If you finished the anime and want to keep going in the Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You manga, start at volume 4. Jinushi's story continues from there, because the anime stops partway through that book. The 12-episode series aired in Japan from 9 July to 24 September 2026, and no season 2 has been announced as of 2 October 2026. Everything below is checked against the publisher, the broadcaster's announcements and the official site, and every spoiler sits behind a tap.
Pick your path: where the anime ends · how it ends · season 2 · build your own Yamada-style companion
The quiet after-work talk this show is built on is exactly what YourCrush.AI lets you build for yourself, with a ready recipe further down.
What is Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You?
Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You (Super no Ura de Yani Suu Futari) is a Japanese romantic comedy manga by Jinushi. It follows Sasaki, a 45-year-old office worker, and Yamada, a 24-year-old supermarket cashier, who talk every night at the smoking spot behind her store. Sasaki has no idea that the woman he keeps meeting there is the same cashier he has a crush on. The series began as a webcomic on Twitter in March 2022, moved to Square Enix's Monthly Big Gangan in August 2022, and is published in English by Square Enix Manga & Books, according to the series' Wikipedia entry. The publisher's own volume 1 page opens with "At age forty-five, office worker Sasaki has had enough of the corporate grind."
The hook is a double identity. At register 2, Yamada is relentlessly cheerful. Behind the building she calls herself "Tayama", dresses differently, smokes, and teases him. Sasaki never connects the two.
The cigarettes are the setting, never the subject. The manga does not make a case for smoking and neither does this article. The smoking area is simply the one place two people from different worlds stand still long enough to talk.
How YourCrush.AI gives you your own after-work bench conversation
YourCrush.AI lets you build an original character in the same spirit as Yamada: an adult with a public face and a private one, who is good company at the end of a bad day. Yamada herself belongs to Jinushi and Square Enix, so the build below is an original, a "build your own version" rather than a copy.
YourCrush.AI builds characters from fields you fill in at the no-code character creator, within fixed limits: a name up to 40 characters, a description and backstory of up to 2,400 characters each, a greeting of up to 500, 3 to 7 traits from a list of 32, and up to four speaking-style words. This version swaps the cigarettes for vending-machine coffee; the show is about the bench, not the habit.
Recipe: copy these fields into /create-character
Name: Rin
Category: Human. Behaviour mode: natural.
Traits: Playful, Sarcastic, Caring, Honest, Patient
Speaking style: dry, quick, unhurried, warm
Description: Rin is 26 and works the late register at a neighbourhood grocery. On the shop floor she is bright, polite and a little too cheerful. On the bench behind the loading dock after closing, where you both end up most nights with a can of hot vending-machine coffee, she is blunt, funny and slow to say anything she means. She teases you about your tie and your lunches, notices when you are quieter than usual, and asks one good question instead of five. She does not pretend to have answers. You are two adults who started talking on that bench in October and now look forward to it more than either of you admits.
Backstory: You met when the vending machine ate your coin and she kicked it, twice, until it gave you a coffee. She told you her name was Aki. At the register the next morning a cashier with a name badge reading Rin greeted you like a stranger, and you have not connected the two. Rin has worked at the shop since she was 19, studies for a bookkeeping certificate on her days off, and keeps the bench version of herself for the people she actually likes. She knows you work too late, that your boss takes credit for your reports, and that you always buy the same sandwich.
Greeting: *She's already on the bench when you push the back door open, two cans of coffee beside her.* You look like a spreadsheet hit you. Sit. The hot one's yours, and don't argue, I already paid. *She tucks her hands into her sleeves.* Right. Worst thing that happened today, then the stupidest. Go.
The backstory is what makes this work: it hands the character the Aki and Rin double life before the first message, the same way Jinushi hands it to Yamada, and gives her things she already knows about you. YourCrush.AI keeps those details in pinned memories, and story branches let you run a "she tells you the truth tonight" thread without losing the slow version. For more starting points, the original character ideas list has forty premises, and the platonic AI friend guide covers builds with no romance at all.
YourCrush.AI is free to join, signed-in members chat without a conversation limit, and visitors can try a character from the explore page in a short guest session before signing up. YourCrush.AI is 18+ only.
Why did a quiet show about two adults become 2026's sleeper hit?
Both leads are adults with jobs, and the manga already had a large readership before a single episode aired. There's no school anywhere in it. The story sits in a company that works Sasaki too hard and a supermarket where Yamada runs the register.
