As a Final Fantasy fan living in Japan, I’m ashamed I didn’t visit the Square Enix store and cafe earlier than this, but in my defence, I only found out about it a couple of months earlier, so please don’t rain meteors on me!

Artnia is a cute egg-shaped building nestled in Shinjuku and impossible to mistake. When I walked in, I was rather surprised at how small the place was (although I should have guessed from the size of the exterior).

The picture above is about all the seating available, minus maybe 4-5 seats that are cropped out.

On the left, behind the white seats are Square Enix merchandise, mostly from Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

I badly wanted Cloud or Seph! And what did I get? Lightning and Ace -_- Anyone wants to buy them off me?

My beloved Cloud!!! I wanna play this game! But I don’t have a PSP or PS4 ._.

Now on to the food!

Unlike other theme restaurants/cafes I’ve been to, the menu at Artnia is very light on theme. Only the desserts and drinks are themed, not the mains. I guess their target market is the classy/casual fan rather than the hardcore otaku fan (there is another cafe for that; see below!)

I wanted to order pancakes but I can rarely resist Egg Benedict… and I was naively optimistic I will be able to squeeze in dessert after my main, which did not happen, of course. It’s ok, I probably wouldn’t have received the Shinra print on my pancakes anyway (the design is randomly chosen).

I was most intrigued by the materia drinks, but those all contained alcohol and they don’t serve alcohol before 5pm, so… phooey.

I was most pleased to see that the serviette (or napkin) had the logo of Seventh Heaven printed on it hehe.

Which needs its own close-up shot, obviously.

To the back of the store is a beautiful space carved out for merchandise display of the expensive stuff.

This is called the Crystal Room, because of the giant crystal that appears to be suspended in mid-air:

And of course, a selfie with the star of the room is in order:

I love the pile of materia at the bottom!

I wanna equip some! Oh wait, I don’t have slots on my coat. Guess it’ll have to go in my pocket then! (but #sayonly. I didn’t steal any)

Kingdom Hearts! Speaking of which, I *really* should go complete the game…

This is a modern, classy cafe, with light touches of the video game theme, making it enjoyable even for people who are not fans of the games. Would I revisit? With good company, certainly! This time I will have the pancakes, for sure!

Another Final Fantasy themed cafe that I very much want to visit is Eorzea Cafe at Akihabara. Although it’s based on the world of FFXIV which I don’t play, I’m a sucker for themed stuff and absolutely love the heavy theme incorporated into both the menu and decor!