Bento PLUS
November 2026
Konnichiwa, AnimeFanatiks!
This November Bento Plus is playing for keeps, our theme is music inspired by Japanese and anime music Our challenges are all built around this theme, so get ready to get rockin’ with us!
Along the way, we talk about delicious Japanese food, have great AMVs, and a variety of yummy content for you to sink your teeth in. Use the menu on the right to easily jump between sections.
We are your monthly source of anime and Japanese news. Just for you. Itadakimasu!
Upcoming events
Events in Nippon
Here’s a list of notable events and festivals (matsuri) that take place in Japan during November.
November 3
Culture Day (Bunka no Hi)
Location: Nation-wide
Significance: A national holiday dedicated to celebrating culture, the arts and academic achievement. Expect parades, exhibitions and free museum entry in many citie
November 2-4
Karatsu Kunchi
Location: Saga Prefecture
Meaning: Held in Saga Prefecture, this festival features massive, ornate floats paraded through the streets in a high-energy harvest celebration.
November 15
Shichi‑Go‑San
Location: Nationwide
A rite of passage for kids aged 3, 5 and 7. Children dress up in kimono and visit shrines to pray for healthy growth. Heartwarming and full of kawaii moments.
November 23
Labor Thanksgiving Day (Kinrō Kansha no Hi)
Location : NNationwide
Event: A national holiday giving thanks for work, production and each other. Celebrations include harvest rituals and civic events.
Game of the month
Phantom Blade Zero: A Stylish Wuxia Action RPG
Introduction
Phantom Blade Zero is a dark action role-playing game from developer S-Game, blending traditional wuxia martial arts, fantasy and folk horror with a punk-inspired aesthetic. Released on October 29, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and PC, it promises cinematic swordplay and a world filled with danger.
Overview
Players control Soul, a swordsman framed for murdering his master. With a fatal wound leaving him just sixty-six days to live, he must fight assassins, uncover a conspiracy and discover the truth behind the martial world known as the Wulin. The story unfolds across the Phantom World, where secrets, shifting realities and encounters reward exploration.
Combat is the game’s biggest attraction. Players can master more than 30 primary weapons and 20 Phantom Edges, combining attacks, counters, dodges and special techniques. Built with Unreal Engine 5, the game features motion-captured kung fu choreography, animations and spectacular boss encounters. Its distinctive “kungfupunk” style combines martial arts traditions with mechanical prosthetics, industrial ruins and fantasy. Donnie Yen contributed as creative consultant and performed Mó Yuan through motion capture.
Pros:
- Fast, satisfying and visually impressive combat.
- A varied arsenal that encourages experimentation.
- A distinctive wuxia-inspired world and memorable boss battles.
- Adjustable difficulty options accommodate different experience levels.
Cons:
- The fragmented narrative and unfamiliar character names can make the story difficult to follow.
- Players seeking a conventional RPG experience may find its storytelling confusing.
- Accessibility options are limited.
Conclusion:
Phantom Blade Zero delivers a stylish action adventure built around spectacular martial arts combat, creative weapons and a fantasy setting. Its storytelling may not appeal to everyone, but its presentation and exhilarating battles make it worth considering for fans of wuxia, action RPGs and cinematic swordplay.
Maid Cafe Simulator: Build Your Dream Anime Café
Introduction
Maid Cafe Simulator is a first-person management game from Accelix and SCON. Players transform a struggling café into a popular maid café, combining business management, character stories and anime-inspired presentation. It launched on Steam in October 2026.
Overview:
Players manage a rundown establishment alongside five kemonomimi maids, each with a distinct personality and story. Daily duties include taking orders, preparing drinks, serving customers, handling payments and restocking ingredients. As the business grows, players can expand the café, purchase equipment, arrange furniture and unlock recipes.
Completing requests and spending time with the maids reveals their stories and strengthens their bonds. Festivals, inspections and performances add variety, while troublesome customers occasionally require attention. The ultimate goal is to earn the prestigious three-star Maidchelin rating.
With 49 drink recipes, customisable outfits and dance performances, there is plenty to explore. However, busy service routines may challenge players seeking a relaxed simulation.
Conclusion:
Maid Cafe Simulator mixes hands-on café management with visual novel storytelling and anime charm. Its varied tasks, character interactions and progression systems give the experience personality. Fans of management games and character-driven anime adventures may find this a delightful place to clock in.