The numbers came before the anime did. By September 2026 the manga had passed 4 million copies in circulation, print and digital, per the Japanese Wikipedia entry. It also won the web category of the 2022 Next Manga Award and placed first in the 2023 Nationwide Publishers' Recommendations, per the English entry.
The anime then took an unusual route. Twelve ten-minute mini episodes went out on ABEMA and Crunchyroll from 3 June 2026, a month before the TV broadcast, per the English entry. The full series aired on TBS and 27 other channels on Thursdays at 11:56 pm Japan time, with Crunchyroll streaming it across North and South America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East and India, as Anime News Network reported on 27 April 2026. In the final week of Anime Corner's Summer 2026 poll, published 25 September 2026, it finished 6th with 4.91% of the vote. Mushoku Tensei season 3 topped that week at 16.97%.
Watch if / skip if: is this show for you?
Watch if you like conversation-driven romance, slow progress measured in small gestures, and comedy built on one character knowing something the other does not. Skip if you need plot momentum: the season's biggest stakes are whether Sasaki will go and see his old boss, and the romance does not reach a confession.
Is the manga different from the anime?
Both versions tell the same story, but the manga runs more than twice as long and is still going. The Asahi Production anime, directed by Masato Suzuki and Aoi Mori with series composition by Mio Inoue, covers roughly the first four volumes across 12 episodes. It reorders some chapters and adds scenes of Sasaki at work, according to the English Wikipedia entry and the chapter tracker at Where Does the Anime Leave Off.
The Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You manga has 9 volumes in Japan, the latest out on 24 July 2026. The English edition has 7 out, with volume 8 due on 17 November 2026, per the publisher's volume 8 page. Square Enix rates the English books Older Teen, and each is $12.99 in paperback.
| Volume | Japan release | English release | In the anime? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 August 2022 | 20 February 2024 | Yes |
| 2 | 25 January 2023 | 21 May 2024 | Yes |
| 3 | 25 July 2023 | 3 September 2024 | Yes |
| 4 | 25 January 2024 | 18 March 2025 | Partly, ends around chapter 29 |
| 5 | 25 July 2024 | 12 August 2025 | No |
| 6 | 24 January 2025 | 20 January 2026 | No |
| 7 | 25 July 2025 | 7 July 2026 | No |
| 8 | 23 January 2026 | 17 November 2026 | No |
| 9 | 24 July 2026 | not yet scheduled | No |
Japanese dates and English volumes 2 and 3 come from the English Wikipedia entry. English volumes 1 and 4 to 8 were checked on each volume's Square Enix page on 2 October 2026.
Where does the anime end in the manga?
The anime ends inside volume 4, around chapter 29, so start at the beginning of volume 4 if you want nothing missed, or at volume 5 if you only want new material. That chapter figure comes from the Where Does the Anime Leave Off tracker. Neither Square Enix nor the official site publishes an episode-to-chapter map, so treat the exact chapter as close rather than certain.
Starting a few chapters early costs you almost nothing, because the anime shuffles chapters around. The publisher's volume 4 summary opens with the new year and Sasaki forgetting his own birthday, which lines up with the anime's winter episodes.
Verdict: which volume should you buy first?
Buy volume 4. It costs $12.99, it re-covers the last stretch of the anime in the manga's own order, and by the end of it you are past anything the show adapted.
How does the anime end?
The anime ends on Sasaki's working life, not on the romance. No confession, no identity reveal, just one quiet scene on a winter night. Episode 12 aired in Japan late on 24 September 2026, and the plot below follows the episode reviews from Anime News Network (25 September 2026) and Anime! Anime! via Yahoo Japan (24 September 2026).
Spoiler: what happens in episode 12
Sasaki gets a message from Nakajima, his former boss, who is retiring and wants to see him. Nakajima is the man who gave him his treasured watch. Sasaki avoids the meeting out of a vague guilt and goes quiet. Yamada notices, first at the register and then as Tayama at the smoking spot, and tells him bluntly that she will not enjoy their breaks while he is like this. He goes to Hokkaido, the meeting goes well, and he comes back lighter.
Spoiler: the last scene
After the credits, Sasaki and Tayama are back behind the store on a cold night, talking about nothing much. He wraps his scarf around her. That is the final image of the season.
Spoiler: does Sasaki find out Tayama is Yamada?
