What Is This Anime Smoking? | Trash Taste #321

In the opening scene of Yanyan Neko Chain Smoky Cat, the protagonist, a down-and-out cat girl, unboxes a fresh pack of cigarettes with the kind of loving, cinematic detail normally reserved for a gourmet meal or a prized artifact. The hosts of Trash Taste—Joey, Connor, and Garnt—agree that this level of over-animation for something so grimy is the first signal that the show is something unusual. Within the first minute, the landlord walks in on her changing, gets aroused, and the episode cuts to him masturbating. Then, the cat girl shits herself on screen. The show is, as Connor puts it, “Trainspotting, but anime edition with cat girls.”

A Show That Makes Smoking Look Disgusting

The premise is simple: Yanyan Neko is a cat girl living in poverty in modern Japan, and her entire life revolves around getting her next cigarette. The hosts describe her apartment as a disaster zone, and her behavior as relentlessly self-destructive. The show is not a glamorization of smoking. Joey notes that while actors like Mads Mikkelsen make smoking look cool, this show does the opposite. “It is the best anti-smoking campaign I’ve ever seen,” he says. The first episode follows her scrounging for change, buying a pack, and then tripping and stabbing several cigarettes into a piece of dog shit on the road. Her immediate solution is to cut the dirty ends off and smoke them anyway.