Tijuana’s self-described freaks and weirdos are having a moment.

After years of being confined to basements, where fans of Japanese pop culture would gather to read manga, watch anime, or play Yugioh card games, young people all over Tijuana now feel comfortable taking their fandom to the streets.

The city now has three different anime cafes, hosts multiple anime conventions a year and offers dozens of events that celebrate Japanese pop culture — from video game tournaments to cosplay competitions and DIY manga workshops. Manga are Japanese comic books and graphic novels.

“Before, it was very hard to find places to go,” said Iry Aylin Silva, 20. “They used to call us ‘freakys’ and ‘wierdos.’ But it’s become more accepted.”


Silva spent one recent Thursday afternoon eating at Mundo Anime Café, one of two anime cafes in the city’s Zona Norte.

The spot is decorated with pictures of characters from different cartoons like Dragon Ball and Pokémon, as well as popular video games like Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man. As Silva ate, a group of teenagers sat on the couch playing video games while a young boy browsed through action figures displayed next to a free manga library.

The café’s co-founder, Gerardo Maravilla, designed Mundo Anime Café to be the type of place he would have liked to go to when he was a young anime fan growing up in Tijuana.

Gerardo Maravilla, co-owner of Mundo Anime Cafe in Tijuana, talks about how initially the Anime ideal started with just a Facebook page. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)


“Historically, we have been rejected and bullied, so we imagined a place for people to gather around and meet others who like the same thing,” he said. “Our mission is to help people who like anime make new friends.”

The café opened in 2014, but the idea actually began back in 2010 with a Facebook group for Tijuana’s anime fandom. That Facebook group became a place where people formed a community around their shared interest for Japanese pop culture.

Maravilla began attending anime expos as a vendor, and eventually the pop-up café became a brick-and-mortar shop.

His café is just a few blocks away from Otaku Anime Café, which also opened in 2014.


Unlike Mundo’s basement aesthetic, Otaku Anime Café looks more like a traditional Japanese ramen house. The place doesn’t have a couch where teens can play video games in, but they do make their ramen by hand.

Otaku’s menu is full of Japanese pop culture references such as Kirby curry and the Pac-Mango Boba tea.

“The food here is much better than the other cafes,” said customer Ana Villa, 18.

Tijuana’s third and newest anime café, Kokoro Café and Deli, is on the east part of town in a neighborhood called Villafontana.


Kokoro doesn’t cater exclusively to anime fans. Instead, it celebrates all things nerdy. The café has American comic books and hosts regular Dungeons and Dragons game nights.

All of the cafes are friendly competitors who often run into each other at the city’s different anime expos. Before these cafes opened in 2014, there were only a handful of events for Japanese pop culture fans. But now there is an expo or convention nearly every month.

The biggest expo, Japonawa, attracts roughly 7,000 people. The second largest expo, which took place two weeks ago at the Tijuana Cultural Center, brought in more than 4,000 anime fans.

Tijuana’s anime fandom has attracted people from all over the world to the border city — especially Japanese tourists traveling through Mexico.


Over the summer, a Japenese student spent two weeks in Tijuana and visited Mundo Anime Café almost every day, Maravilla said.

For a man who has spent most of his adult life obsessing over Japanese pop culture, that was high praise.

“I’ve never been to Japan, but the café brings a little bit of Japan to Tijuana,” he said.