An Anime Smoking Break

Columnist Andrew Osmond takes a break with Crunchyroll’s romcom about a harassed salaryman, the perky checkout girl he adores, and the pierced, deep-voiced coworker he somehow can’t tell is the same woman, and asks why Japanese animation loves a game of hidden identity.

Smoking in Japan is both rigidly restricted and highly visible. Puffing while walking on a Tokyo sidewalk is out, on pain of penalties, but there are designated “Smoking Areas,” sectioned off by barriers, where large clusters of people blow their collective cloud. I’m not a smoker, so those places are mystery territories to me, like pachinko and mahjong parlors.

For all its reputation for healthy living, smoking remains part of Japanese life. There were 17 million smokers in the country according to a 2023 report, though that might be down a million or two now. My favorite example of smoking in anime is in the 2004 show Planetes, a largely realistic drama about the rigors of outer space living… yet a crusty pilot character has her enclosed smoke zone, and damn the cost in oxygen.

If you think I’ll cover Chainsmoker Cat, one of the current TV series, about a catgirl hooked hopelessly on her smokes, then think again. Available on Netflix, Chainsmoker Cat has trended on its gross-outs. You can get an idea of its extremes from the first two minutes, which go from mellow slice-of-life to eeew scatology. The series was curbed by streaming platforms in Hong Kong and Taiwan, not for the sake of good taste but because it “advertised” smoking (presumably in the same way Trainspotting advertised heroin). I watched three episodes and called it a day.

No, the smoking show that attracted me is almost as unassuming as its title: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You, on Crunchyroll. Part of its draw for me is it’s a rare anime romcom with working grown-ups (see my rant on that elsewhere). Smoking has an interesting situation, part of which is broadly believable, and part of which seems so ridiculous that maybe you could only get away with it in a cartoon. But the “ridiculous” part has a thematic heft.

Sasaki is a harassed office worker in his 40s. The nature of his business isn’t disclosed, though it’s sourly called “Happy Corp.” Our hero’s long face hasn’t lost all its boyish innocence, but he seems destined for a future of haggardness. Sasaki’s committed drudgework is only punctuated by bawlings-out from his boss. His one consolation is his local supermarket (open 24/7, common in Tokyo), and specifically check-out register two.

Unlike much of the world, this supermarket hasn’t fallen victim to bar-code automation; there are humans at the tills. And Sasaki’s favorite check-out server is Yamada, an endearingly perky girl in her 20s. She always has a peppy smile and an earnest tone which, well, animates his day.

But one evening, Yamada’s not at register two. Sasaki goes out dejected and is looking for a smoking area when a woman’s voice calls him from the back of the supermarket. She introduces herself as Tayama, a self-possessed twentysomething with ear piercings, a deep voice and a black jacket. She’s insolent but good-humored; she instinctively intrudes on Sasaki’s personal space, homing in on his shyness and embarrassment with the precision of a school bully, but none of the malice. Sasaki is what Japanese pop-culture calls a “herbivore” male. Put him with a strange woman on a dark night, and he has the assertiveness of a dishcloth.

A supermarket employee, Tayama reveals she’s seen Sasaki’s attraction to Yamada at the till. (“You’re the guy who always lines up at register two, aren’t you?”) But after hearing Sasaki’s shamefaced confession, and his assurance that he has no designs on the tiller, she accepts he’s no creep. A scene later, Sasaki is being served by the soft-spoken Yamada at the till again. She cheerfully mentions her colleague Tayama told her Sasaki is a “fan” of her.

And as Sasaki leaves hot-faced in embarrassment, we see the small plasters on Yamada’s ears, covering piercing holes. Yup, Yamada and “Tayama” are one and the same person.

That’s the basis of the series. It follows Sasaki’s continuing awkward smoke breaks with Tayama, as he thinks of her, and her incredulous amusement that he can’t see what’s in front of his face. Viewers will share the incredulity. How can Sasaki not see past his female companion’s swiftly-donned hairband, piercings and lowered voice? Is he a male Lois Lane?

The obvious point, though hardly referenced in the dialogue, is that what really blinds Sasaki is his stubborn preconception of Yamada as a smiling, friendly shopgirl. That’s the image that attracted him; why would he look any further?

As I said, this absurdity has thematic heft. It also has a quasi-justification, thanks to the cartoon medium. In much animation, it’s hard to judge how much characters are meant to look alike, given they’re often struck from generic templates such as “young woman.” Asking how similar Yamada and “Tayama” look to Sasaki would challenge anime’s fabric. It’s like asking if characters in animation differentiate between live-action and cartoons when they watch TV.

