SHAFT's next TV anime starts from an unusual premise. In Just Like Mona Lisa, everyone is born without a sex and their bodies change toward the one they want around age 12, settling by 14. Hinase Arima is 18, in the final year of high school and still genderless. The show's first main trailer dropped on October 21, along with seven new cast members and its ending theme.
The anime adapts Tsumuji Yoshimura's manga, which ran on Square Enix's Gangan ONLINE and has passed 1 million copies in circulation. It is set to air in 2027. A specific season and broadcast slot haven't been announced yet.
imase wrote the ending song
The ending theme is "Mayoi wa Hikari" (roughly, "Hesitation Is Light"), a new song written for the series by imase. The trailer includes the first snippet of it.
In a comment on the official site, imase said he saw a lot of himself in the story, especially in Hinase being pushed to make a choice without knowing what future comes after it. He added that he likes multi-ending games for the same reason: the choice changes what comes next, and you carry the weight of it. The site also notes he paused his activities in August 2025 and returned in September 2026 with new music.
Who's in it
Chika Anzai, known as Chisato in Lycoris Recoil, leads as Hinase. The story turns on a triangle between Hinase and two childhood friends, Ritsu and Shiori, who have already chosen their sexes.
The October 21 update adds seven more cast members, among them Yoshino Aoyama, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Shion Wakayama and Daisuke Sakuma. The production also released its first main visual and profiles for seven characters, including the friends and classmates around Hinase.
The team behind it
Kana Shundo directs. Her directing debut was Apocalypse Hotel, and she was assistant director on Saga of Tanya the Evil: The Movie. Nobuhiro Sugiyama handles character design and chief animation direction, and Yuki Hayashi of My Hero Academia and Haikyu!! composes the score.
Shundo has said one of the first things that stands out in the manga is its two-color art, where turquoise marks emotions that are normally invisible. Bringing that subtle shimmer into animation is the challenge she named.
The production is credited to the Just Like Mona Lisa Partners committee, with CyberAgent issuing the earlier announcements. No streaming partner for the Philippines or Southeast Asia has been named yet.