I absolutely love stupid romance anime. The dumber, the better. Give me ridiculous misunderstandings, painfully oblivious characters, 12 episodes of romantic tension that could have been resolved with a single conversation and a relationship progressing at the speed of continental drift. I will eat it up.
Maybe I just enjoy watching a burning dumpster fire. There’s something mesmerising about it.
Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You, however, isn’t really a dumpster fire. It’s actually rather fab.
The premise is stupidly simple. Sasaki is an overworked middle-aged man whose little bright spot is seeing Yamada, the cheerful cashier at his local supermarket. After a particularly bad day, he heads outside looking for somewhere to smoke and meets Tayama, a much sharper, cooler woman who invites him to join her behind the supermarket.
Yamada and Tayama are, of course, the same person. It’s the difference between her wearing an apron and her hair being tied up. Hello, Clark Kent.
Does Sasaki realise this? Of course not. This is a romance anime. We have episodes to fill.
Affectionately dubbed “Slow-Saki”, his extraordinary ability to miss what is happening directly in front of his face quickly became part of the charm. There were moments when my husband and I were practically screaming at the screen as another painfully obvious clue sailed straight over his head.
Yet, strangely, I never really minded.
The relationship between Sasaki and Yamada/Tayama is sweet enough that you’re happy just hanging out with them. The character development and voice acting, both in the sub and dub, give the pair a warmth that makes the simplicity of the story work.
Because, realistically, not a lot happens.
This isn’t a romance that races towards anything. The story isn’t particularly groundbreaking, the plot doesn’t dramatically evolve, and the relationship progresses at an almost comical pace. By the end, you could quite reasonably ask yourself what actually happened over the course of the series.
And yet I happily watched the entire thing.
That’s probably the best way to describe Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You. It’s a low-risk, chill anime. It isn’t necessarily the show you’re going to spend all week desperately waiting for the next episode to drop. It’s the one you put on after dinner, settle into the couch and happily let another episode roll.
That distinction matters. Something like Dandadan has me completely locked in. The story, pacing, music and characters make it the kind of anime I actively want to sit down and pay attention to. Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You isn’t trying to deliver that same experience. It’s quieter, slower and considerably less ambitious. And that’s perfectly fine.
My husband’s one genuine gripe was, bizarrely, the cigarette continuity. For an anime with smoking literally in its title, the cigarettes themselves could be surprisingly inconsistent.
Cigarettes that appeared to have been snuffed out would suddenly be lit again, while others jumped from barely smoked to half-finished between shots. It sounds incredibly nitpicky, but when so much of the series consists of two people standing around smoking and talking, you notice. A couple of times it actually pulled me out of otherwise very sweet moments.
Still, we kept watching.
Maybe that’s the real compliment. Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You isn’t the best story I’ve watched. It isn’t groundbreaking. It doesn’t particularly go anywhere. And I’m not going to pretend it does just because I enjoyed it.
Sometimes you don’t need an anime to reinvent the genre. Sometimes you just want two idiots taking an eternity to realise they like each other while smoking cigarettes behind a supermarket.
Apparently, I could watch that all day.
