The Finale Came With a Live Watch Party
Episode 12 of Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You aired on Thursday, September 24, 2026, in a slot pushed 30 minutes past the show's usual 11:56 p.m. start on TBS and its affiliate stations. Fans were already posting about how much they would miss it before the episode began, according to a finale reaction roundup from Japanese anime news site Anime Anime, with several saying they were staying up to watch this one live no matter how late it ran.
The show's official X account ran a real-time viewing party during the broadcast, with the directors posting comments and behind-the-scenes notes as scenes played out. When the opening theme, Zutomayo's "Ichijiku Kemuri," rolled for the last time, replies filled with "don't end" and "why is the OP finishing already making me this sad." Seena Hoshiki, who voices Yamada/Tayama, posted that the opening alone was enough to bring on tears.
The series numbers its episodes with the Japanese counter 本, the one used for cigarettes, so the finale was billed as the 12th one lit rather than episode 12.
Spoilers Ahead: How the Finale Plays Out
This section covers the finale, "Keeping It Going Behind the Supermarket with You," in detail.
The episode opens on Suzuki complaining his way into the workday. Sasaki, meanwhile, is not himself. An email from a former boss named Nakajima leaves him walking into fences and automatic doors, and viewers spent the first act asking whether he was okay. The store manager, Gotō, wanders over to Yamada hoping to witness some romance, decides it isn't what he was expecting, and leaves disappointed. The staff revealed mid-broadcast that the exchange between Gotō and Obata in that scene was ad-libbed by the voice actors.
Suzuki gets chewed out by his department head and is handed a business trip to Hokkaido, where Nakajima happens to be. He tries to pass it to Sasaki, who turns down both the trip and Nakajima's invitation. Nakajima, it turns out, was the boss who looked out for him and the person who gave him his wristwatch, and he reached out with his own retirement approaching. Sasaki says he caused the man far more trouble than the kindness he was shown, which is when Tayama loses her patience. Smoking with him like this is no fun, she tells him, and she bans him from the spot behind the store until he feels better, then shoves him off from behind. Viewers read the ban for exactly what it was and called it her way of pushing him forward. A healthy number of posts also stopped to appreciate how good she looks angry.
Suzuki comes back and gives up the Hokkaido trip, apparently having understood everything Sasaki couldn't say out loud. The goodwill lasts about one line: he rigged the trade because he simply didn't want to go himself. Yamada spends her half of the episode worried she went too far, until Sasaki finally turns up again. She offers to pass a message along to Tayama. He declines with an embarrassed smile, saying he wants to ask her directly, and the reaction posts briefly stopped forming words.
Sasaki does meet Nakajima, and the two talk over cigarettes at a counter about the years behind them and about Yamada, a relationship Nakajima calls precious. The ending theme rolled on that reunion, and then came a C-part (a short scene tagged on after the credits): Sasaki drapes his own scarf over Yamada. That was the loudest moment of the night, somewhere between "why aren't these two dating already" and pure keysmash.
The Last Conversation Was Left to the Cast
During the watch party, director Masato Suzuki revealed that the closing conversation was handed to the leads, posting that "the last conversation was left up to 'the two of them.'" Hoshiki called it real love that the staff animated to their ad-libs, while Takuya Satō (Caesar Anthonio Zeppeli in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure), who voices Sasaki, said the studio was full of such genuinely lovely people that it never felt like pressure. Viewers who had just watched the scene called that low-stakes, unhurried back-and-forth the most "Yanisuu" thing in the episode, using the show's Japanese nickname.
Letting two people just talk is the whole premise. Jinushi's manga began on X on March 9, 2022, drew a cumulative 280,000 likes on its first chapter, and now runs in Monthly Big Gangan, Square Enix's monthly manga magazine. It follows a worn-out 45-year-old salaryman, Sasaki, and a 24-year-old supermarket employee with a slightly outlandish dress sense who build a friendship over cigarettes at the store's back door. She is the demure Yamada at the register and the sharper Tayama in the smoking area, and the two names are the same pair of kanji flipped around (山田 and 田山), which is more than enough camouflage for Sasaki to miss it entirely.
Asahi Production animated the series, with Masato Suzuki and Aoi Mori directing, Mio Inoue on series composition, Yasuka Ōtaki on character design and music by Shin Kōno. Satō and Hoshiki lead as Sasaki and Yamada/Tayama, with Shinya Takahashi as Suzuki and Toa Yukinari as Gotō, plus Megumi Toyoguchi, Rikuya Yasuda and Yōko Hikasa as Ōno, Obata and Maezawa. imase's "Fiction" closed out the TV broadcast, while the ABEMA advance version ran a different pair of themes, Zutomayo's "Kuzuri Nen" and imase's "NIGHT DANCER."
Looking Ahead
No sequel has been announced. After the broadcast, Jinushi and the cast posted thank-you messages, the show trended on X in Japan, and the replies turned into a season 2 campaign almost immediately, including plenty of people volunteering to wait however many years it takes. The manga is still running in Monthly Big Gangan, so there is more of it left to adapt, but nothing official exists yet.
International fans have options in the meantime. Crunchyroll streams the series outside Japan, Netflix carries it in select Asian regions, and an English dub cast was announced in July 2026. In Japan, ABEMA and Netflix had the earliest streams, and ABEMA's exclusive advance version was still free to watch as of the finale. The manga is published in English by Square Enix Manga & Books, with digital chapters on Manga UP! Global.