Anime of the Week – ‘Bartender: Glass of God’

Bartender: Glass of God might just be the coziest, most life-affirming slice-of-life Tokyo-dim anime of 2024. Not only similar to Oddtaxi as your go-to working class anime about working class people converging upon Edenhall (not to be confused of course with the Garden of Eden), it even subtly supplants it. The series centers the neighborhood escape from the clutches of urban angst and modern disappointment, only to be served up the titular “Glass of God” from one Ryu Sasakura, who can best be described as Sherlock Homes meets Mister Rogers.

Now some of you who might be well aware of the original Bartender anime and manga from almost 20 years ago, and for you I have good and bad news. Good news is that this remake — which premiered on TV Tokyo in April and is now streaming weekly on Crunchyroll — actually manages to maintain that same easy pace and lo-fi wisdom of Araki Joh’s manga. The bad news is that the animation is a mixed bag and lacks the wistful charm of the 2006 designs. Fortunately, Bartender: Glass of God more than makes up for that bitter taste with its exquisitely sweet attention to detail in its mixology.

“Do you know where the term bartender comes from?”

Liber produced this one with Ryōichi Kuraya as director, Mariko Kunisawa as writer, and Yōichi Ueda as character designer and animation director. The story still follows Sasakura as a young, but brilliant bartender whose hyper-awareness allows him to understand and anticipate the perfect drink for his customers. So if you walk in and ask if it’s OK to order a drink even though it’s almost closing time, he immediately figures out your Social Security Number and who you voted for in 2016. I’m only barely kidding.

The anime is mostly a series of short stories with two overarching narratives linking them. The main one is that a luxury hotel desperately wants to hire Sasakura as their bartender, believing his skill will help them compete with “Mister Perfect,” our resident bad-guy-sama who wears glasses because he doesn’t see how limited his perspective is. Or does he…

“Your cocktail is nowhere near close to being perfect.”

The other main plot point is whether or not Sasakura can create the “Glass of God,” a drink that will literally move hearts and minds, or something. Thankfully, the anime doesn’t spend too much time on the glass of god thing, instead contenting itself with random “facts” about cocktails and an ongoing discussion about what it means to work in hospitality, a particularly poignant theme for a place like Japan, as you might imagine, especially in a certain whiskey distillery episode that might as well serve as a logbook for our very own EIC Allyson Johnson on her next pilgrimage to Japan.

Now the first few episodes of Bartender: Glass of God aren’t the best representations for what’s truly special about this series. We do meet Sasakura of course, along with the two hotel employees who immediately become taken with his remarkable insights. But from episode 4 onward, the show becomes a cavalcade of feels as we add more and more characters, which reminds of the latter half of Domestic Girlfriend, the portion of the manga where we move past (most of) of the stepsister drama and end up [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] all the way and up the [REDACTED].

“You made a glass of drink that was meant only for me.”

For example, the first episode has some immediately cringy dialogue about what “bartender” means, which is obviously nonsense (if you’re an English speaker, at least). But then later on we get these metaphor nuggets that manage to set up a new character, establish their personality, unfold their backstory, and make the watcher want to cry, all in the span of less than 20 minutes.

I’m not much of a drinker myself these days, but I do love the artistry of making cocktails and getting immersing in the lore and flavor profiles of this world. So I can’t even imagine what it must be like checking this one out as someone with far better taste (take a shot), or even someone who aspires to be a bartender someday, themselves. And by closing time, something tells me you’ll be dropping by the original anime and manga for another round.

Bartender: Glass of God is currently streaming on Crunchyroll. Check out the official trailer here.

Images courtesy of Crunchyroll. Read more articles by Jon Negroni here.