Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You premieres 9 July 2026 on TBS and 27 affiliated Japanese channels, with new episodes airing weekly on Thursday nights for a confirmed 12-episode run.
Crunchyroll will stream the series internationally alongside the Japanese broadcast, giving it a same-day global release rather than the delayed rollout older anime adaptations often got.
The anime adapts Jinushi's ongoing manga, which began life as a webcomic posted to Twitter in March 2022 before Square Enix picked it up for serialization in Monthly Big Gangan that August; the series won the 2022 Next Manga Award in the web category, an early signal that its premise had crossover appeal beyond typical romance-manga readers. The story follows Sasaki, a burnt-out, middle-aged salaryman who gets through his days on small pleasures, mochi chips, a cigarette, and pleasant small talk with Yamada, his favorite supermarket cashier, then starts meeting a cool, intimidating regular named Tayama on her smoke breaks behind the store, unaware the two women are one and the same. Directors Tadato Suzuki and Aoi Mori lead the adaptation at Asahi Production, a Tokyo studio with five decades of history whose recent slate includes Heaven's Design Team, with Mio Inoue handling series composition.
The premise reads, on paper, like a standard age-gap romance setup, but the manga has built its following on sidestepping that trap: the appeal is in the workplace-comedy companionship between two women who don't realize they already know each other, built around shared small vices rather than a will-they-won't-they hook.
Confirmed: the 12-episode count, the Thursday-night TBS broadcast slot, Crunchyroll's day-and-date global streaming, and the manga's Big Gangan and Next Manga Award pedigree. Unclear ahead of the premiere: how the anime's animation and pacing will hold up against the source material, and whether a second season or home-video release is already planned.
