Aniplex has set a January 8 premiere for The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy at All, the anime adaptation of Sumiko Arai’s manga. The announcement came with a first promotional video, five new cast members, more staff, and confirmation that Crunchyroll will stream the series.
The show debuts on January 8 at 11:00 p.m. JST on NTV’s FuraAni programming block.
New cast members
Five names were added. Kenjirō Tsuda plays Jō and Tasuku Hatanaka plays Narita, both reprising their roles from the series’ audio drama. Yurina Amami plays Chizuru, Fairouz Ai plays Mao, and Maiko Nomura plays Kanna.
They join Akari Kitō as Aya Ōsawa and Mariya Ise as Mitsuki Koga.
Staff and music
Masashi Ishihama (From the New World, Garakowa -Restore the World-, Horimiya) directs at CloverWorks. Rino Yamazaki (Akebi’s Sailor Uniform, The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity, Spy×Family season 3) is handling series composition, and Kanna Hirayama (Rent-A-Girlfriend, Oshi no Ko) is designing the characters. Kōsuke Noma and Takayuki “Kojiro” Sasaki are composing the music.
The opening theme is “Breed,” the 1991 song by Nirvana. Putting a grunge track from the early ’90s in front of a romance built around a CD shop says a lot about how the team is reading the source.
The manga behind it
The setup hinges on a misunderstanding. Aya, an upbeat high schooler, falls for an employee at a local CD shop, a stylish person with sharp taste in music and an air of mystery. That employee is actually her classmate Mitsuki, a girl who keeps mostly to herself. Mitsuki’s seat is right next to Aya’s, so the secret gets harder to keep. Yen Press licensed the manga and released the third volume in December 2025.
Arai launched the series on Twitter (now X) in April 2022, then serialized it on pixiv Comic from April 2023. Kadokawa Shoten publishes it in print and shipped the fourth collected volume on February 19.
It has the awards record to match its readership. The series placed second on the 23rd Da Vinci “Book of the Year” list and second among top manga for female readers in the 2024 edition of Takarajimasha’s Kono Manga ga Sugoi! guidebook.
Why it matters
CloverWorks has become one of the steadier romcom and slice-of-life studios, and this is a project where the adaptation has to carry a lot of quiet feeling. The manga runs on glances and small moments more than plot, so direction and character animation will decide whether the show lands. Naming a Nirvana song as the opener is a good early sign that the team understands the mood.
For other romance and coming-of-age anime on the way, see our posts on Glasses With a Chance of Delinquent and Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia’s Case Files, the latter also from CloverWorks.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: Trailer still from The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy at All anime, via Aniplex / Anime News Network.
