English Dub Season Review: Chainsmoker Cat Season One

Overview:

Yani is a catgirl with a seriously bad smoking habit. She smokes so much that her apartment smells like ash and is littered with cigarette butts—and plenty of other trash! Every time she tries to quit, she becomes weak to the cravings and gives in almost instantly. Will she ever get her life together, or is she doomed to live as a chain-smoking slob forever?

Our Take(Spoilers):

I asked about the strength of your stomach because it surprisingly has relevance when it comes to this show. Chainsmoker Cat is one of the most disgusting shows that I have ever watched. I don’t mean that from a moral standpoint, though you could make an argument for that as well. This show was, umm… not great. I don’t know what the point of it was other than maybe some sort of abstract anti-smoking ad, but considering this anime is based on a manga, I doubt that.

The main thing that makes this show so disappointing for me is the fact that there aren’t any characters that are enjoyable… or good people. I’m all for flawed characters with layers, but some of the flaws are really bad. Ootani the landlord is a mostly nice guy, but he’s so attracted to the beastfolk that he has a blow-up sex doll, and since most of his apartments are rented out by beastfolk, you can see how that could look. There’s Aruko, who’s an alcoholic, Yakuko, who is into hard drugs, and that’s not even mentioning how bad Yani is.

There wasn’t any sort of main story or anything. What we get is a bunch of unconnected episodes where Yani and everyone treat each other like shit. The only two characters who are kind of okay, Nishi and Yani’s sister Imoko, are barely in the show. Nishi is a struggling comedian and felt like a character that was supposed to get more screen time but didn’t for some reason. Imoko tries to change her shitty sister while also not realizing that her mother likes to smoke as well whenever she’s gone.

Most of the time I watched Chainsmoker Cat, I kept thinking, who is this for? It’s funny at times, sure, but I felt grossed out more often than I was laughing. If you’ve ever been around someone who smokes as much as Yani, you’ll be even more sick while watching this. Ultimately, I wouldn’t recommend this show outside of the shock factor that you get in the first couple of episodes, until it settles into being a below-average comedy.