Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You Volume 6 Review

It’s summer but Mr. Sasaki has come down with an early summer cold, so no smoking behind the supermarket with Miss Tayama (Yamada) for him until he’s feeling better… And then he’s faced with a dilemma when his young female subordinate wins an award at work and wants him to accompany her to head office for the ceremony. She doesn’t know that he dreads returning to head office because of a really bad experience he underwent there in the past. It’s also Tanabata time and the supermarket has a tree where people can write their wishes and hang them on the branches. It’s inevitable, then, that Mr. Sasaki encounters Tayama there and she teases him about what he ought to write as his wish. Retiring to smoke companionably together behind the supermarket, they chat about his dilemma and she tells him – in no uncertain terms – that if he wants to go to the award ceremony, he should go!

Tanabata time also means summer festivals and fireworks and Yamada’s coworker friend Kawakami entices her to attend the one in the next town. Kawakami is jealous of Yamada’s friendship with Mr. Sasaki and is constantly trying to drive a wedge between them. She can’t resist crowing about the festival when she encounters Mr. Sasaki outside the supermarket the night before – but as he’ll be going to the award ceremony at head office, it’s something of a pyrrhic victory for her. Yamada attends the festival wearing a traditional yukata – but when she’s sitting with Ms. Ono, she learns that Mr. Sasaki has gone to the awards ceremony that very day (Ms. Ono met him the night before when he was picking up his three-piece suit from the cleaners). Yamada rushes off. She has a hunch that Mr. Sasaki might drop by the supermarket (even though it’s closed). Because the words he wrote on his Tanabata wish, ‘I’ll survive and drop by’ make sense to her now. Today at least, she thinks as she makes her way through the festival crowd, someone ought to praise him. He deserves it… It ought to be me. And he’s there! (Of course, he addresses her as Miss Tayama because that’s the way her hair is styled and anyway, she’s his smoking companion.) But when he blurts out how he really feels on seeing her – and tries to cover it up, a little late – she gets embarrassed and storms away, leaving him wondering what he should have said or done.

Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You continues to portray the endearing but extremely slow-burn relationship/friendship between middle-aged salaryman Sasaki and young Miss Yamada, his favourite sweet-natured till attendant and her alter ego, Tayama, his smoking companion (when she’s out of uniform, she tends to speak her mind!). And just when it looked as if a breakthrough and a mutual confession might have been in order at last – things fall apart. Dejected, Mr. Sasaki meets up with the mangaka Ms. Nishizono for a meal and a drink (she’s the owner of Daigoro, the big friendly dog) and she listens to his concerns, before gently observing, “You’re worried you’ll ruin the way things are right now. Isn’t that all because… you care very deeply about her?”

Jinushi continues to deliver an amusing yet heart-warming portrait of a May-September friendship slowly evolving into something deeper. (If only the two MCs could have bonded over something less problematic than smoking!) It’s difficult not to warm to the two (three) while at the same time wanting to give them a good talking-to! We still know relatively little about Mr. Sasaki except that he works all the hours at his company – but we can probably all relate to his world-weary attitude. Although, is he really that stupid that he’s still unaware his smoking partner and his favourite checkout assistant are one and the same person? Jinushi’s art style is just right for portraying the way both Mr. Sasaki and Tayama/Yamada come alive when they’re keeping each other company. But the other staff at the supermarket are also vividly portrayed and in this volume we get to know at lot more about the diminutive Kawakami (tiny in stature but big in personality, drawn with glowering cat-like eyes). She’s very over-protective of her friend Yamada and sees ‘middle-aged’ Mr. Sasaki as an enemy, eventually (when drunk) challenging him to a race. If he loses, “You can never shmoke with Yama again!” she declares loudly and he agrees (he’s had a few also). Watched by the other staff (except Tayama who’s avoiding everyone) they set off. Who will win?

Translation for Square Enix Manga is again by Amanda Haley with lettering by Kyla Aiko and both contribute to an enjoyable reading experience, capturing the different speech patterns and rhythms of characters from Ms. Nishizono’s rather sophisticated way of putting things to the down-to-earth utterances of Kawakami (especially when she’s drunk). It’s nice too to find six colour pages at the front as well as the latest Backpage Cosplay (‘Oktober-Yama and Fest-Saki’) as well as the titles of some of the tracks mangaka Jinushi was listening to while drawing these chapters. Volume 7 is due out in July (at the same time as the anime) and we’re almost caught up with Japan (Volume 8).

The anime TV series is promised for July this year and I’m really looking forward to seeing these characters brought to animated life. However, nothing beats reading the original manga first-hand, especially in a slice-of-life manga with such a flawed but likeable cast of characters as this one.

A free preview can be found at the publisher’s website here.

Our review copy from Square Enix Manga was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).