Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You — Episodes 1-3

Content Warning: Age gap (24 and 45); Smoking/Use of Tobacco (as implied by the title)

What’s it about? Sasaki is your typical overworked salaryman who makes his paycheck laboring at a desk and taking the occasional smoke break. But even though life is mundane, he has one treat to look forward to at the end of the day: going to his favorite twenty-four hour market and chatting with the perennially cheerful Yamada, a cashier who’s always present on register two. But then one day, he ends up going overtime only to find that Yamada is off the clock. But fate seems to have another young woman in mind for him to meet who seems to not mind keeping him company on his smoke breaks…

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At base, Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You is a collection of vignettes that, on the surface seem to be just that: an anime about Sasaki, a middle-aged office worker, and Yamada, a super market cashier who meet up to occasionally smoke when she’s off shift or on a break. It’s very simple, both on the surface and beneath it. Yet I’ll admit: these vignettes are so much more to me as an adult viewer.

And, uh, vignettes these are because this release is six episodes in full but actually twelve episodes because they’re mini-episodes. The rest will apparently be released at some future date, but we don’t know when, or if they’ll be recobbled into 12 full-length episodes again. Either way, this review concerns itself with episodes 1 through 3 or, per the landing page for Smoking, mini-episodes 1 through 6. Now that you’ve got the gist, let’s start with the review!

Episode 1 starts with Sasaki and Yamada’s meet-cute: Sasaki is your typical overworked office worker, harried and exhausted at forty-five. But he has one reprieve: stopping into the local supermarket to pick up assorted discounted ready-to-eat meals and even some snacks. Enter Yamada, a friendly cashier at Super S who does her due diligence on register two. After a chance meeting, Sasaki finds himself drawn to her, mostly for how cute she is but also because visiting the market means a reprieve from his work day.

From there, we watch Sasaki and Yamada go about their day: Sasaki at his salaryman desk job, Yamada at the supermarket. With luck, their paths cross each time Sasaki stops in to purchase a basket of goods. And with greater luck, he encounters the somewhat enigmatic Tayama behind the supermarket where they share cigarettes and conversation. Of course, what’s immediately apparent to the viewer is that Yamada and Tayama are one and the same—you don’t need to know that the kanji in their name match exactly to know that.

One of the simple joys of this series is knowing that Yamada and Tayama are the same person: it’s so blatant that the series doesn’t even bother to disguise it. Instead, it opens up the relationship between Sasaki and Yamada to feel more natural as they steadily get to know each other and recognize the depth the other person has. And rather than being telegraphed through fantasy or sci-fi, their story is one that we all can encounter, should we seek connection: it’s love in aisle one, grounding the series in what I would call a pretty global adult experience: working and finding joy in feeding yourself at the end of the day.

Of course, part of what makes Smoking work so well is Sasaki being utterly relatable: he’s very much a reflection of modern adulthood, finding relief in a little treat in the most mundane place we all visit. Yet I found that made him immediately likable, trending in the direction that shows like Wotakoi do where the adults are just people you’ve probably met who have complex internal lives of their own. Contrasted against Yamada, who wears her work face as needed but is something of a punkish girl in actuality, you get the foundation of a pair of night owls that have all the potential to become more. And naturally, because this is a romantic slice of life, that’s going to happen: the joy is in the adventure there.

One thing to note is that this is an adult age-gap relationship: Sasaki is forty-five while Yamada is twenty-four. Personally, I don’t have an issue with this because they are both fully adults and Yamada very clearly has a grip on her own life: I get the feeling she wouldn’t put up with much, plus she clearly likes to fluster Sasaki intentionally enough that she doesn’t need me defending her. In fact, I would say that she’s more the driving force in their relationship than Sasaki is, especially when it comes to deducing that Yamada and Tayama are one in the same. 

Still, I understand some viewers may be put off by that: however, I was trained in the school of Tamora Pierce, and as long as everyone is adults and things are equitable, I’m all good. In this case, I think Yamada and Sasaki are well met enough that there’s no chance of any abuse of power: if anything, Sasaki is the more flustered of the two, offering a bit of a nice change to a heterosexual romance.

Simple though it may be, I really Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You because it’s just nice to see adults become friends and, in this case, set the stage for an eventual romance. It’s nice to see it executed in a way that feels incredibly natural, even if there’s the twist of Yamada’s work persona versus who she actually is when she’s not on the job. As a former retail worker who is very recently unemployed, I really vibed especially with this because instead of Yamada’s switch being painted as quirky, it’s portrayed as what it truly is: retail workers doing their job. It’s nice to see a bit of the real world adapted into an adult slice of life anime, and it’s certainly what’s kept me coming back to the manga.

There’s something so incredibly delightful about seeing more adult relationships being adapted. It’s not that I don’t love teen romance stories, especially shojo; but rather, as my gender identity has changed and, simply as I get older, I long to see more stories like mine. My IRL meet cute with my partner was over food after two weeks of texting: I sense that more and more, as the landscape of connection changes, that’s becoming the way we all settle down to connect. And whether you’re eating hot pot with friends, nestling up at a candlelit table for a few with people you love, or picking up vittles for a night at home, food is our universal language. Here, it becomes the vehicle for two adults connecting with each other and eventually, setting the stage for a romantic relationship.

In the end, this is an easy recommendation to give in these almost-dog days of summer: you can breeze through what’s available on Crunchyroll then head to your local bookstore to pick up all the manga. Oh, and don’t forget to be nice to your local retail workers: you never know if they might be in a rom-com slice of life all their own. (Also, this uses literally one of my favorite songs—Night Dancer by imase—so like…watch it for that.)