injury, so if they are to arise, it does not just impact individual physicality levels but also communication between doubles pairs.
A fellow British player with similar injury problems is Emma Raducanu, who rose to fame with a shocking US Open grand slam win as a qualifier. Since her win, she has had multiple surgeries, which saw her plummet down WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) standings due to time spent off court.
The issues that come with injury upsets can make a career really difficult to reclaim, even at a young age; tour rankings can be brutal on game time and match opponents, such as Broady’s Wimbledon draw against Holland’s Van De Zandschulp and Raducanu’s recent draw against American no.3 Anisimova.
We hope to see Team GB’s athletes fit and ready to fight on tour, and we have a strong feeling we’ll see native talent Broady back in the spotlight where he belongs.
Gig review | KEO at the O2 Ritz in Manchester – Sometimes you just KNOW…
Danny Jones
Fontaines D.C., Turnstile, Wunderhorse, Sleep Token, Neck Deep; sometimes it only takes a few listens and a live show to KNOW that a band is going to catch fire and go on to be huge – for Audio North and KEO, it only took a few.
But having now seen KEO for a third time, collectively, we’re more convinced than ever that they’re going to be massive.
Sadly, a prior engagement meant that we just missed catching the support act, Tooth (though we did hear great things rumbling around the eager young crowd), but there was no chance we were going to miss this lot show off how very good they are at what they do.
And there was absolutely no chance they were going to disappoint us, either…
We first caught this fast-rising post-grunge outfit live in action at Kendal Calling last year, where they somehow turned a daytime slot on the Woodlands stage into a moody mid-evening mosh.
They had even less fully produced and officially released music out then, but then we had the pleasure of watching them at The Key Club in Leeds this past October, and they were even better; punchier, more graduated at their game, and their fandom seemed plenty strong already.
As it turns out, that same progression proved true in Manchester, as KEO played their biggest headline show to date, and that same cult following only appeared more fervent than ever.
They might be based down in the capital, with roots in Portugal, brothers Finn and Conor having grown up there, but they certainly know a thing or two about how to please a Northern audience.
Of course, we’re sure they go off just as hard down in the capital – in fact, we’re certain they do – but the response they got from two sold-out rooms full of Yorkshire folk and us equally discerning Mancs felt like they had well and truly passed the litmus.
With flying colours, may we add.
Everything from the raw ’90s rock feel to the aesthetic hits just right. (Credit: Audio North)
It’s also worth noting that these London lads have built up this hype like very few ever manage to do: by developing a sterling live reputation right from the off and putting top-notch shows first.
For those unaware, they only just released their first five-track EP, Siren, back in June 2025, yet they’ve been packing out venues and festival stages pretty much since day dot, with die-hards growing their love for the band via performance and initially only learning the lyrics through social clips and snippets online.
While some have questioned why they’ve been chosen to headline this year’s Neighbourhood Festival here in Manchester city centre before they’ve even dropped a debut album, you only need to hear the entire Ritz screaming back the lyrics to ‘I Lied, Amber’, ‘Thorn’ and ‘Hands’ to know they fit the bill.
Frontman Finn pours so much unbridled power and emotion into his vocals, guitarist Jimmy Lanwern didn’t even need to look to know that his riffs were ripping the roof off, and they’ve quickly moved far beyond the early Wunderhorse parallels – they’re their own beast just waiting to be fully woken.
Georgina Pellant -
29th October 2021 
