You Can’t Be in a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends! is about to drag one very unlucky high school boy and his way-too-cute childhood friends onto late-night TV. The romcom premieres in Japan on January 5, 2026, with streaming on services like d Anime Store, AnimeFesta and Crunchyroll, and you can start the original Magazine Pocket manga right now with a free first chapter.
Broadcast plans in Japan for the childhood friends romcom
Under its English title You Can’t Be in a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends!, the TV anime adapts Shinya Misu’s hit romcom manga Osananajimi to wa LoveCom ni Naranai. In Japan, the series begins airing on the TV Tokyo network on January 5, 2026, as a late-night romantic comedy slot, with AT-X and BS Nippon TV (BS NTV) also broadcasting episodes the same week. The show is produced by Tezuka Productions, with Satoshi Kuwabara directing and Mitsutaka Hirota and Mayumi Morita on series composition, promising a classic but polished “childhood friends plus too many feelings” setup.
Streaming platforms and simulcast timing in Japan and abroad
If you are watching inside Japan, d Anime Store and AnimeFesta will host the earliest web streams, delivering the on-air version shortly after the TV Tokyo broadcast each Monday night. A slightly spicier “Puchi-Doki” cut—where select episodes relax some of the broadcast restrictions—will stream exclusively on those two platforms. From January 9, 2026, the on-air version will also roll out across a wide range of Japanese services, including ABEMA, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, U-NEXT and more, so most local viewers can just pick their usual app. For international fans, Crunchyroll has licensed the series and will stream it worldwide outside Asia, lining it up as one of their headline romcoms for the winter 2026 season.
A childhood-friends love triangle that refuses to become a romcom
The story follows high school boy Yonosuke and his two childhood friends, Shio Minamo and Akari Hiodoshi. On paper it sounds like a standard harem setup, but the hook is that Yonosuke is desperately trying not to see them as romantic interests, even as he becomes painfully aware of how attractive they are. Magazine Pocket highlights the series as a “sweet, frustrating, and not-very-honest” love story, where friendship and attraction constantly clash and nobody wants to be the one to ruin their long-standing childhood bond. That tension is exactly what the anime aims to amplify—leaning into sharp comedic timing and just enough fanservice without losing the emotional awkwardness underneath.
Starting the manga on Magazine Pocket with a free first chapter
If you want a head start before episode one, the original manga is serialized on Kodansha’s Magazine Pocket app and site, with 18 collected volumes released as of late 2025. The easiest entry point is the official trial read of chapter 1, which sets up Yonosuke’s messy inner monologue and the dynamic between Shio and Akari. You can jump in here: read the first chapter for free on Magazine Pocket. The interface is Japanese-only, but the layout is straightforward enough that even non-Japanese readers can get a feel for the pacing, paneling and character chemistry while waiting for official translations.
Reading ahead before the anime and ideal viewers for this series
For most viewers, sampling the free opening chapter is enough to know whether this specific brand of “I swear this isn’t a romcom” chaos is for you. If you fall in love with the push-and-pull between Yonosuke and his childhood friends, reading a few volumes—say the first three to five—will give you plenty of context without racing far ahead of the first anime season. This series is a natural fit if you enjoy triangle-heavy romcoms where everyone overthinks everything, plus a slightly more daring edge that justifies the existence of that “Puchi-Doki” version. Between the January 2026 TV Tokyo broadcast, Crunchyroll’s global simulcast and the Magazine Pocket manga, you have multiple ways to dive into the drama long before anybody on screen admits they’re in love.
©三簾真也・講談社／幼馴染とラブコメになりたい製作委員会
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