Manga / The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses

The seaside romcom with too many heroines! ^note Left to right: Hayato, Shiragiku, Akane, Riho, Ouka, Ami.

Hayato Kasukabe is an orphan who returned to his seaside hometown of Miura, after being notified of the death of his grandmother, who had raised him as a child up until they had a falling-out. Intending to close down his grandmother's café, Cafe Terrace Familia, before he proceeds to study at Tokyo University, he encounters five girls who lived and worked at his grandma's café, and who claim to be "family". Thus begins Hayato's struggle with keeping the café afloat while living with five cute girls under one roof.

Created by Kouji Seo, The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses (女神のカフェテラス, Megami no Cafe Terrace or Goddess Café Terrace) is a manga that began serialization in Weekly Shonen Magazine in 2021. An anime adaptation consisting of 12 episodes premiered on April 8, 2023, with a second season due to start in July 2024.

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This series provides examples of:

• Accidental Pervert:
  • First happens when Hayato initially meets Ouka and the other girls in his grandmother's house.
  • A Running Gag is Hayato always walking in on the ten girls changing out of their clothes, often due to Ami's (sometimes accompanied by Valentina) coffee-related shenanigans.
• A-Cup Angst: Although Riho and Akane are nowhere near flat, they do not appreciate being reminded that there are other girls bustier than them (like Shiragiku or Mao).
• All Women Are Lustful:
  • Mao often acts like this. At one point, she just takes her top off and just presses herself against Hayato, who was showering at the time.
  • One chapter has Riho wanting to touch Hayato's rock-hard little man during their date in the love hotel.
• Almost Kiss: Between Hayato and Ouka, after triggering one of Ami's traps. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Amazonian Beauty: The sweet shop lady has rock hard abs, earning her many admirers.
• Amusing Injuries: One of Ouka's farts was powerful enough to blow Hayato away into the sea, breaking his arm in the process.
• Appearance Angst: Rei feels she's less attractive than the other girls to Hayato, because of her muscles.
• Balanced Harem: Each of the five main girls gets her own arc.
• Barely-There Swimwear:
  • At the beach, the sweet shop lady wears a one-piece swimsuit with a Navel-Deep Neckline, exposed back, and thong. Though she flaunts her body, she gets mad if people ogle her for too long.
  • The swimsuit she's wearing to the bathhouse doesn't leave much for the imagination either, though it is less revealing in the anime version.
• Beach Episode:
  • The characters live near Miura Beach, so there are chapters showing them taking a break at the beach, or working on their stall during the summer.
  • An arc puts Hayato and the 11 girls in Miyakojima, one of Okinawa's most beautiful islands.
• The Beastmaster:
  • Ami is able to ride sea turtles.
  • Later on, Ami is able to teach Valentina how to ride sea turtles as well. Moemi is not as successful.
• The Big Damn Kiss:
  • Shiragiku to Hayato, after the Christmas party. It was the first kiss for both of them.
  • Since Shiragiku got to kiss Hayato, the other girls are also given the right to kiss him to keep things fair. Akane is the first to exercise this right, kissing Hayato (with tongue) in front of everyone.
  • Hayato catches Riho off-guard with a kiss later on, after she had demanded that he surprise her.
  • Ouka kisses Hayato right before she boards her plane to France.
• Boob-Based Gag:
  • One chapter has Shiragiku's chest extending past the comic panel.
  • An illustration features Ririka's chest slightly covering the series title.
• Bothering by the Book: Ririka asks Hayato to laugh whenever something funny happens, while he is recording video for Ririka's YouTube livestream. During a scene where Ririka is giving her stream viewers some Fanservice while remarking that she might have gained some weight, Hayato suddenly laughs out loud, prompting an unhappy Ririka to cut the scene.
• But Not Too Foreign: Valentina is Brazilian and dark-skinned, but has a Japanese surname.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Shiragiku starts doing lewd things whenever she gets drunk.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Ami, in spades. From going off on random tangents, to wearing bizarre-looking masks and props, it's hard to tell what Ami is really thinking.
  • Valentina is apparently this as well, so she and Ami go well together.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Ouka is this to Ami.
• Company Cross References: Ouka has the volumes of Smile Down the Runway in her library.
