This won’t be the Manhattan Cafe post, but it will be a Manhattan Cafe post.
Manhattan Cafe, or just “Cafe” is the creepy-looking girl with long black hair and golden eyes.
She’s a really fun character because you see her and she’s a really cordial and mild-mannered girl, hell, if you’re willing to take the risk, she actually has her own personal coffee shop of sorts in the same unused room that Agnes Tachyon uses for her laboratory where you can chill.
She loves hiking and chatting… in fact she loves conversation so much she’s often seen talking alone.
And looking at… something in empty air.
And THINGS just seem to act up around her in the once-in-a-blue-moon moment that she has strong emotions.
And many often report seeing Cafe at night only for her to matter-of-factly point out she was doing something else at the time.
The fun part is that despite the immensely cursed vibe that she can give sometimes, Cafe is always super casual about the whole thing. My favorite example is her SR Support card where she’s placidly doodling things on the condensation of a window and then the Episode tab reveals that she’s been having a conversation with SOMEONE or SOMETHING and playing a thing where she draws to tell what she was doing.
Whatever she can see seems to be very gentle with her, and that includes the recurrent figure of her “Friend”
On her personal side, Cafe often comments on how she has an easier time relating to girls like Agnes Tachyon, Special Week, or Marvelous Sunday, whereas girls like TM Opera O or Meishou Dotou tend to feel like too much for her sometimes.
This goes both ways too, there’s a scene where she’s chatting with other girls and where everyone seemed lost, Zenno Rob Roy was the one that immediately got what she meant and took it from there.
And then there’s her racing.
Cafe has a lot of stamina, she’s one of the best stayers both in gameplay and in-universe and when she runs it feels as if she’s not actually focusing on the other girls, it’s as if her “Friend” is always one step ahead of her, taunting her, daring her to reach her, and she just… can’t no matter how hard or how long she runs.
But she persists, because this is a “Friend” she loves, a “Friend” that loves her back.
But a “Friend” that she’s never seen the face of, no matter how hard she tries.
A “Friend” that loves her so much that she keeps nudging her eventual trainer into paying attention to her by making them lose their phone near her training, or cutting the power to make them go out. Because this “Friend” wants Cafe to realize that if she wants to catch up to her she cannot do it alone, that she’s not enough even for that.
The Episode tab of her SSR Support card says:
Run, run, run
Still not enough to catch up
Still not enough to take the lead
–
Spin, spin, spin
It goes up, it goes down
My thoughts go round and round
Before I know it I’m on top of a gear
–
A beautiful song just ended
But it wasn’t a song for me
My will to face forwards is gone
I’m only facing Her back
–
Oh I can only see Her back
I can only see Her back now
All I can do is run like hell
Towards that swaying back
–
This creature that I am is just
Stirred, dilluted, and reassembled
Just another cog
In pursuit of Her
–
I’m slowly losing track
Of who I am and why I am here
The noise is so far away
I don’t know if it’s cheering or shouting
–
In a world that was in chaos
Only the thread-like path behind Her
Remained silent
–
(I’m chasing you
Only you, always)
–
The golden gears turn
I reach out to touch Her
–
In that moment
I left the whole world behind
And who is she chasing? Well, to speedrun a bit of Cafe’s story, as it progresses she starts opening up to more and more girls. Where she once would shun others because everyone thought she was weird, now a lot of girls would visit her little coffee shop and look for advice or just small chatter.
Her trainer, meanwhile would seem to become more and more aware of the supernatural stuff going on around her.
This all culminates in the last scene of her training campaign, where Cafe talks about how what she wants is to spread her arms and just help as many girls as she can. To the point that she wants to practice some running to be able to advice one of the girls asking her questions all the better.
She wants to be everyone’s Friend, helping if only from the shadows, that even if she can never catch up with her “Friend” it’s important to help other friends just as much.
And in that moment, for the trainer, Manhattan’s image seemed to overlap with… something.
The word “Friend” immediately came to mind even though the trainer has never seen Cafe’s “Friend”.
When the trainer asks Cafe if her “Friend” is still close by she says yes before being puzzled because she WAS there just a second ago.
The trainer gets more overwhelmed, they try to convey to no avail that they’re hearing the constant voice of an Uma Musume, of “The Seed” (種). For a second they even try to say that Cafe is every Uma Musume’s… something.
And in that moment, the trainer remembers the fable of a certain Horse Girl. The “Ultimate” Horse Girl, with almost perfect speed, a girl that looked awfully familiar to Cafe.
That girl had a dream.
For people to not only reach her, but surpass her.
And you wanna know what the name of Manhattan Cafe’s ending is?
静かなる継承者
“Silent Heir”.
…
By the way, if the implication wasn’t obvious by now: In real life Manhattan Cafe was so similar to Sunday Silence that he was actually used as an “actor” horse to play his part on a TV drama based on the life of Zenya Yoshida.
There’s also the detail of how Manhattan Cafe was a prolific stallion himself and became Leading Sire after Sunday Silence (AND Agnes Tachyon), but for now, let’s leave it here and focus next time on untangling this thing I’ve been teasing so much.