If I had a rupee for the number of anime around smoking that also happen to be among my favourite anime of 2026, I’d have two rupees. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
This hyper-specific Dr. Doofenshmirtz joke may not be nearly as funny as I’d initially convinced myself it was (probably even less so to my lungs), but Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You is the second, and exponentially less disgusting of those two little miracles 2026’s anime calendar has coughed up.
Based on Jinushi’s 2022 manga and adapted for TV by Asahi Production, the series follows Sasaki, an exhausted corporate salaryman whose one dependable pleasure each day is making a pilgrimage to his local supermarket and joining the queue at register number two, where Yamada, a relentlessly cheerful and winsome cashier, can reliably brighten what remains of his increasingly despondent evening. One night, however, a late finish keeps him from catching her shift, so he wanders behind the supermarket in search of somewhere to smoke and instead encounters Tayama, a mysterious, teasing woman with a smoking spot to spare. The catch is that Tayama is Yamada, who has deliberately concealed her identity from Sasaki because watching him remain spectacularly oblivious is simply too entertaining to resist. The running gag is that Sasaki is somehow the last human on Earth to realise that the woman he worships at register number two and the woman he smokes with behind the supermarket are, in fact, the same person.
Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You (Japanese)
Director: Masato Suzuki, Aoi Mori
Cast: Takuya Satōm, Seena Hoshiki, Toa Yukinari, Shinya Takahashi
Episodes: 12
Runtime: 25 minutes
Storyline: An overworked office worker and a supermarket cashier form a secret bond, smoking behind a supermarket
It’s fairly familiar sleight-of-identity romance, yet Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You somehow turns that modest conceit into one of the year’s most tender examinations of metropolitan loneliness. It is technically a romance, technically a comedy, technically a slice-of-life, and, yes, technically a show about cigarettes, but each of those labels feel inadequate the more time you spend with Sasaki and Tayama behind that supermarket.
Across its twelve episodes, the anime keeps bringing us back to the same little concrete alcove behind the same konbini, usually at roughly the same hour, where the same two people get together to smoke and talk about whatever happened that day. The cigarettes give these encounters a beginning, middle and end; like a tiny narrative clock to be lit, smoked, allowed to burn down while the conversation meanders, and finally extinguished when the allotted pocket of time is over and they have to return to the world. Every visit deposits something small into the relationship, whether it is a private joke, a remembered detail, a new piece of personal history or simply another reason to wonder whether the other person will be there tonight. Even the very space itself feels neither home nor workplace; not private, but not exactly public either — its a kind of social limbo that sociologist Ray Oldenburg called a “third place”, where Sasaki and Tayama can briefly clock out of the roles imposed upon them everywhere else.
A still from ‘Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You’
| Photo Credit:
Crunchyroll
Sasaki is what Higuruma from Jujutsu Kaisen might look like after having his Domain Expansion confiscated and his cursed technique downgraded to the considerably less formidable art of apologising at approximately 20 sumimasens per second. At 45, he is chronically overworked, visibly worn down and so thoroughly lacking in self-esteem that even the most innocuous social interaction can metastasise into a full-blown crisis. Even so, Sasaki’s complete and utter obliviousness to the Yamada/Tayama identity switch is what makes his attentiveness elsewhere so funny, and so affecting. He can stare directly at the mountain of evidence connecting Yamada and Tayama and somehow remain unconvinced, yet he notices when Tayama is uncomfortable, remembers the stray details she has mentioned, worries about imposing on her and treats her with an absurd degree of consideration and respect. There is nothing particularly heroic about it. He is simply a man who knows what it feels like to be worn down, and who therefore makes a point of not adding to somebody else’s burden. For Yamada, who spends so much of her life calibrating herself to what other people expect from her, Sasaki’s unforced consideration becomes difficult not to fall for.