Itadakimasu Eats
Oden: Japan’s Traditional Winter Comfort Food
Oden (おでん) is a traditional Japanese dish that offers warmth and comfort during the colder months. This hearty one-pot meal consists of assorted ingredients slowly simmered in a light, savoury broth. Popular in homes, restaurants and street stalls, oden is an important part of Japan’s winter food culture.
The broth is usually prepared using dashi, a Japanese stock made from kombu (kelp) and dried bonito flakes, with soy sauce, mirin and other seasonings adding flavour. Popular oden ingredients include daikon radish, boiled eggs, konnyaku (a jelly-like food made from konjac yam), potatoes, tofu and various fish cakes.
The secret to delicious oden is allowing the ingredients to simmer gently so they absorb the rich flavours of the broth. It is commonly served with karashi, a hot Japanese mustard that adds a pleasant kick.
Oden also has interesting regional variations. Tokyo-style oden often features chikuwabu, a chewy wheat-based food, while Shizuoka is famous for its darker broth and black hanpen fish cakes. Some regions even serve it with ginger miso or a ginger-soy sauce.
Although traditionally associated with winter, oden is available throughout the year at specialist restaurants and Japanese convenience stores.
More than just a Japanese stew, oden represents the comfort of home cooking and seasonal food traditions. With its variety of ingredients and regional flavours, this humble dish is well worth trying when exploring Japanese cuisine.
New AMV's & Wotagei
Every month, the AnimeFanatika team dives headfirst into the YouTube universe, hunting for the hottest, most rocking AMVs to blow your mind, as well as Wotagei videos.
Takeshi's Tunes
First choice is Control by VNV Nation with scenes from Redline. His second choice is SABATON – Resist And Bite with scenes from Azur Lane.
Ookami's Tunes
First choice is ABOKAI – Carthage with scenes from The boxer, Street Fighter, Fighting Spirit: Champion Road, Baki. His second choice is POWERWOLF – Beast Of Gévaudan with scenes from Skeleton Knight in Another World.
Daisuke Tunes
First AMV choice is Unbroken – GRISSEN VALE with scenes from MARVEL Tōkon . His second choice is Tokyo AMV – Boots, Blood & Thunder with scenes from The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System . His last choice is Zahna – DRAG YOU with scenes from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2
Retara's Tunes
Our correspondence from Japan shares with us this impressive Wotagei video.
Please support the original music artists by looking them up on YouTube, Spotify and other media and give them your appreciation and support!
Birthday of the Month
Staz Charlie Blood: The Vampire Otaku of Blood Lad
Staz Charlie Blood is not your typical vampire, and Blood Lad never lets you forget it. He rules the Eastern District of the Demon World, which sounds suitably grand, but what he actually cares about is Japanese pop culture. Anime, manga, video games: that’s where his heart is, not in brooding over a crypt.
On the surface he can come across as lazy and carefree, the sort who’d rather stay in and binge something than defend his turf. Don’t mistake that for weakness, though. Few demons are foolish enough to test him. He comes from the prestigious Blood family, and it shows in his magic, his fast regeneration and a fighting ability that’s more than a little impressive.
Things change when Fuyumi Yanagi, a human girl, wanders into his territory by accident. She ends up dead and turns into a ghost, and Staz, to his credit, decides he’s going to find a way to bring her back. That quest drags him well beyond the Demon World. Along the way he has to face his past, his family and, probably the part he’d least like to admit, his own feelings.
What makes him work, I’d say, is the mix. He’s got real supernatural power, a fan’s enthusiasm and a habit of acting on impulse, and the result feels like a fresh spin on an old archetype rather than another tired one. Flipping vampire conventions on their head isn’t new in itself, but Staz does it with enough heart that it rarely feels like a gimmick. His love of Japanese culture and his stubborn determination to save Fuyumi are a big part of why Blood Lad has its own blend of supernatural action, comedy and adventure. He celebrates his birthday on November 23.
He shares his birth month with:
November Anime Challenge
Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad
Koyuki, or Yukio Tanaka if you’re being formal, is fourteen and coasting. Nothing is really wrong with his life, but nothing is pointing anywhere either. That starts to shift when he rescues an odd-looking dog called Beck and, soon after, meets Ryusuke Minami, a gifted guitarist who is dead set on rock stardom. Ryusuke opens the door to rock music, and Koyuki, who had no real passion before, seems to find one almost overnight.
From there he learns guitar and gradually discovers he can really sing. That draws him into Ryusuke’s fledgling band, which is also named Beck. The lineup is rounded out by drummer Taira, bassist Yoshiyuki and vocalist Chiba. Finding a sound of their own turns out to be the easy part. Carving out a spot in Japan’s crowded music scene is much harder, and the show doesn’t pretend otherwise. It asks for a lot: time, loyalty and real sacrifice. Friction between the members and a few romantic complications don’t help either, and they may end up distracting the band more than anyone would like to admit.
