Isshiki-san Wants to Know About Love adds four detectives
The winter romance published a new main visual on 24 September and named the four detectives joining Rinna and Meishi, with the January 2027 broadcast window unchanged.
The anime adaptation of Isshiki-san Wants to Know About Love has a new main visual and four more people in it. The series' official site published the illustration and the additional characters with their voice actors on 24 September, and the update holds the January 2027 broadcast window that the production committee set back in May. The picture is a return to the idea the series sells hardest: two people who are bad at being in love, walking under a canopy of golden ginkgo leaves and holding hands while trying not to look pleased about it.
Who is joining
All four are detectives in the modern-crime unit where the leads work, which is worth noting: none of them is a rival for anyone's affection. Iwata Danjuro, played by Haruki Ishiya, considers himself Rinna's right hand and is usually the one heading out on an investigation with her. He worships her reputation as steel, refuses to entertain the idea that she might be interested in anyone, and has watched enough detective dramas to conduct himself like he is in one. Nakatani Masato, played by Takuma Nagatsuka, is the younger detective who works alongside Iwata, unbothered by rank and cheerful enough to defuse a room, until something breaks and he switches immediately into the sharpest person on site.
The other two fill in the edges of the unit. Matsumoto Sei, played by Hiiro Ishibashi, is the quiet and painfully earnest one, the straight man in a team of eccentrics, and the character card hints that he has already registered the change in how close Rinna and Meishi stand to each other. Yamakawa Rena, played by Yu Wakui, is the calm, unflappable senior who soothes the room and, the site notes, has a partner of her own inside the department, which makes her the one person on the team watching the situation with any perspective at all.
What the series is
Rinna Isshiki Milford skipped grades, graduated top of her university class and became an inspector in a unit built for modern crime at seventeen. She is clear-headed, cold and nicknamed steel, and she has no interest in romance, right up until she starts working with Meishi Rokutanda, the self-described hopeless detective who assists her investigations and sets her heart racing for reasons she cannot identify. His solution is to propose that they date, as an experiment, in secret. The manga is Ayune Araragi's, serialised in KADOKAWA's Monthly Shonen Ace, and the tenth collected volume went on sale in late May.
Who is making it
Kazuya Komai is directing, with Deko Akao on series composition and Shouhei Hamaguchi designing the characters. Michiru is composing, music production is KADOKAWA's, and Studio Twinkle handles photography and CG. Sakura Create is the animation studio. Riko Akeshi and Shuichiro Umeda were confirmed as Rinna and Meishi in May alongside the teaser video above, and both cast comments that arrived with that announcement are still on the site.
Our opinion
The most interesting thing about this update is who the four new characters are not. A winter romance with a fake-dating premise and a cast list that grew by four in one afternoon could easily have produced four rivals, and instead the production committee introduced four colleagues, three of whom exist mainly to react to the leads. That is a deliberate choice, and it suggests the series is a workplace comedy with a crush in the middle of it rather than a harem with an office attached. The risk is the opposite of the usual one: a support cast built to comment can flatten into a Greek chorus if the writing does not give them anything of their own, and Matsumoto is the only one whose card suggests he has an actual arc.
The giveaway alongside the reveal is a reminder of how winter shows are marketed. Signed coloured paper from the lead cast, won by reposting the show's own account, is standard practice for a KADOKAWA production, and it tells you where the committee thinks the audience is: on social media, first and foremost. That is neither a problem nor a promise of quality, but it does mean the four new names will be doing promotional work for the next three months, and the cast a show leans on early is often a sign of how much material each of them actually has. Converts from the manga will know already; everyone else finds out in January, when the pseudo-couple goes on the clock.