What sound does a sip of wine make? The fruit sleeping beneath the tannins, the memory of earth that rises the moment a cork is pulled, the way time slowly unfurls inside the glass. The TV anime Drops of God (Kami no Shizuku) is a rare work that tries to render that invisible thing—flavor—through image and music. Airing across two cours from April 10, 2026 on TOKYO MX, BS Nippon TV, Kansai TV and other stations, the series has its score composed by Eishi Segawa. Based on the landmark Kodansha Morning manga by Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto, animated by Satelight, it stars Kazuya Kamenashi as the voice of protagonist Shizuku Kanzaki.
A comedy master descends into the depths of wine
Say the name Eishi Segawa and most people first picture laughter. The gleefully cheap B-movie fantasy sound of the Yusha Yoshihiko series, the exhilarating scores of From Today, It's My Turn!!, the chaos of the Gintama films. Having started out writing commercial music in 1986 and gone on to score more than 2,500 ads, he is a master of conjuring an entire mood in a matter of seconds. That is precisely why his comedy scores feel silly yet somehow refined.
Now Segawa takes on the quiet, sensual, at times philosophical world of Drops of God. It seems surprising, but it is really inevitable. Tasting wine lives on a knife's edge between taut silence and pure bliss—and a composer who knows the tension between a laugh and a hush is exactly the one who can turn the art of the pause into sound.
The challenge of turning taste into sound
What captivated readers worldwide was the manga's audacious way of expressing wine's flavor through words and imagery: one mouthful and a meadow spreads across the hero's mind, an orchestra swells, a single painting rises into view. What the manga achieved through the visual and the literary, the anime must now shoulder through music. This is where a scoring composer's true worth is tested.
Sweet or dry, young or aged, Old World or New—Segawa surely paints each wine's character through timbre and harmony: the sheen of strings for the grip of tannins, the lightness of woodwinds for youthful fruit, the depth of bass for long maturation. In the tasting scenes the music is no mere backdrop but a translation device for the very sense of taste the characters feel. Only sound can bridge a sensation that is invisible and beyond full description. That is the deepest pleasure of following this score.
From 2009 to 2026, a story walked with Kazuya Kamenashi
We cannot overlook lead actor Kazuya Kamenashi. He also played Shizuku Kanzaki in the 2009 live-action drama that aired on Nippon TV. Seventeen years later, the same actor returns to the same role in animated form—a rare alignment running through this project. The live-action version had its own score, including lyrical pieces that carried the drama. Now, across the years, we get to hear what color Eishi Segawa's music lends this new Drops of God. A story handed down across generations is being answered by music from a new generation too.
Why this score deserves attention now
In the world of film and TV scoring, flashy battles and grand fantasy tend to grab the spotlight. But it is works like Drops of God—depicting the quiet cosmos inside a glass—that lay a composer's skill utterly bare. At a dinner table with no explosions or clashing swords, the music must move the listener on the strength of emotional nuance alone. Segawa once won the top music prize at a French national film festival for the short film Le Dernier Jour de l'Hiver. How this composer, who hides genuine lyricism beneath his humor, confronts the profound theme of wine—maturing over two full cours—makes this one of the scores to savor in 2026. Follow the broadcast, and by all means, listen with a glass in hand.
