The Summer 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses Season 2

When Hayato returned to his recently deceased grandmother's house and attached café, he planned to turn them into a parking lot. However, he never expected to find five beautiful young women living in his house and working at the café—or that they would all view his grandmother (and each other) as family. Since that fateful day, despite his prickly personality, Hayato has worked alongside the girls to revitalize the café. But now, dark clouds loom on the horizon as a new set of five beautiful young women begin their quest to destroy Hayato's café with a café of their own.

The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses Season 2 is based on the manga series by Kouji Seo. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

I wouldn't say that The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses comes out of the gate running but it certainly doesn't limp out either. Last season ended with three of the five girls confessing their love for Hayato—with two of them accepting his excuse that he is too focused on reviving the café to think about dating and the other playing off her confession as a joke. Yet, that doesn't mean they've stopped hitting on him. If anything, Akane and Shiragiku have kicked their flirting up a notch—to the point that the others have started to notice. This leads to a confrontation between the girls—one which shifts the status quo in two major ways.

The first of these is that Akane, Riho, and Shiragiku all lay their cards on the table—all come out to say that they are trying to win Hayato's heart and tell the others the current status of their relationships with him. None of them are willing to back down but neither are they antagonistic towards the others vying for his heart. Then comes the second shakeup.

Ouka has, from the start, been the most critical of Hayato. Even if she has come to respect him as a manager—and even after he helped resolve her issue with her sister—she's never been one to swoon over him. Yet, the others are convinced that she too must be in love with Hayato. And while she initially rejects the idea, since her best friends—her found family—are telling her this, she decides to give it some thought.

And what comes from this is a solid comedic twist: She doesn't discover that she's in love with Hayato—she discovers she's more than a bit of a sadist. Does she get turned on by seeing a cowering, powerless Hayato? Sure. But whether it's due to deeper feelings, her recently kindled fetish, or some combination of the two remains to be seen.

The episode also does a good job of dangling two plot hooks for the rest of the season. The first is another group of five beautiful girls all looking to take down the café for unknown reasons. The second is that all of the titular goddesses' mothers (or, perhaps, grandmothers?) all worked at the café many years before. What does this mean for our heroes going forward? I have no idea—but I am more than interested to find out.

Before I tell you about my thoughts on Café Terrace season 2's first episode, I want to make sure we're on the same page about something. Namely, what I liked about the first season of Café Terrace: it's media junk food. Yeah, I know it's not very good and probably full of microplastics but sometimes, it's fun to just turn your brain off and watch a cheesy, uninspired, mostly standard-issue harem anime. And I say “mostly” because it doesn't take place in a high school, which I found pretty refreshing. There's also something to be said about how there are attempts to add dimension to all of the girls—and Hayato's not so much dense as he is more concerned with his business than actively pursuing romance. Nonetheless, while it's more typically categorized as an ecchi harem, to me it's a comedy first and foremost. And even now, I'm not entirely sure whether or not that's intentional. But, I enjoyed it all the same.

So knowing that's what I liked about season 1, hopefully, you can better understand me when I say that this first episode of season 2 is everything I could've wanted and more. The girls talk amongst themselves about how in love with Hayato they all are. Ami is a confirmed Blanka main (which feels correct). Ouka slips on a banana peel and lands on top of Hayato (because that's how people trip, of course). Akane somehow faints in a way that her shirt is almost totally off (because that's how people faint, of course). There's a very long cat. No notes, this is exactly the kind of stuff that made me enjoy season 1—and if things continue like this, I will enjoy season 2 as well. We're off to a promising start.

I'm also excited at the prospect of—well, it's not elaborated on during the episode itself, but it feels like we're seeing the setup of a rival café. And if I'm understanding the preview for the next episode correctly, this rival café is hilariously called Family. To reiterate: if I'm understanding this correctly (and dear lord, I hope I am) the café made to rival Familia is called Family. Chef's kiss. Perfection. Couldn't have named it better myself.

If things continue this way, then season 2—like season 1—certainly won't be for everybody. But whether the audience was meant to do this or not, I find that watching this show as a comedy—as a weird, ironic performance art of sorts—is incredibly fun. And if this episode is indicative of what the rest of this season will be like, then it'll be absolutely delightful.