There’s an interesting wrinkle with Super no Ura de Yani Suu Futari. It’s definitely more noticeable when you binge the series, which I had to do in prep for our podcast episode on it. It started out as a Twitter manga, and quite early on shifted to publication in Monthly Big Gangan. The reason is the obvious one – it got very popular very fast. There absolutely was a change here, no matter what anyone tells you. The chapters got longer, hell, the title even changed – from Super no Ura de Yani Suu Hanashi to Super no Ura de Yani Suu Futari. But I think it went deeper than that.
We go deeper into this on My Taste is Better Than Yours, but the impression I come away with is that this was originally envisioned as a grown-up gag manga. Droll discomfort humor set behind the supermarket with some double entendres here and there. That wasn’t going to cut it in Monthly Gangan. The point is, I don’t think Super no Ura was originally intended to dig into the relationship and the psychology of the leads as much as it has, or spend as much time developing the supporting cast. It was learning on the fly, and there are some missteps associated with that process.
That said, I don’t think A Story About Smoking at the Back of the Supermarket had the legs to go the distance. It had to become Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You. We’re already seeing, I think, the limitations of the original premise as a full-length anime. It’s built entirely around Sasaki being unbelievably dense and Tayama’s teasing antics. That’s already kind of repetitive. In a sense it’s like the transformation that happened with Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san except it happened much, much faster and less organically. And in that case, the anime still had to pad things out a lot to make it work. As it would have here, had the manga not already to a degree reinvented itself.
We’re just in that transition phase now, which was an interesting time for the manga. I feel like things are a bit awkward because of that, but with the essential charm still showing through. For starters Sasaki is shamed into getting a smartphone when his flip finally gives up the ghost (again, he’s portrayed like he’s a senior citizen). Of course he has no idea how to use it (like to read his newspaper, which even doing online is a fossil activity). He musters up the courage to act Tayama for help, and she does provide it – though not without extracting her pound of flesh in the process.
Then we have one of those nimrod personality tests, this time based on what brand of cigs you smoke. Tayama’s says she’s “two-faced and has a strong sex drive” (I always wondered if she made up that last part but she never gives anything away). She panics for a second when Sasaki muses that it actually might be right. He just means “you act like a bad girl but you’re actually nice”, but – unwittingly – of course he’s closer to the truth than he realizes. Then, it’s a May heatwave – hardly uncommon these days – and both Sasaki’s client and S Super have switched to Cool Biz. But not Black Company Inc., where Sasaki works.
Superficially, the joke here is that Sasaki is more turned on by Yamada in short sleeves than Tayama flashing her whole belly. But the real gag is that “Tayama” is actually jealous of herself. I mean, those are her arms that got him all hot(ter) and bothered, ramen flaps or no. So why is she bothered by this so much? Well, I think it comes down to Yamada and Tayama, and the way those two personalities reflect what’s true and what’s a performance. But that’s a subject for further exploration later on down the line.
