A kitten with a tobacco addiction. An apartment drowning in cigarette butts. No intention of changing. If that sounds like the most honest premise of summer anime, that’s because it probably is.
Chainsmoker Cat (Yanineko) cuts through a season of explosions and destiny with the quiet confidence of someone who knows their flat is a disaster and couldn’t care less. No noble quest. No redemption arc. Just raw, scruffy honesty β a fascinating pattern in a medium usually built on aspiration.
The Trailer
The main trailer has arrived, confirming a July 2, 2026 premiere. It’s loaded with the everyday, messy situations manga readers already cherish β now with animation and moving voices. Nicotine-stained mornings. Chaotic kitchens. The beautiful mundane chaos of a life that isn’t trying to impress anyone.
The Music
Each episode will be accompanied by two distinct musical identities that perfectly frame the show’s emotional core.
Opening β “Nanmonee” by Wasureranneyo
The rock band Wasureranneyo delivers raw, driving energy β the unapologetic bang of a door to a messy kitchen. It leads with the chaotic, relentless present.
Ending β “Kemuri to Blue” by Necry Talkie
Necry Talkie closes each episode with Kemuri to Blue
β literally, Smoke and Blue. It’s the melancholic, hazy soundtrack to staring out a nicotine-stained window at dusk. You bookend the chaos with the wistful blue. That tonal one-two tells you everything about the show’s heart.
Both songs can be heard in the trailer over scenes of daily kitten life and their beautifully worn-in environment.
The Production Team
Production is handled by Bibury Animation, with a crew that reads like a well-oiled machine designed for consistent, everyday charm.
- Director: Taku Kimura
- Scripts: Takashi Aoshima β the translator of the manga’s specific, low-stakes honesty
- Character Design: Riki Matsuura
- Music: Keiichi Suzuki
- Art Directors: Yukiko Maruyama & Shotaro Yoshino (Atelier Musa)
- Color Design: Yuiha Ota
- Photography Direction: Hisashi Yonezawa
- Editing: Mutsumi Takemiya
- Sound Direction: Takatoshi Hamano
Every name here isn’t a flashy headline β it’s a signed contract to deliver a specific, grounded tone. The art and colour direction especially will be doing the heavy lifting to make that glorious, cigarette-butt-filled apartment feel lived-in, almost forgiving, like the wallpaper in a favourite pub.
The Story
Chainsmoker Cat is a manga by Nyan Nyan Factory, published in Kodansha’s Young Magazine. It’s already on its twelfth collected volume, released on .
The world-building is the real hook: humans and cats coexist simply. That’s it. The story follows Yani, a kitten whose apartment is an absolute disaster of cigarette butts and ash. Every time she tries to quit smoking, the craving wins in record time.
The story isn’t a public service announcement on quitting. It’s about the quiet, relentless negotiation between a bad habit and daily life β and the friends who orbit that chaos.
The fun isn’t in whether Yani achieves sobriety or not. It’s in watching her and her just-as-carefree friends navigate the small chaos of everyday life with a lack of pretense we rarely get to see. They aren’t trying to be better. They’re just trying to get through the day.
Why It Might Matter
In a landscape chasing epic scale, does a story’s power sometimes lie in its refusal to even entertain a moral lesson? If a narrative finds its strength in portraying aimless, communal drift β what does that quietly suggest about what we’re actually craving from our entertainment?
Are you on Team Wasureranneyo, or has Necry Talkie’s ending already won you over from the trailer?
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