Meanwhile, the Yamada/Tayama personality switch ought to quickly wear thin, yet somehow only gets funnier the longer she keeps pulling it off. Yamada feels like she listens to The Beach Boys. At counter number two, she is sunshine with a barcode scanner; bright-eyed, courteous and professionally attentive. But behind the supermarket, Deftones feels like the more appropriate band of choice for Tayama, as she emerges clad in leather and piercings with a more seductive voice to invade Sasaki’s personal space and take visible pleasure in the fact that this painfully dense dolt of a man cannot connect two extraordinarily obvious dots. Yamada is the version of herself she has learned to deploy in front of customers; Tayama is the version that is less interested in making herself palatable — Seena Hoshiki gets that balance exactly right and is one of the standout voice performances of the season. Tayama’s “cool bad girl” swagger may be slick and her michievious teasing seemingly inexhaustible, but every now and then the bravado also slips just enough for you to see how much she actually cares.
A still from ‘Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You’
| Photo Credit:
Crunchyroll
The supporting cast is wisely kept on a short leash. Goto, the manager of the supermarket is thoroughly invested in this irl romance manga, but also exasperated by the glacial pace of it all. Suzuki is Sasaki’s sympathetic blond work-bro. Obata is the head of the Produce Department with weapons-grade social anxiety, who has a short but sweet late-season appearance. And rounding out the ensemble are the gossipy supermarket chief Maezawa and the kind, encouraging elder staff cashier Ohno, who reminded me of the lovely tour guide who showed me around Tokyo and said some of the sweetest things to me during the trip (Ohara-san, if you’re reading this, you’re the best).
The anime’s influences boast a rich little pastiche of the romance canon. The Yamada/Tayama switch gives the story that old You’ve Got Mail pleasure of falling for someone while having only half the information, with a touch of Roman Holiday in the way stepping outside an assigned identity can make an ordinary relationship suddenly feel possible. It also draws on a distinctly Lost in Translation understanding of the adult loneliness epidemic as something more specific than simply being alone, and Wong Kar-wai is an equally obvious point of comparison for that instinct for romanticising postponement and the unsaid. But Richard Linklater is the filmmaker this series seems to have swallowed whole. Before Sunrise is the obvious antecedent, but not because Sasaki and Tayama can be lazily dressed up as a Japanese Jesse and Céline. The kinship is more fundamental because there is just something so deeply romantic about the simple desire to prolong a conversation. Sasaki and Tayama are not exactly plumbing the mysteries of existence between drags, yet they keep extending these mundane conversations past the point of necessity because they have simply grown fond of getting to yap without judgement, and that makes them feel seen.
A still from ‘Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You’
| Photo Credit:
Crunchyroll
Before long, we become regulars at the smoking spot too. The anime makes a fetish of these routine smoke breaks without ever making it feel repetitive. The whole thing was catnip for the insufferable Tokyo romantic in me, who could turn commuting on the Yamanote Line every morning into an aesthetic experience, or elevate a konbini run for an Ebisu to a late-night adventure, and of course, consider finding one of those ever-elusive publicly designated little smoking alcoves where a bunch of strangers can share a cigarette, a legitimate urban triumph. That is not to overlook the series’ plainly anti-capitalist impulse to wring whatever small pleasures it can from the few escapes punctuating the routine drudgery of working life, but there is something almost Proustian in the production’s attentiveness to the ordinary urban world and its knack for making the most unremarkable corners of metropolitan existence feel worthy of prolonged notice.
The chemistry between Sasaki and Tayama also has a little of Marin and Gojo from My Dress-Up Darling, only sans the egregious fan-service. The flirtations constantly tow the line between teasing and genuine affection, but the intimacy here is subtler and more observant. The anime makes a strong case for remembering as one of the least showy but most incriminating forms of devotion. To notice someone is to carry them around in your head when they are no longer there, and the title really gives away what the series is selling. It isn’t Smoking Behind the Supermarket. It is Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You.
Ultimately, this is really a story about companionship, which is probably why it has a shot at converting people who couldn’t care less about love stories. It is a slow-burn in the most literal and figurative sense, and a nouvelle vague portrait of modern love. It may not be a conventional romance, but for my money, it is the most definitively romantic thing I’ve watched all year.
Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You is currently streaming on Crunchyroll
