Chainsmoker Cat (Yani Neko) has been removed from distribution in Hong Kong after the anime was flagged over its heavy depiction of smoking.
The decision came after Hong Kong’s Department of Health reportedly determined that the series’ smoking-related content could violate the city’s regulations concerning the promotion and advertising of tobacco products.
The anime’s unusual premise already made it one of the more talked-about shows of the Summer 2026 season. Now, its smoking-heavy content has landed it in a completely different kind of controversy.
Chainsmoker Cat Pulled From Hong Kong
The Hong Kong distribution of Chainsmoker Cat was stopped on August 17 after the Department of Health issued a notification regarding the anime’s content.
The Taiwan-based anime streaming platform Bahamut Anime Crazy had been distributing the series in Hong Kong, but stopped its Hong Kong distribution after receiving the notice.
Previous episodes were also removed from the affected platform.
The reason given was the anime’s depiction of smoking, which authorities considered to be content that could promote or encourage smoking under Hong Kong’s restrictions on tobacco advertising and related content.
Interestingly, the restriction does not appear to have resulted in the anime disappearing from every service available in Hong Kong. The report notes that its availability on Netflix Hong Kong does not appear to have been affected at this point.
Why Is Chainsmoker Cat So Focused on Smoking?
Well… the title wasn’t exactly hiding it.
Chainsmoker Cat, originally titled Yani Neko, follows a heavy-smoking cat-eared beastwoman who spends her days living an extremely lazy and self-indulgent life.
The story takes place in Nyangamihara City, Kanagawa, a place where humans and beastfolk live alongside each other. The protagonist lives in a cheap apartment and spends her everyday life with the other residents.
The manga originally began as a series of posts on Twitter before being serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Young Magazine in 2023.
Its comedy heavily relies on smoking, crude humor and the protagonist’s deliberately dysfunctional lifestyle, giving the series a very different tone from most anime airing this season.
The manga had surpassed 400,000 copies in circulation as of August 2025, showing that the strange concept has managed to find a sizeable audience despite its divisive nature.
Real Cigarette Brands Also Appear
The smoking isn’t merely a background element either.
The series frequently depicts cigarettes, including real-world Japanese brands such as Mevius.
That’s particularly relevant to the Hong Kong situation because the city’s regulations can apply when content is considered to objectively promote or encourage smoking, regardless of whether a tobacco company actually sponsored or paid for the content.
So the question isn’t necessarily whether Chainsmoker Cat was created as an advertisement for cigarettes.
Instead, the concern is whether the way smoking is portrayed can itself fall under Hong Kong’s restrictions.
And considering that smoking is one of the central elements of the series, that’s a pretty significant issue for Yani Neko.
The Anime Was Already Dividing Viewers
The Hong Kong decision isn’t the first controversy surrounding Chainsmoker Cat.
The anime has attracted plenty of attention in Japan because of its deliberately excessive content, particularly its frequent depiction of smoking.
Some viewers reportedly dropped the series after watching its first episode, while others have embraced its bizarre premise and unconventional comedy.
That divisive reaction has also followed the anime overseas, where some viewers have criticized its smoking-heavy presentation and other aspects of its crude style.
At the same time, that’s essentially what makes Chainsmoker Cat what it is.
Take away the cigarettes and the deliberately messy lifestyle of its protagonist, and you’ve removed a huge part of the joke.
A Strange Situation for Chainsmoker Cat
The anime began airing in Japan in July 2026, with international streaming also launching around the same period.
It is being released internationally under the English title Chainsmoker Cat, while its Chinese title is 尼古喵喵.
Now, barely a month into its television run, the anime has already encountered a regulatory issue in one of its overseas markets.
For Hong Kong viewers, at least one official distribution platform has already stopped carrying the series following the Department of Health’s notification.
Whether other platforms will face similar action remains to be seen.
For now, Chainsmoker Cat continues its Japanese run, but its Hong Kong removal highlights something the anime probably wasn’t going to avoid forever: when smoking is this central to a series, different countries are going to have very different ideas about where fictional depiction ends and promotion begins.
Source: HongKong-bs