• Cooking Duel:
  • Shiragiku and Riho wanted Hayato to judge which of their sandwiches was better. Hayato decides to eat his own crappy sandwich instead, not wanting to upset one if he chose the other's sandwich.
  • Shiragiku challenges Princess Olivia to a pinchos showdown for Hayato's birthday dinner. Hayato chooses Olivia's pinchos by a narrow margin, upsetting Shiragiku, and Olivia lets Shiragiku in on her secret (using a lot of garlic on her pinchos).
• Contrived Coincidence: The five waitresses of the current iteration of Familia just had to be the granddaughters of the waitresses of the previous iteration.
• Courtroom Antics: One chapter puts Shiragiku on trial by the other girls after she kisses Hayato. Hilarity ensues.
• Cranky Landlord: Hayato sometimes acts like one (overlapping with Mean Boss), but the girls see through him.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Riho lost contact with her dad after her parents' divorce, since her mother took out a restraining order against her father.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Hayato takes a lot of unfair abuse from Ami including being assaulted in the bathtub because she continues to walk in on him by accident. It gets to the point where Hayato has to put a sign on the door but Ami ignores it, walks in anyway and proceeds to beat him up for seeing her naked.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: A lot of jokes concern Hayato being harassed by or lusted after the girls without his consent. One running gag, for example, concerns the girls constantly commenting on his larger-than-average penis, with some of the girls outright trying to get him naked or observe him while sleeping again to mess around with it. The end of their trip to Miyakojima even has them take off his pants—and then he awakens with horror wondering what happened the previous night. His empty-eyed stare on the way home is entirely played for comedy.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Masahiro ran the original version of the Familia café like a gruff commandant. Hayato, his grandson, is only a little softer.
• Erotic Dream: Hayato has had sexy dreams involving Akane, Riho, and Shiragiku. (Ouka and Ami, on the other hand, just do funny things in the background.)
• Fanservice: With Seo as the author, and five cute girls as the leads (later joined by five more girls), there are frequent opportunities to show them in various states of undress.
• Fence Painting:
  • The other girls get Ouka to decorate for the Christmas party by claiming they could never make it look as pretty as she could.
  • Akane gets Riho to help out in the café (even if it wasn't supposed to be her shift) by saying Riho is the café's management genius.
• First-Name Basis: Hayato and the five girls call each other by their first names.
• Five-Man Band: The five main girls and the girls from the Chiyoda Diner later on.
• Foregone Conclusion: A Flash Forward chapter features Hayato and his daughter (who bears an uncanny resemblance to his grandma), and reveals that he eventually marries one of the five girls.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Shiragiku and Hayato once met when they were very young, but Hayato had already forgotten about it. This is later elaborated on, revealing that Shiragiku was Hayato's first crush.
• Former Child Star: Riho used to be a child actress until her parents split up.
• Frustrated Overhead Scribble: With Ouka after yet another mishap with Ami and Valentina.
• Funbag Airbag: Rei accidentally crashes her chest (which had gotten exposed by Shiragiku) into Hayato while running away. Akane and Riho are not happy about it.
• Funny Background Event:
  • In at least two instances, while Hayato is having a serious discussion with one of the girls, Ami is out running in the background, with Ouka on her back yelling about wanting to be put down.
  • While Shiragiku is being interviewed by a TV reporter, Hayato is giving Ami a noogie in the background.
• Gasshole: The series does not quite clarify whether Ouka's spectacular farts are indeed due to her flatulence (and penchant for sweet potatoes), or Ami's pranks. In one case, the blast force of Ouka's fart during the Miyakojima trip was enough to blow Hayato into the sea, thus breaking his arm. (But, it could just as well have been due to Ami and Valentina's prank.)
• Genre Savvy: Hekiru invokes common romcom tropes while making observations about Hayato's relationship with the girls.
• Generation Xerox:
  • The five Familia girls look remarkably like their grandmothers. Likewise, Hayato has features inherited from his grandparents, Masahiro and Sachiko.
  • Even Fuwa's grandson resembled Fuwa in his youth.
  • Hayato's daughter strongly resembles Sachiko in her youth. The girl also looks a lot like her mother, but Seo cleverly obfuscates which girl it is because they all have naturally dark hair.
• Gilligan Cut: As a favor to Fuwa (along with the promise of 100,000 yen), ex-Olympic hopeful Shuto Mitsui is called in to deal with Ami and Ouka. When one of Ami's signature punches No Selled him, Mitsui begins to wind up for his own knockout punch while he comments on how Ami's strength wasn't enough to take him out. The very next panel, he's laid out flat by Ami without anything to show for himself.
