SAIKA Cafe pop-up events are creating a relaxed, nonjudgmental community around anime and nerd culture

Are you looking for a place to talk classic anime, start a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign, watch a Spiderverse marathon, or nod off with your favorite manga?

If so, SAIKA Cafe, a series of pop-up events celebrating anime and manga, video games, board games, tabletop role-playing games, and East Asian culture, might be the place for you.

From chill manga and music nights, to thematic DDungeon and DragonsD sessions, and mostly recently, an anime makers market for local artists, SAIKA Cafe’s events are designed to build a nonjudgmental and relaxed community among people whose interests tend to overlap.

“I am a strong believer that socializing is good for your health,” said Anya Laudenslager, the founder of SAIKA Cafe. She said she started hosting events at the Velvet Whip speakeasy in Center City a year ago to fill a niche for “alternative nightlife” — something other than going out to bars, clubs, or concerts.

“I started SAIKA Cafe with the goal of creating an open, safe, and welcoming space [and] events for people to come and relax and potentially meet new people. And to just get out of the house and take that first step of trying to make new friends,” she said.

Laudenslager, 33, describes herself as a “giant nerd.” She said that SAIKA started as an accidental by-product of that “nerdom,” or nerd culture, when the owner of the Velvet Whip asked her about some anime films she ought to screen at the venue. Laudenslager’s suggestions were so extensive that the owner asked if she would just run the event for her instead.

Laudenslager was born in Japan and immigrated to Montgomery County when she was about 4 years old. Anime became the vehicle for her to connect with the culture she had left behind, especially since the same cartoons she watched in Japan were now dubbed in English for her.

“That’s probably why I became a lifelong anime fan just because, Sailor Moon was my favorite as a kid. And when I came to the U.S., Sailor Moon came on and she was speaking English … and I was like, ‘Mom, Sailor Moon learned how to speak English! … [she’s] talking to me!’” she said.

As Laudenslager grew older, she made friends over shared interests in anime and manga. But she hadn’t found much of an in-person community of people in Philly who regularly got together to explore these kinds of nerdoms. She lost touch with some friends because of the isolation that came with COVID and found herself craving socialization. SAIKA became that social space for herself and others, too.

Mahfuza Chowdhury, 25, has been attending SAIKA Cafe events since Laudenslager’s first event last year because she also missed the feeling of in-person connections. Most of her interactions and relationships with people over anime have been online since she finished college, but SAIKA events have brought Chowdhury what she was missing. She’s been to most SAIKA events, and especially enjoyed its Japanese tea ceremonies.

“Anya’s events really [help] give a lot of opportunity and a lot of chances for people like me to have a place to go and find something to do when I [didn’t] have these opportunities before,” she said.

At the end of June, SAIKA Cafe hosted an Anime Maker’s Market, where local artists and crafters sold anime-themed pieces. Chowdhury was one of them, selling anime- and video game-themed stickers.

“Especially as someone like me who’s very quiet and introverted, I don’t really openly speak a lot or connect with people easily, I really found it a lot easier to connect with others and [more] relaxing compared to say, bigger events such as a party,” she said.

According to Westly Mandoske, a tabletop role-playing gamer and collaborator with Laudenslager, anime and other nerdom conventions can be places where people find community, but those events happen infrequently and are flawed.

He said people sometimes use conventions as excuses to let loose and be wild, which he’s not looking for; conventions are also primarily business ventures, which limit the amount of genuine connections people build with each other.

“You’re constantly being bombarded by sensory information, and people are not on their best behavior because they’re like, ‘well, I’m out in the wild, so who cares?’” he said. But that has not been his experience with SAIKA.

“I don’t need to [invent] a whole new personality just to exist here,” he said. He’s part Chinese, and enjoys meeting new people who have sincere interests in East Asian culture.

“[It’s] a comfortable place to just be appreciated without feeling othered … Everyone seems to come along and be like-minded in that they want a safe, supportive space to explore our interests,” he said.

Across the city, even among different age groups, people are trying to find “third spaces,” or places outside of the home, school, and work where they can hang out. Third spaces are in high demand now as libraries, community centers, and other traditional gathering spaces have declined in recent years.

» READ MORE: Why there’s nowhere to hang out at night in Philly anymore

“You know how it’s like, you don’t want to be home, but you kind of just want to lie down … how many places in the city can you really do that?” Laudenslager said. The level of active socialization at SAIKA events is completely optional, and she even provides a separate space to nap, if that’s what you need.

Laudenslager hopes that one day, SAIKA will become a physical cafe so it can serve as a regular space for people to gather. She envisions it as a lounge space where people can rent manga to read for the day and eat traditional Japanese lunch foods.

Until then, she is committed to evolving her event offerings based on feedback from attendees, believing that collaboration is how to build the strongest communities.

SAIKA’s next event will take place on Thursday, July 11 at 7 p.m. at the Velvet Whip. It is hosting a Studio Ghibli Night, where a DJ will play a selection of ambient music inspired by the iconic anime studio, and people can read books from a manga library, eat snacks, and just hang out.

“I love that the community that I’m hoping to build off of this is a community of people who are open, welcoming, accepting, understanding of each other’s little quirks, and understanding of need for space and no pressure at all,” Laudenslager said.