Fledgling Asian pop culture event planners AnimeYado held its second Neko Maid Café event on Saturday, June 24, at Vin’s Oasis, St Andrew.

“I believe the overall event was a great experience, especially for the patrons. My team and I were happy to present the hybrid experience of an anime convention and Japanese maid café,” Ashley Smith of AnimeYado told the Jamaica Observer.

In March the group celebrated its first full year in existence with the more traditional Daisuke! Chapter II event. The Japanese are famous for their love of cats, maid cafés, anime, and manga, which they have combined in their home country. AnimeYado hoped to bring that to Jamaica with first Neko Maid Café, last June.

The Japanese word neko means cat in English, translating the event as Cat Maid Café.

“I have always watched various anime, where characters visited or worked at a maid café,” said Smith.

The hybrid event would see patrons taking part in standard anime convention fare, such as cosplay competitions or visiting vendors selling Asian pop-themed items, all while being surrounded by male butlers and cats anthropomorphised as female maids who would take food and snack orders.

For this second event Smith said they took things forward a bit to expand the appeal outside the anime community.

“This was our second Neko Maid Café event, but this is the first in which we actually served food and authentic Japanese style dishes. I personally loved baking and creating new dishes, I wanted others to experience something new while letting them have the ability to try some authentic dishes just like in an anime.”

While patrons in attendance had the run of the venue for food, drink, games, and anime-themed swag from the several vendors on hand, Neko Maid Café was not able to deliver on some of its major competitions.

“Unfortunately, due to so many order rushes in the kitchen we could not host our cosplay competition on the day of the event,” Smith explained.

Despite the lack of the competition, veteran cosplayer Tiffany Chen, who showed up in costume as Morax from the video game Genshin Impact, was positive about the event.

“It was a chill event, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and they had a few hiccups and incidents but not everything can be perfect sometimes,” said Chen.

Smith said AnimeYado is already looking ahead to correct this, moving the cosplay competition to the virtual arena at a later date to be announced and are looking at the tweaks necessary to make the Neko Maid Café work better for its next staging.

“In the future we intend to expand in terms of venue and in the range of cuisine available. We would also be open to partner with corporate Jamaica to introduce new products that we believe are suited for the events theme,” Smith said.

Beyond Neko Maid Café, AnimeYado is currently planning their third event for 2023, Edo Tensei, in October.