Ryusuke has ties to the international music industry, which could give Beck a shot at a much bigger audience. Success has a price, though. As the band moves from tiny gigs to bigger and riskier shows, it runs into setbacks, rival acts and the less glamorous truths of trying to make a living from music.
Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad is adapted from Harold Sakuishi’s manga, and at its core it’s a coming-of-age story about figuring out what you’re good at, finding where you belong and chasing a dream that probably looks impossible from the outside. It’s easy to see something of ourselves in Koyuki, we see in him a mirror of our own teenage years when we were still figuring out where we belonged.
The anime mixes an energetic blend of rock and rap-rock that makes the blood in your veins dance, the awkward innocence of young romance and some genuinely heartfelt drama. If it works, it’s because it gets both sides of growing up: the thrill of the highs and the sting of the lows, all while you’re trying to build something you can be proud of. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad has a MAL score of 8.29 for a reasons, it rocks!!!
Light novel of the Month
K-On!
Yui Hirasawa is a carefree first-year who can’t decide what club to join. She wanders into the Light Music Club at Sakuragaoka High School more or less by accident, and the timing is awkward: the club is about to be shut down for lack of members. Bassist Mio Akiyama, drummer Ritsu Tainaka and keyboardist Tsumugi Kotobuki are desperate enough to welcome her in, even though Yui has never touched an instrument in her life.
Guitar doesn’t come easily at first. She fumbles, she forgets, she gets distracted. But she’s enthusiastic and seems to have good musical instincts underneath all that, and she slowly gets better. Once the four of them are a proper band, they call themselves Ho-kago Tea Time (After-School Tea Time), which is a fair hint about where their priorities sit. There’s music, sure, but also a lot of laughing, a lot of friendship and a lot of tea.
Most days are a mix of practice, school festivals, the odd performance and plenty of small distractions. Mio is terrified of embarrassing herself in front of a crowd. Ritsu’s pranks have a habit of wrecking rehearsals. Tsumugi, meanwhile, is mostly just happy to hand around snacks. Yui’s younger sister, Ui, helps out in the background too, as the girls juggle school life and whatever ambitions they have for the band.
As the club grows and new members arrive, the show seems to suggest that becoming rock stars was never really the point. What they end up with is a pile of shared memories, and that’s probably the bigger win. K-On! is a gentle slice-of-life series about friendship, youthful innocence and the plain pleasure of making music with people you like. It’s not trying to be dramatic, and that’s much of its charm.
All about Japan
All About Japan shows you interesting journeys, interviews or just trivia that teach us more about the Land of The Rising Sun and its people. Enjoy the videos as we take a deeper dive into what makes Japan such a beloved country for many from some of our favourite YouTubers.
Cosplay
First we share a New York Comic Con NYCC 2026 Best cosplay music video, then we share a very interesting video about Japanese cosplayers that are shocked…. You have to watch to find out!!
Japanese Art Forms
The Koto: Japan’s Enchanting Traditional String Instrument
The koto is one of Japan’s most recognisable traditional musical instruments. Resembling a long wooden zither, it produces a delicate, resonant sound that can evoke the tranquillity of a Japanese garden or the atmosphere of an ancient imperial court.
Introduced to Japan from China during the eighth century, the koto became an important part of gagaku, Japan’s traditional court music. Over the centuries, it developed into a celebrated solo instrument, accompanying songs and performing alongside instruments such as the shamisen and shakuhachi.
A standard koto has 13 strings stretched across a hollow body traditionally made from paulownia wood. Movable bridges, called kotoji, adjust the strings’ pitches. Musicians pluck the strings using small finger picks known as tsume, usually worn on the thumb, index finger and middle finger of the right hand. Meanwhile, the left hand presses the strings to create expressive changes in pitch and vibrato.
The koto is not confined to the past, either. Modern musicians have experimented with additional strings, new compositions and contemporary genres, including jazz. Its versatility allows this centuries-old instrument to reach audiences far beyond traditional Japanese music.
Whether heard in a classical performance or a modern arrangement, the koto remains a beautiful symbol of Japan’s musical heritage.
Japanese Commercials
Japanese commercials are out of this world sometimes, strange and fun. We share with you a highly entertaining Japanese commercial video and we hope you enjoy it!
Sugoi Shorts
We share fun YouTube shorts about anime, cosplay, music and everything inbetween!