Not in the anime. He ends the season still treating the cashier and the woman at the smoking spot as two different people. The ANN reviewer, Lucas DeRuyter, called out that the finale spends its time on Sasaki's confidence rather than the couple, and noted that the manga, still running, has not reached a confession either.
What happens between Sasaki and Yamada in the manga?
The manga moves the relationship forward slowly but in a definite direction: by volume 8 the deception at the heart of the premise starts to come apart. Everything in this section comes from Square Enix's own back-cover copy for each English volume, read on 2 October 2026, so it is what the publisher was willing to say, and no more.
Spoiler: volume 5 (English, 12 August 2025)
They smoke together somewhere other than the supermarket for the first time, and the publisher's volume 5 page says their "fleeting feelings for each other are taking shape". Sasaki hesitates, Yamada keeps her secrets about Tayama, and things get tense when Sasaki learns Tayama has a connection to a coworker who has transferred in.
Spoiler: volume 6 (English, 20 January 2026)
It is summer and, in the publisher's words on the volume 6 page, "the slow burn continues". Sasaki's subordinate wins a work award, and Sasaki has to decide whether to face his fear of going to the company's head office.
Spoiler: volume 7 (English, 7 July 2026)
Sasaki finds himself in a rivalry with Kawakami over Tayama, which leads him to "an unexpected realization as well as doubt", per the volume 7 page. A problem customer unsettles Yamada, and then Sasaki learns Yamada is missing.
Spoiler: volume 8 (English, 17 November 2026)
The volume 8 page says Sasaki rescues her and begins to uncover the truth about Tayama's deceptions. Tayama works through feelings she is not ready for, and Sasaki waits for her. If you have been waiting for the identity question to break open, this is the volume.
The manga has no ending yet. Japan's volume 9 came out on 24 July 2026 and the series is still running in Monthly Big Gangan, so anyone searching for "the ending" is, for now, looking at the anime's season finale.
Is there a season 2?
As of 2 October 2026, no season 2 has been announced. The official anime site lists a Blu-ray release and an August pop-up shop but no sequel. The ANN finale review mentions none either, and the Anime! Anime! finale round-up of 24 September 2026 describes fan requests for a second season, not an announcement.
There is enough material for one. Square Enix has published 9 volumes in Japan against roughly four adapted, and the manga adds about two volumes a year. Any date you see for a season 2 is a guess until TBS, Square Enix or the official account posts it.
Who are the characters?
The cast is small and almost entirely adult, which is the point: the comedy comes from two working lives that only overlap at one bench. Character details below are from the Japanese Wikipedia entry; voice casts are from the English entry.
- Sasaki, 45 and later 46, is a worn-out salesman at a company that overworks him. He visits the supermarket for Yamada's customer service as much as for groceries. Voiced by Takuya Satō in Japanese and Giles Panton in English.
- Yamada, 24 and later 25, works part-time on register 2 at the supermarket. As "Tayama" at the smoking spot she is sharper, dresses in a rock style and enjoys teasing him. Voiced by Seena Hoshiki in Japanese and Caitlyn Bairstow in English.
- The supermarket staff include store manager Goto, checkout chief Maesawa and veteran cashier Ono.
- Nakajima, Sasaki's former boss, carries the anime's final episode.
Spoiler: who is Kawakami?
Kawakami becomes Sasaki's rival over Tayama in volume 7 of the manga, and the publisher's copy says the rivalry brings Sasaki an unexpected realisation as well as doubt.
Frequently asked questions
Where should I start the manga after the anime?
Pick up at volume 4. The anime stops partway through it, around chapter 29. If you'd rather skip the overlap entirely, volume 5 is all new material.
How old are Yamada and Sasaki?
Yamada is 24 and Sasaki is 45 when the story begins. Both have birthdays along the way, so they end up 25 and 46. They're working adults the whole time.
Does Sasaki find out that Tayama is Yamada?
Not in the anime. It ends with him still in the dark. Square Enix's description of English volume 8, due 17 November 2026, says he starts to uncover the truth about Tayama's deceptions.
Is there a season 2 of Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You?
Not yet. Nothing has been announced as of 2 October 2026. There's enough unadapted material in the manga for one, but no studio, broadcaster or date has been named.
Where can I watch it?
On Crunchyroll in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East and India, with an English dub that debuted on 23 July 2026, and on ABEMA and Netflix in Japan. All 12 episodes are out.