• Groin Attack: Done twice by Ami to Hayato, but not with malicious intent.
  • In trying to wake up a sleeping Hayato, Ami uses Zangief's "Iron Claw" technique on his sensitive parts.
  • Upon seeing a sleeping Hayato's morning wood, she mistakes this for Hayato getting bitten by an insect, and proceeds to apply a mentholated ointment to it, with disastrous consequences.
• Harem Genre: A first for Kouji Seo. And in a rare twist, it seems the whole backstory of Hayato's grandmother was that she was the winner of her generation's harem, and care is shown to how the other girls lived after it all went down.
• Hot Springs Episode: Ririka gives Riho a coupon for two to a hot spring resort, intending her to invite Hayato along. However, the other girls also wind up with coupons...
• Identical Stranger: When Fuwa decides to open up an upscaled knockoff of Cafe Terrace Familia, he chooses five girls who look extremely similar to the café girls as his waitresses. At the time, they also displayed an intentional exaggeration of the main girls' personalities (i.e. Shiragiku's coming off like a ditz, Ouka's Tsundere tendencies being turned into a stark hot-and-cold routine, etc.).
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Unlike the girls, Hayato can easily tell Ouka and Kikka apart. He explains that Kikka is left-handed, plus she was rude to the girls, which Ouka would never do.
  • A 4-koma set after the arc with Kikka has Ouka trying to fool Hayato by pretending to be Kikka. Hayato mentions that he quickly figured out it was Ouka because she was fatter.
• Identical Twin Mistake: Kikka is mistaken for her twin Ouka in her first appearance.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Shiragiku is often just called "Kiku".
  • Hayato is called "Hayacchi" by Ami. He is not happy about this at first, but eventually accepts it.
  • Valentina is often just called "Tina".
• Jealous Romantic Witness: Seeing Akane or Shiragiku openly flirt with Hayato does not make Riho happy.
• Karma Houdini: The girls protest when Hayato has them do chores around the house because his grandmother used to do everything. He immediately suspects a major reason why her health deteriorated was being overworked by the girls. They don’t deny it and the whole thing is played off as a joke.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Riho's attempts to sabotage Akane and Shiragiku during the Christmas party are thwarted at every turn, leading her to wonder if she's being subjected to divine punishment.
• Minimalist Cast: There are only six real main characters at the start of the series—just Hayato and the girls, with Hayato's grandma Sachiko often featuring in flashbacks. Later on, other business owners from the shopping district and the girls from the Chiyoda Diner act as supporting cast, with the latter making more frequent appearances.
• Mistaken for Badass: Rei is under the impression that the café is also a dojo, and that the girls are training under their master, Hayato.
• Moral Guardians: Ouka sometimes fills this role. She doesn't appreciate it when the other girls start talking about lewd things.
• Naked First Impression: Hayato's first introduction to the girls all involves seeing them in some state of undress. The same happens with the Family cafe girls, when they start living with the Familia staff.
• No Name Given: Some of the townspeople, like the sweet shop lady or the fishmonger, are unnamed.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Hekiru is happy about Ouka's return, thinking how the harem (as viewed from her Meta Guy lens) is balanced once more, and gives her encouragement. Ouka, on the other hand, believes the words of encouragement were for her recent setback.
• One-Note Cook: Ouka is only able to make pilaf, which she learned from Hayato's grandma. She's rubbish at everything else.
• Posthumous Character:
  • Hayato's grandmother, Sachiko, had just died at the start of the series. Bits of information about her are gradually revealed through the course of the series.
  • Hayato's grandfather, Masahiro, was already gone before Hayato was born. There are chapters dedicated to showing things that happened to the initial iteration of Familia under Masahiro's ownership.
• Punched Across the Room: Ami (accidentally) punches Ouka into the doorway during an intense game of karuta.
• Put on a Bus: Ouka leaves for France to study fashion.
• Raging Stiffie: For Hayato in two cases.
  • Had one when having an Erotic Dream during New Year's Eve. Ami discovers this when trying to wake him up, and applies mentholated ointment to it in the mistaken impression that Hayato was bitten by an insect, with hilariously disastrous results.
