This Week in Anime

The Stunt Market

Lucas
Sylvia, you and I have spoken at length about smoking in anime and how the habit can be a vehicle for social connection that's explored in works like Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You. Having this familiarity with the series, our audience can imagine how surprised I was when the anime adaptation of Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You received a rare early premiere on Crunchyroll! That's right, if you're reading this, you can watch Smoking Behind the Supermarket right now...so long as you're cool with watching it in three-part, mini-episode "installments."

Why would the decision-makers behind this anime make this choice? How does this release fit into the broader history of anime stunt releases?? How does this format affect the anime version of the cult hit??? We'll attempt to answer these questions and more in today's This Week in Anime installment! (in between contract-mandated smoking, bathroom, and snack breaks, ofc.)

Listen, if we want to do a "The TWIA Crew Installs Linux" as a future column topic, I am SO DOWN to do that the next time there's a slow news week! I finally made the jump to Firefox for all of my personal computing a few months back and have been so much happier now that my daily exposure to AI tool promotion has plummeted following the change.

While I know we're opening this column with a couple of tangents, this column is about the weird release format of a slice-of-life anime about burnt-out, working adults. The only people reading this are other 30+ year-old nerds, so we're gonna talk about stuff that 30+ year-old nerds care about!

This release fully feels like a decision that one of Sasaki's clients would have come to on their own, with him subsequently failing to talk them out of it and then having to make some version of this idea work in practice. If it sounds like I'm bringing my own experiences working in PR with a clientele of largely Japanese companies into this conversation, it's because I am! At least once a month, I have to try to make an activation or press release explicitly intended for a Japanese domestic audience work abroad, and I'm picking up similar vibes from this surprise development.

Can we talk about how a different localization of the series' name, Behind the Supermarket, Smoking with You, shows up in the title card for each episode!??

That localization isn't "better," but it's weird how friction points keep showing up around this title! Plenty of series have quirks in their localization or fan translations that are more popular than an official release, but I can't remember the last time a series so overtly drew attention to a localization choice.

As fellow ANN contributor Kalai Chik notes in her review of this early premiere, all of these mini-episodes were made available immediately to premium subscribers of the Japanese streaming platform ABEMA, with free users getting a staggered release of these mini-episodes. In the context of a subscriber benefit, this release model makes a bit more sense, but feels needlessly frustrating without it.

I too am a working adult, and a core part of Smoking Behind the Supermarket's premise is that we working adults don't even have the energy after a long day to piece together that a woman will wear different clothes and have a different affect in different settings! This kind of release model is more frustrating than anything else, with my first thought when I heard about it being, "if they're going to split episodes into three parts, they should just put it on YouTube and lean into the nostalgia." If you don't go all in with this kind of stunt, it falls flat and will work against a project.

Agreed! Outside of this format, the only complaint I have about this Supermarket Smoking is that I don't believe for a second that tall drink of water Sasaki and absolute baddie Yamada would both be single over the course of their months-long casual courtship. I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to envision a world where someone hasn't tried to lock either of them down by now!

Though speaking of Netflix, this unique release format is evocative of the Steel Ball Run premiere, which dropped a 40-some-minute premiere episode a few months back. Though, as Chris and I explored in another previous TWIA, this premiere felt more appropriate considering how different the pacing of Steel Ball Run's opening moments are compared to the rest of the work, with controversy only arising after-the-fact due to there not being immediate confirmation on when Steel Ball Run would continue.

I've long held onto the belief that Stone Ocean's production issues (such as they are) stem more from David Productions simultaneously working on the absolutely gorgeous Urusei Yatsura reboot and therefore splitting talent between the two high-profile productions, but your point still stands.

The loss of JoJo Fridays with Stone Ocean's release was, and I know this sounds hyperbolic, but bear with me, a loss of culture. Anime fans built their schedules around the weekly release of new episodes of Stardust Crusaders, Diamond is Unbreakable, and Golden Wind; and would turn each new episode release into a mini-cultural moment on various social media platforms. Companies pour ridiculous amounts of money and man-hours into artificially creating this cultural cache, and the fact that Netflix blew up this free promotion is a marketing blunder on par with Elon Musk changing the name of Twitter to "X" after the platform successfully entered the branded term "Tweet" into the public lexicon.

Absolutely! Shows taking big swings in their releases are only a problem if they miss, and I can think of as many anime that are home runs in this regard. Looking back, it's absolutely nuts that the anime adaptation of Trigun creator Yasuhiro Nightow's Blood Blockade Battlefront would have a first season that's almost entirely anime-exclusive storylines, but it works super well, and that show is a delight!

And, of course, it's worth mentioning that There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless...'s YouTube release played a huge role in turning it into the biggest yuri release of last year, where it almost assuredly would have gotten lost in the seasonal RomCom deluge if it had released on a more traditional platform.

These kinds of stunts can be additive and elevate an anime to a broader audience, but they need to be synergistic with the source material to make sense for the audience that they're trying to reach.

With how obfuscated licensing agreements have been between US-based streamers and anime rights owners, and the dirty secret that loads of anime productions aren't very profitable until merch sales start coming in; I can see how the math works out such that right's owners would go for broke on niche titles or trust that big titles are going to be a hit no matter what and post both to YouTube for free. If the goal is getting as much exposure as possible and then converting a portion of that viewership into Blu-ray and figure sales, YouTube is a better means to that end than any other platform.

Who among us doesn't love a good bait-and-switch!?? My go-to example for this is Talentless Nana, which in both the trailers and the majority of the first episode, seemed like it was going to be a discount My Hero Academia, only to reveal that it's actually a super-powered, subterfuge-filled death game!

To this day, I'm not sure if Talentless Nana is, like, "Good," but I enjoy the first season and respect its commitment to the bit!

If we're going down this rabbit hole, we should probably shout out Puella Magi Madoka Magica. For as ubiquitous as it is now as the "edgelord magical girl" anime, I remember folks back in the day being absolutely FLOORED by its dark turn, with only the smallest hints of unease and foreshadowing teeing them into the franchise's actual tone and plot.

And maybe that's why this Supermarket Smoking release stunt feels so misaligned. Years from now, I'm not going to remember the show for this gimmick, as it doesn't feel like it's feeding into the show's actual strong points. Instead, I'll remember its charming localization, honest depiction of the struggles tied to putting a good chunk of your self-worth into your career, and how it explores how much better even small moments with a like-minded person can make your day better.

There's a lot to like here, but the show feels almost tailor-made to be an anime I watch while lounging on the couch at the end of the day when I'm too tired to go to bed, and this release format is almost antithetical to that experience.

God, do I aspire to be as cool and hot as Tayama, or any of the confident, capable, and inspiring women I worked with during my time in retail and hospitality gigs!

And it is a testament to the appeal and execution of Supermarket Smoking that its charm can still shine through even when it's presented in a frustrating format. Cannot wait until I can watch it in 20-some-minute installments like god (and more importantly, the show's production team) intended!