Oikawa and Iwaizumi Pull Butler Cafe Duty
Production I.G commissioned a fresh set of illustrations for the shop, all of them built around a school culture festival. Toru Oikawa and Hajime Iwaizumi are running a butler cafe. Atsumu and Osamu Miya take the stage with a manzai routine. Shoyo Hinata and Tobio Kageyama are in the lineup too, and the new art covers eight characters in all, according to Japanese anime news site Anime Anime.
For readers outside Japan, the bunkasai is the one day a year a Japanese high school turns its classrooms over to the students. Clubs and homerooms put on themed cafes, haunted houses, stage shows and food stalls, costumes included. A butler cafe staffs the room with students in butler costume who treat every customer as the lady or gentleman of the house. Manzai is the two-person stand-up format in which a straight man (tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke) trade rapid-fire gags. Both are standard festival fare, and the wakuwaku bunkasai in the event's full name, Haikyu!! Wakuwaku Bunkasai POP UP SHOP by Production I.G, means roughly "exciting school festival."
What's On the Shelves
The headline items are acrylic stands featuring the new art: eight designs at 1,980 yen each (about $13). Clear file folders come in four designs at 550 yen each, and can badges round out the lineup. Every 2,200 yen spent earns one postcard pulled at random from a set of nine.
Admission is free, and each venue sets up photo spots built around standees of the festival illustrations.
Four Cities, Seven Weeks
The tour runs in sequence rather than all at once:
- Tokyo: Shinjuku Marui Annex, 6th floor (Calendarium 6). October 23 to November 8, 2026. Weekdays 11:00 to 19:00; weekends and holidays 10:30 to 19:00.
- Osaka: Namba Marui, 5th floor event space. November 14 to November 29, 2026. 11:00 to 19:00.
- Gifu: Malera Gifu, 1st floor Blue Plaza. December 4 to December 6, 2026. 10:00 to 18:00.
- Gunma: Smark Isesaki, 1st floor Haruna Plaza. December 11 to December 13, 2026. 10:00 to 18:00.
The Gifu and Gunma stops are short Friday-to-Sunday runs, three days each.
Looking Ahead
Haruichi Furudate's manga ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump from February 2012 for eight and a half years. Production I.G has animated the series since 2014, and the TV anime ran through December 2020. Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle arrived in February 2024, cleared 20 billion yen (roughly $130 million) at the worldwide box office, and took the Award for Excellence in Animation at the Japan Academy Film Prize.
The next film is Haikyu!! The Movie: VS The Little Giant, due in 2027. It covers Karasuno against Kamomedai and the Hinata against Hoshiumi "Little Giant" duel, which the Anime Anime report calls the match at the core of Furudate's story. Susumu Mitsunaka returns to direct, and a companion special anime, Haikyu!! Where the Monsters Go, was announced for 2027 at the same time.
The pop-up itself is Japan-only, and the announcement mentions no online store or overseas stop. The series around it travels better: the TV anime streams on Crunchyroll and Netflix, plus Hotstar in India, and Viz Media's English edition of the manga is complete at 45 volumes.
(C) Haruichi Furudate / Shueisha, "Haikyu!!" Production Committee