  • When Riho seduced him at the love hotel.
• The Rival: Rei sees herself as this towards Ami.
• Rule of Three: Deliberately invoked by Hayato when throwing himself against the onsen's thin walls while talking to Riho, after previous mishaps with Akane and Shiragiku.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In one arc, Akane's band Mussy Mustache Girls is unavailable to perform at a big ticket concert because one member has to attend a wedding and the other a funeral. Cancelling the performance isn't an option either, since it's a big opportunity and the concert is less than a month away. She's eventually made to go completely out of her comfort zone and do a pop idol performance with a sugary original song rather than her usual rock—and what's more, the other Familia girls perform with her too. After trials, tribulations, finding the right romantic inspiration for her new song, and getting cutesy outfits, she learns that she didn't actually have to do this, since both of her original bandmates had their events cancelled at the last minute.
• Shipper on Deck: Ririka is this for Riho and Hayato, while Hekiru supports Akane and Hayato. Both girls eventually move away from this role.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: In chapter 50, Fuwa opens a rival café named Family intent to crush the Familia café, and it's even staffed by five girls (one of whom is a bonafide idol) who are exaggerations of the main cast. However, the Family café is mainly riding off the girls' appeal to stay afloat; its food is low-quality and it starts losing customers after the opening hype dies down.
• Shout-Out:
  • Ami provides the majority of references in this manga:
    • She is an avid fan of Street Fighter II, and often gets in bouts with Hayato or practices moves from the game.
    • Upon first encountering the waitresses from Fuwa's rival café, she refers to them as "the Black Saints".
    • One time, Ami excitedly tells the other girls about an anime she's interested in, which includes a scene of a demon girl emerging out of a wooden box.
    • One of her school notebooks has a picture of Attack on Titan's Colossal Titan in it.
  • Riho mentions Chihayafuru during a game of karuta.
  • Akane has invoked Natsume Soseki's famous phrase "the moon is beautiful" during her confession to Hayato.
  • Hekiru advising Ouka on the "proper" way to act as a tsundere echoes Yozakura Quartet's "tsun-tsun-dere-tsun-dere-tsun-tsun" jingle.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Fuwa is still hassling Hayato to this very day because of something Masahiro did to him in the past. To be fair, Fuwa is a Smug Snake and likely deserved what Masahiro did to him.
• Slut-Shaming: Kikka assumes Riho is the type to seduce any guy based on her wardrobe.
• Smug Snake: Fuwa, the old man who Hayato's grandmother had borrowed money from.
• Soap Opera Disease:
  • The audience is privy to Ami's grandmother having worsening dementia, but not how it started or when she got it. It's bad, but it's not yet at the stage where surgery couldn't temporarily halt it for a while.
  • Riho's mom was diagnosed with a nasty cancer that threatens to kill her in three years and almost killed her in the present day. What type of cancer it is isn't said.
• Take a Third Option: Instead of choosing between Shiragiku's and Riho's sandwiches, Hayato instead chose to eat his own crappy sandwich, stating that if he'd chosen one, he'd certainly upset the other.
• Talk to the Fist: In a flashback to a martial arts match Ami had, she attempted a Hadouken, thinking it was actually possible, and refused to quit trying when she failed. Her opponent knocked her out in the middle of this.
• Team Pet: Sachiko the cat.
• The Tease: Mao likes flaunting her sexuality; she especially likes teasing the prudish Ouka.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Hayato, in his desperate attempt to keep Ami from learning that Santa Claus isn't real, keeps covering her ears every time Santa gets mentioned. At some point, his hands instead go to Ami's chest instead of her ears.
• Theme Twin Naming: Both Ouka and Kikka have the character for "flower" in their names.
• Tsundere: Ouka acts like one; Riho also sometimes plays the part.
• Verbal Backspace: A Running Gag with Riho involves her hearing something behind closed doors, her rushing in to retort, and then immediately backpedaling once she sees that the situation was not what she thought it would be.
• We Named the Cat Sachiko: After finding the cat in grandma's old room, they decided to name the cat after her. Never mind that the cat has huge...
• Whoopee Cushion: Ami has used this when pranking Ouka.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Shiragiku acts like one, at least until she gets drunk.
• You Never Did That for Me: Shiragiku felt that Hayato had been going out more with Riho or Akane, which is why she wanted to accompany Hayato to his trip to Tokyo.