Chainsmoker Cat

Episodes 1-3

The first two episodes of Chainsmoker Cat that I covered for the Summer '26 Preview Guide were absolutely deranged, which I of course mean as a compliment. This show is nothing if not one-hundred percent committed to depicting the raunchy, depraved, tobacco-stained excess of our anti-heroine Yani Neko's lifestyle, no matter how off-putting or offensive it may be to most well-adjusted members of society. In fact, you can tell that Chainsmoker Cat gets right off on the thought of viewers turning away in disgust and horror, even when the sterling production of Bibury Animation Studios and Yani's genuinely funny antics make it impossible to do anything but keep on gazing into that furry abyss.

Whether or not you will be sticking around past Episode 3 of Chainsmoker Cat largely depends on your tolerance for watching an anime that is going out of its way to rub your nose in the filthiest smells and textures imaginable while cracking dirty jokes. If there's one thing I have been truly impressed by up to this point, it's the show's skill at getting its audience to experience all of the layers of Yani and Co.'s filthy habitats. Every surface is meticulously textured to look as ragged and greasy as the color spectrum of a modern television will allow. Exceptional care has been put into animating every crinkling cigarette box, every hacking spasm, and every noxious puff of smoke.

At the center of all this madness is Yani Neko herself, a whirling dervish of crippling nicotine addiction and abject poverty who leaks and oozes every conceivable odor and slime that your nightmares could dream up. This week, we get a vivid look as she hocks a nasty old loogie onto her poor landlord's bald head, and he helpfully makes sure that we know that the cat-girl's spit smells like a radioactive mix of coffee, cigarettes, and old feet. I don't think an anime has ever made me gag before, but the shot of Mr. Landlord sniffing his fistful of cancerous cat mucus had me checking for an emergency vomit receptacle. Just in case.

If Chainsmoker Cat was nothing but a sophomoric parade of various body fluids and willfully idiotic puns, it might pass for decent (albeit incredibly niche) late-night comedy. What makes the show truly interesting, though, is the palpable undercurrent of melancholy fatalism that you can feel oozing out from under the floorboards and through the soggy patches of carpet in practically every scene. This isn't a comedy-drama by any means, but there's something about Chainsmoker Cat's aggressive and unflinching depiction of these characters and their world that circles back around to be quite dark. We've seen plenty of signs that the Beastfolk of this alternate universe aren't exactly treated like first-class citizens, and Yani herself is basically living in squalor. She has to eat garden weeds and steal cabbage to sate her hunger; her next-door neighbor and best friend, Yaku Neko, is addicted to hard drugs, and she is plagued by regular nightmares of dying from lung cancer.

Later in Episode 3, Yani visits her friend Aruko, who is clearly an alcoholic, and the girls' boozy shenanigans are punctuated by the shockingly grim joke of Aruko coming within a whisker's breadth of choking to death on her own vomit. The real question here is whether Chainsmoker Cat is asking us to laugh at the character's noxious addictions and depressing impoverishment from afar or inviting us to actually empathize with these characters through the lens of gross-out humor. Three weeks in, I think the answer is “A little bit of Column A, and a little bit of Column B.”

The sketch that ends Episode 3 sees Yani and Yaku join their pal Kansai to deliver public service announcements to the residents of Nyagamihara about properly disposing of cigarettes and other waste. Kansai gets distracted, however, when Yani rips ass with such vicious potency that everyone in the sound truck nearly suffocates on the evil fumes. Kansai and the others are supposed to be educating the public and improving society, but the ladies can't help but be distracted, almost hypnotized, by the comedic potential of having Yani blast her butt trumpet through the loudspeakers for everyone to hear. These cats are committed to earning their godforsaken yuks, even though Yani's wretched farts should be registered as felony-grade weapons of chemical warfare. Forget about frivolous details like shame or common decency. I can't think of a better encapsulation of Chainsmoker Cat's artistic philosophy. We're going to squeeze every last choking laugh that we can from the diseased bodies and broken spirits of these cat-girls, even if it kills them.

Episode 1 Rating:

Episode 2 Rating:

Episode 3 Rating:

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.

Chainsmoker Cat is currently streaming on Netflix and OceanVeil.