Tomori Kusunoki Takes On a Kusunoki of Her Own
The casting comes with a coincidence sitting right on the surface: Tomori Kusunoki (Makima in Chainsaw Man, LLENN in Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online) voices Shizuka Kusunoki (楠木静), a heroine who happens to share her surname. Her character is rumored to be the prettiest girl in her year, a reputation that hides how badly her social life is actually going.
Playing opposite her is Yūto Uemura (Atsushi Nakajima in Bungo Stray Dogs, Thorfinn in Vinland Saga) as Keisuke Shizuki (志月恵助), the boy whose carefully rebuilt image drives the whole story. According to the announcement covered by Japanese entertainment news outlet Oricon News, a teaser visual and teaser promotional video arrived alongside the cast reveal. The video is up now on the DMM pictures YouTube channel.
Two Successful High School Debuts, One Secretly Failing
Mitsuki Mii's manga follows Shizuki, who reinvented himself for high school after a bitter middle-school experience and pulled it off. All he wants now is a quiet, uneventful school life. The problem is that exactly one classmate knows what he used to be like: Kusunoki, who went to his middle school and looks like she nailed her own transformation.
Then she asks him to be her friend, and his peaceful routine falls apart. Kusunoki, it turns out, is hopeless at conversation, and her attempts at making friends keep misfiring. The two settle on a limited-time friendship so she can level up her social skills. Complicating things are Ririsa Hebikawa, who knows Shizuki's past, and Moe Otobe, an old friend of Kusunoki's. The official introduction sums up the tone as "just friends, but somehow special," an awkward and noisy teen rom-com about two people faking their way through school.
The Team Bringing It to the Screen
Midori Yui directs and handles series composition, with animation produced jointly by Passione and Hayabusa Film. Kōji Haneda designs the characters, Hyadain composes the music, and Suzune Ishikawa serves as animation producer.
The source manga runs in comic POOL, Ichijinsha's web manga label, where it launched in October 2022. Japan gets the eighth collected volume on July 28, 2026, just days after the anime announcement.
Looking Ahead
There is no broadcast window yet. The Oricon News report stops at the adaptation being confirmed, with no season, episode count, or network attached, and no international streaming partner has been announced either.
English-speaking readers don't have to wait to check out the source material, though. Kodansha USA publishes the manga in English as Kusunoki's Flunking Her High School Glow-Up, with volume 6 released on May 19, 2026. And the teaser video streams worldwide on YouTube, so the first look at the anime's take on Shizuki and Kusunoki is already a click away.