Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You

Name: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You
Genre: Romance
Released: 2026-07-10

スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり (Super no Ura de Yani Suu Futari)

9.3(3)

OtakuDen

8.3(53,593)

MAL Score

Ranked #300

Popularity #1318

Romance
Adult Cast
Love Status Quo

Episodes: 12
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Jul 10, 2026 to Sep 24, 2026
Status: Currently Airing

Synopsis

In the daily grind of his uninspiring job, middle-aged Sasaki finds solace in the bright smile of Yamada, a young cashier at the local 24-hour supermarket. Her cheerful demeanor serves as a welcome respite from the monotony of his life, offering a glimpse of warmth that he cherishes after long days filled with stress and dissatisfaction.

One evening, after a particularly taxing shift, Sasaki arrives at the store only to discover that Yamada has already clocked out. Feeling a sense of loss, he steps out for a smoke, where he encounters the bold and playful Tayama. With a teasing spirit, she calls out Sasaki’s fondness for Yamada and even mentions this to the young woman, throwing Sasaki into a whirlwind of unexpected emotions. As their encounters grow more frequent, a unique camaraderie develops between Sasaki and Tayama, revealing layers of complexity and connection that challenge his previously unchanging routine.

Otaku Consensus

Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You has landed as one of 2026’s strongest niche romances, with its 8.46 MAL score and 83 AniList average reflecting praise for Aoi Mori and Masato Suzuki’s patient handling of adult loneliness, routine, and flirtation. Its strongest asset is the slow-burn structure: the repeated supermarket-side meetings give Mio Inoue’s series composition room to turn small conversational shifts into character development. The main criticism is also its hook: viewers frustrated by romantic stasis and by Sasaki being kept in the dark may find the pacing deliberately evasive rather than soothing.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want a romance about working adults that trades confession fireworks for cigarette-break tension, awkward pauses, and the strange intimacy of seeing the same person after a bad day. It scratches a related itch to Wotakoi’s adult-cast appeal and After the Rain’s age-gap melancholy, but with a more contained, ritualistic structure: the show keeps returning to one ordinary urban pocket until it starts to feel emotionally loaded. The appeal is not “will they date?” so much as watching two exhausted people renegotiate what comfort, performance, and attraction look like outside youth-romance formulas. ZUTOMAYO on the opening and imase on the ending also give the adaptation a distinctly contemporary J-pop frame rather than a soft-focus throwback mood.

Key Characters

S
Sasaki(VA: Takuya Satou)
Sasaki is compelling because he is written as an adult whose emotional life has narrowed into routines, making every flustered reaction and small breach of habit feel unusually revealing.
Y
Yamada(VA: Seena Hoshiki)
Yamada functions as more than a cheerful service-worker presence; fans latch onto the tension between her polished public warmth and the show’s interest in what remains unread in everyday interactions.
T
Tayama
Tayama is the pressure valve of the series: blunt, teasing, and central to why the romance plays less like wish fulfillment than a test of what Sasaki actually notices.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Asahi Production’s 12-episode TV adaptation is built around repetition rather than escalation, using the supermarket-adjacent meeting place as a fixed emotional stage instead of constantly changing locations.
2
The series is co-directed by Aoi Mori and Masato Suzuki, with Mio Inoue handling series composition, a staff arrangement that suits a romance where timing, withheld information, and conversational rhythm matter more than event-heavy plotting.
3
Its demographic identity is unusually clear: AniList users tag it 97% Seinen, 90% Primarily Adult Cast, 81% Age Gap, and 77% each for Konbini and Work, separating it from the school-romance default of the genre.
4
The sound package pairs Kouhei Yoshida as sound director with music by Sayaka Aoki and Shin Kouno, while the opening is performed by ZUTOMAYO and the ending by imase, giving the adaptation a notable contemporary music profile.
5
The most discussed structural choice is that Sasaki’s limited understanding is preserved as a major hook, which is why the same device is praised as slow-burn tension by supporters and criticized as frustrating stasis by detractors.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The anime adapts Jinushi’s original work, with Asahi Production credited as the animation studio.
Fun fact 2: Despite a relatively modest MAL popularity placement of #1689, the series holds a high MAL score of 8.46 from 34,111 votes and a rank of #190, suggesting unusually strong approval among the viewers who have found it.
Fun fact 3: AniList shows a similar reception pattern, listing the series at 83/100 with 2,323 favourites while its tags heavily emphasize seinen, adult cast, work life, and iyashikei elements.
Fun fact 4: The opening theme is performed by ZUTOMAYO, while the ending theme is performed by imase, an unusually high-profile pairing for a contained adult romance.
Fun fact 5: The show began airing on July 9, 2026 and is listed as currently airing, so its critical reputation is still developing episode by episode rather than being based on a completed season consensus.