I wouldn’t make any high claims for Smoking Behind the Supermarket. The movement, by Asahi Production, is functional, though the character designs — principally Sasaki, Tayama “and” the occasionally-appearing Yamada — are suitably distinct and serve the show’s humor. As in many anime, it takes the weather to provide a bit of lyricism. There’s a strong sequence in a howling typhoon, and another on a cold crisp early morning when the characters aren’t together.

The situations, such as they are, often feel stretched, though there’s always a good line or payoff not far ahead, whether in the current vignette or the next. At best, the characters’ tentative chemistry has enough underlying worry to generate charm. Sasaki frets he’s a sad old man who should have no business dallying, however platonically, with Tayama or Yamada. Meanwhile the woman who’s secretly both of them enjoys her game and worries she’s being mean, especially when Sasaki goes out of his way to be nice to her. Just what is their relationship, this couple posing as a trio?

A few more characters come in later, including the supermarket’s woman manager, who’s formidable but approachable. I worried she would be a love-rival for Sasaki, but so far she’s been funnier than that (she knows what’s going on, but watches it from afar). Not that the show is afraid of tropes. Midway through the season, we get one of the hoariest, corniest “surprise” reveals in anime storytelling. I could go with it, though.

As of writing, the series has just ended (the penultimate episode was especially sweet), though the source manga’s still running and a second anime season is presumably possible. The manga, incidentally, is serialized in a men’s manga magazine (“Monthly Big Gangan”), though before checking, I thought it might have been from a women’s one. After all, it’s a story of an endearingly hapless man and the woman who controls him gleefully and guiltily. (The gender of the strip’s creator, who goes by “Jinushi,” seems unknown.)

The show’s main shortcoming is its slightness. In particular, it’ll disappoint viewers who’d like a meatier discussion of male preconceptions and female stereotypes. That’s rarely hinted, except in an early scene where Tayama tells Sasaki about how supermarket staff are pressed to put on a perfect smile for customers. (“Your eyes have to be upturned and crescent, lift your facial muscles and show your upper teeth…”) But this season’s history serial Jaadugar was more cutting on the subject of female smiles, as I noted recently.

But what struck me about Smoking Behind the Supermarket is how it exemplifies anime’s penchant for playing with identity, and perceptions of identity. American animation can play these games too. There are the cross-gender performances of Bugs Bunny, and the swathe of cartoon superheroes pretending to be ordinary people. Though I’ve never seen, say, a Batman cartoon get very interested in the hero’s play-acting as Bruce Wayne. The Spider-Verse movies suggest you can be entirely yourself whether your mask is on or off.

In anime, though, identity games abound. Toward the superhero side, the 2000s saw two vastly popular anime, Death Note and Code Geass, which are both about boys desperate to hide their secret identities as they crusade to change the world. But these boys are less heroes than megalomaniacs. Their stories focus less on their feats than on the crazy lengths they’ll go in order to keep their identities secret: murder, brainwashing, even brainwashing themselves so they believe the lies they protect.

How about rebooting your identity? Reincarnation is an anime staple, mostly in other-world (isekai) stories, but outside them too. In the pop/mystery saga Oshi no Ko, the two reincarnated characters are celebrity twins in contemporary Japan. In anime, a teen boy and girl can swap bodies (the blockbuster Your Name), adults regress to vulnerable children (the thriller Erased), and children can transmute into adults (last year’s series Sanda, though “magic girl” shows did the same thing 50 years ago).

The landmark in identity-themed anime remains Satoshi Kon’s 1997 film Perfect Blue, a psycho-thriller about a singer who’s simultaneously a real, victimized woman and a frilly-frocked phantom constructed by her fans and her own fury. But Smoking Behind the Supermarket is closer to a non-fantasy series like 2019’s Domestic Girlfriend. In that, a teen boy and girl have sex one time; then their respective parents decide to marry and the youngsters must cope with being step-siblings. Sounds gross, and bits of it are, but it’s also a thoughtful relationship story, at least in anime form.

Even the current anime season has an example of the form, a show on Crunchyroll called Oh Boy, Was I Wrong About Her. With a name like that, you might be able to guess the story. A boy transfers to a new school and meets an attractive girl classmate. Then he realizes they were childhood playmates, only he always thought she was a boy back then.

Is this liking for identity games a reaction to Japan’s regulated culture, to its restrictive expectations on how people behave and who they can be? I’m wary of making such a foreigner’s speculation, and yet it’s suggested by Smoking Behind the Supermarket‘s own miniature worldbuilding. This is a show whose hero endures passive misery in his office, while the heroine makes her trained smiles at the cash register, only snatching moments of freedom in the shadow of her workplace. Her separation of identities into Yamada and Tayama may be a romcom prank. But it suggests so much more about this person, her work and world.

Andrew Osmond is a British author and journalist, specialising in animation and fantasy media. His email is [email protected].
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