Walking Home with You is officially getting a TV anime, and the date is April 2027. The show's website opened on October 7, confirming the TV format, a teaser visual and an NTV premiere. The tagline on that visual reads, "The requirement for joining the club is walking home with me." Great hook. Still, there's no studio, no staff and no cast yet. The announcement dropped one day before volume 7 of Mai Matsuda's manga (Hōkago Kitaku Biyori in Japan) hit shelves on October 8, which is tidy timing.
So why should you care? Matsuda also created Hikaru in the Light!, and that name alone gets manga readers leaning in. The story follows Shun, a former middle school soccer star whose injury ended his dream. Now he's in high school with no passion and no plan. Then he meets Naoki, a weird upperclassman who recruits him into her one-member "Hyper-Epic Heading Home Club." The whole point is turning the walk home into an adventure through detours and secret finds. The manga has run in Futabasha's Manga Action since August 2023, and the anime was first announced back in March 2025. That's a long wait for a teaser.
Here's where the fandom sits right now. The news is barely a day old, so the chatter is mostly about what's missing. Who's animating it? Who's voicing Naoki? Those questions matter more than usual, because a show about wandering lives or dies on backgrounds, light and small comedic timing. English readers also have an easy way in. Omoi licensed the manga at Anime Expo 2026 and has been releasing chapters weekly since August 18, so new fans are catching up in real time. My hot take: spring 2027 will be loud, and a quiet, cozy show like this could end up being the one people actually come back to every week.
As for what to expect, stay realistic. A studio and staff reveal will probably come in the next few months, and a first trailer and cast announcement likely follow before spring. With seven volumes out, there's enough material for a single season, and a standard one-cour run (around 12 episodes) is a fair guess, though that's a guess, not news. Streaming details haven't been announced either. Don't expect big action or plot twists. Expect a warm, funny, easygoing coming-of-age romcom, and if the adaptation gets the mood right, that's plenty.
