The Publisher's Own Lobby Cafe Becomes the Venue
Most anime collab cafes rent space in a Shibuya or Ikebukuro pop-up. This one is happening inside Shogakukan itself. Cafe Lish sits on the first floor of the Shogakukan Building in Jimbocho, Tokyo's used-bookstore district, one minute on foot from Jimbocho Station. Day to day, it is a house-roasted coffee and curry rice spot whose concept plays on the neighborhood's book-town identity, according to a report on the event from Japanese anime news site Anime Anime.
Sunday Bunkasai itself is Shogakukan's annual gathering for Weekly Shonen Sunday readers. The 2026 edition is a single day, September 23, running 10:00 to 18:00 across three Jimbocho-area sites: exhibitions at Shogakukan headquarters, stage events at Hitotsubashi Hall, and merchandise sales at the Sanseido Kanda-Jimbocho bookstore. Admission is free but requires advance ticket registration, per the publisher's official event page. The cafe is the food-and-drink arm of that day.
The lineup covers eight works. Three are the magazine's tentpoles: Detective Conan, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and Rumiko Takahashi's MAO. The rest are newer Sunday serials plus what the source describes as Shogakukan's women's-oriented titles. Eligible menu items come with a series-specific novelty, so ordering the Frieren dish gets you Frieren art on a postcard, coaster, or sticker, and ordering the Conan dish gets you Conan's.
The Nine-Item Menu, Series by Series
The headline dish is the Frieren staff churros. It is a churro shaped like the staff Frieren carries throughout the series, and the source pitches it mostly on photo appeal. Cafe Lish's operator lists it at ¥800.
Detective Conan's contribution is the Cafe Poirot napolitan, a classic ketchup-spaghetti napolitan modeled on the menu at Poirot, the cafe below the Mori Detective Agency where Amuro works. The source calls it a nostalgic, old-school take. At ¥1,200 it is the priciest single dish.
MAO gets the cursed coffee shaved ice. It is styled in black to match the series' eerie, period-horror look, with soft serve, coffee jelly, and coffee syrup layered over the ice. ¥800.
The newer Sunday titles mostly get drinks:
- Akira Failing in Love (Viz Media's English title for 百瀬アキラの初恋破綻中。) gets an egg sandwich that recreates a scene from the manga, complete with the accidental overdose of mustard powder that gives it a spicy kick.
- #Gal x Gal Yuri gets the #GyaruKawaii Juice, a pink-to-light-blue gradient lactic acid drink served with a paper coaster and straw tag.
- Utsuranai n desu (写らナイんです), a school-set supernatural comedy, gets an After-School Vengeful Spirit Lemon Squash. The name is more menacing than the drink, which the source describes as sweet-sour with a clean finish.
- Tsumiki Ogami's Not-So-Ordinary Life gets a light soda themed on the series' gentle, slightly off-kilter everyday setting.
- Dealing with Mikadono Sisters Is a Breeze, adapted as a TV anime in summer 2025, gets a layered matcha latte.
The drinks are ¥700 each. Rounding out the nine is the Sunday Bunkasai Cake, a ¥1,700 cake with the event's official key visual printed straight onto it.
Three Dishes Outlast the One-Day Event
Sunday Bunkasai 2026 is a one-day event, and most of the cafe menu is tied to that day. But the Anime Anime report specifies that the Cafe Poirot napolitan, the cursed coffee shaved ice, and the Frieren staff churros stay on sale at Cafe Lish through the end of October. That gives anyone visiting Tokyo in October a five-week window to try the three flagship items without an event ticket.
The source does not say whether novelties continue during the extended period, so treat the postcards and coasters as a September 23 perk unless the cafe says otherwise.
Looking Ahead
The collab menu launches September 23, 2026 alongside the main event, and the three extended dishes run through the end of October at Cafe Lish, Shogakukan Building 1F, Jimbocho. Check the official Sunday Bunkasai page for ticket registration and hours before going.
For readers outside Japan, most of the featured manga are already in English. Viz Media publishes Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and, under the Case Closed title, Detective Conan. Viz also handles Akira Failing in Love, Tsumiki Ogami's Not-So-Ordinary Life (in English since July 2025), and #Gal x Gal Yuri as a simulpub. No English edition of Utsuranai n desu has been announced. There is no word on whether any of the cafe menu or novelties will travel beyond Jimbocho.