Crunchyroll dropped the first full The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All trailer on October 8, 2026, confirming more cast, a January 8, 2027 premiere on Nippon TV, and a surprising Nirvana needle-drop. The CloverWorks adaptation of Sumiko Arai’s yuri manga streams on Crunchyroll in the US the same day it airs in Japan.
Trailer via Crunchyroll’s official YouTube channel.
The Facts
| Japanese title | 気になってる人が男じゃなかった (Ki ni Natteru Hito ga Otoko Janakatta) |
| Source | Manga by Sumiko Arai (Kadokawa; English by Yen Press) |
| Studio | CloverWorks |
| Director | Masashi Ishihama |
| Lead cast | Akari Kitō as Aya Ōsawa, Mariya Ise as Mitsuki Koga |
| Premiere | January 8, 2027, 11:00 p.m. JST |
| Network | Nippon TV (NTV), FuraAni programming block |
| Streaming (US) | Crunchyroll |
| Opening theme | “Breed” by Nirvana |
| Genre | Yuri, slice of life |
What’s In The Trailer
The 73-second clip opens on pure gossip: a classmate whispers that the gyaru who sits next to Aya is in love, and the trailer cuts straight to the question everyone in the story is asking — who with? It never spells out the answer in the opening beat. It just lets the rumor hang.
From there it jumps to the record shop where Aya’s own crush works the counter. This is the clearest new location in the cut, and it comes with a staff credit card — series composition by Rino Yamazaki, character design by Kanna Hirayama — flashing up over the storefront.
A hooded figure shows up in a moody green-lit cutaway right as the narration repeats the “someone I’m interested in at the CD shop” line. The shot is deliberately unclear on who is under the hood, and nothing else in the trailer resolves it.
The title card lands around the halfway point — green background, the Japanese title, “THE ANIMATION” — then the trailer pivots to comedy: a classroom scene where Aya panics over not seeing her crush lately, and a blushing, sweating reaction shot that plays the yuri-romance anxiety for laughs.
The best joke is a dialogue line. As the camera holds on Mitsuki Koga at the shop counter, she says the music playing is “influenced by Nirvana, so—” before catching herself mid-sentence, embarrassed. It is a direct, in-story justification for why the show’s real opening theme is a Nirvana song — the kind of detail only shows up if you actually watch the clip rather than read the press release.
It closes on the title card again, a “COMING SOON” card, and a Crunchyroll watch-now end screen.
What’s New Here
The July 3, 2026 teaser confirmed the two leads, the staff, the Nirvana opening theme, and a general January 2027 window. This trailer narrows that to an exact date and time, adds the first look at the show in motion with its cast actually voicing lines rather than static key art, and reveals more supporting cast.
It’s also the first time the Nirvana needle-drop gets an in-story joke built around it — Mitsuki name-checking the band mid-sentence — instead of just sitting in a press release as a music credit.
What The Trailer Doesn’t Show
No one confirms who the hooded figure is. The trailer never actually shows the moment Aya realizes her crush is a girl — the manga’s central twist, right there in the title — which stays completely off-screen here. And despite leading with the record shop where Mitsuki works, the clip never shows the two leads talking to each other directly.
The Manga Behind It
Sumiko Arai’s manga has run free on X (formerly Twitter) since April 2022 and on Pixiv Comic since April 2023, with Kadokawa collecting it in print and Yen Press releasing it in English. The first volume sold 150,000 copies in its first week after its April 19, 2023 release, per a Kadokawa press release at the time (PR TIMES, May 1, 2023).
By an August 31, 2026 Kadokawa announcement (PR TIMES, August 31, 2026), the series had passed 2.25 million copies in worldwide print-and-digital circulation ahead of its fifth volume.
The story follows Aya Ōsawa, who falls for a masked clerk at the record store she frequents — and then has to process the fact that the clerk is Mitsuki Koga, the quiet classmate who sits next to her. Their shared taste in rock music, including the Nirvana influence the trailer jokes about, is what pulls the friendship toward romance.
Where To Watch
The anime premieres in Japan on Nippon TV’s FuraAni block on January 8, 2027, at 11:00 p.m. JST, with Crunchyroll streaming it for US audiences. An exact simulcast time for American viewers hasn’t been published yet; Crunchyroll’s past FuraAni simulcasts have typically gone up within hours of the Japanese broadcast.
For more on what CloverWorks and Crunchyroll showed off at this year’s con, see our breakdown of the Sekiro: No Defeat trailer, and for another fresh teaser from the same NYCC week, check the Code Geass: Star Chaser Aspal reveal. If you want to see how other page-to-screen yuri and romance titles stack up, our best anime adaptations ranking has the wider field.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All premiere?
The anime premieres in Japan on January 8, 2027, at 11:00 p.m. JST on Nippon TV’s FuraAni programming block, with Crunchyroll streaming it for US audiences.
Is The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All based on a manga?
Yes. It adapts Sumiko Arai’s manga, which has run free on X since April 2022 and on Pixiv Comic since April 2023, with Kadokawa publishing it in print and Yen Press releasing it in English. The series passed 2.25 million copies in worldwide print-and-digital circulation as of an August 31, 2026 Kadokawa announcement.
Who stars in the anime?
Akari Kitō voices lead Aya Ōsawa and Mariya Ise voices Mitsuki Koga. Kenjirō Tsuda voices CD shop owner Jō, Yu Hatanaka voices classmate Narita, and Yurina Amami, Fairouz Ai and Maiko Nomura round out the classmate cast.
What studio is animating it?
CloverWorks, directed by Masashi Ishihama, with series composition by Rino Yamazaki and character design by Kanna Hirayama.
Why is the opening theme a Nirvana song?
Crunchyroll confirmed “Breed” by Nirvana as the opening theme, and the new trailer gives it an in-story reason: a character describes the record shop’s music as “influenced by Nirvana” moments before the title card hits.
