The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All premieres January 8 on Nippon TV, adding Kenjiro Tsuda and Fairouz Ai in its first PV
CloverWorks' anime of Sumiko Arai's music-loving girls' love manga now has a Friday-night broadcast date, five more cast members, and its full main staff.
A high schooler who loves rock music falls for the clerk dressed in black at her neighborhood CD shop, never realizing that the clerk is Mitsuki, the quiet girl who sits beside her in class. Sumiko Arai's manga built on that misunderstanding now has a firm date: the TV anime of The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All starts January 8, 2027 at 11:00 p.m. on Nippon TV, in the network's Friday anime block. The date arrived with the first full promotional video, announced through the official X account and at Crunchyroll's New York Comic Con showcase.
Five new voices came with it. Kenjiro Tsuda plays Joe and Tasuku Hatanaka plays Narita; Mao goes to Fairouz Ai, Chizuru to Yurina Amami, and Kanna to Maiko Nomura. Leading the cast, as announced earlier, are Akari Kito as the rock-loving Aya Osawa and Mariya Ise as Mitsuki.
CloverWorks is animating, and the staff names lean on recent romance work. Director Masashi Ishihama previously directed Horimiya, series composer Rino Yamasaki wrote The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity, and character designer Kanna Hirayama is credited on Oshi no Ko.
Music front and center
For a story about two girls bonding over records, the soundtrack matters, and the anime has taken an unusual route. Kosuke Noma and Takayuki "Kojiro" Sasaki share scoring duties. This is the first series score of Noma's career, he says, and the sessions took place in two cities, Tokyo and Los Angeles. The opening theme, revealed with a July teaser, is Nirvana's "Breed." The new PV carries the tagline "'Music' connects worlds that cannot connect."
The manga
Arai started the comic as posts on X in April 2022, and Kadokawa took it to print a year later; a fifth Japanese volume follows on January 13. In English, Yen Press holds the license, acquired in April 2024, with volume four arriving October 27. Worldwide sales have passed 2.25 million copies according to the official site, and readers can also find translations in Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Italian and Spanish.
