Bandai Namco Europe announced on Monday that Bandai Namco Entertainment‘s Synduality Echo of Ada game will end its online service after May 2027, and will transition to an offline version. 

With the end of the online service, updates and events will no longer be available after the content scheduled for October.

Sales of in-game items including the “SYN COINS” tokens will end on December 18. The launch of the transfer of save data to local save data is also scheduled for December. The end date of the online service is scheduled to be announced in March 2027, and transition to the offline game is scheduled after May 2027.

The game launched on January 24, 2025 (January 23 in Japan) for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

Sony describes the game:

The year is 2222. It has been years since Tears of the New Moon, a mysterious rain, poured and wiped out almost the entire human race. The poisonous rain gave birth to deformed creatures devouring for humans, and humanity fled from the danger. As means for survival, the humans then build an underground haven; Amasia. In this new built dystopian city, on a pursuit of maintaining their existence, they run into an Artificial Intelligence named Magus. Not knowing how things will work between them, the story of how Humans and AI coinciding and trying to find their truths begin.

The game is part of Bandai Namco Filmworks and Bandai Spirits‘ Synduality project, which includes the television anime Synduality: Noir. The anime’s first cours premiered in July 2023. Disney+ streamed the anime exclusively worldwide as it aired in Japan. Hulu streamed the anime in the U.S. The second cours (quarter of a year) premiered on the TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TV Setouchi, TV Hokkaido, and TV Q Kyuushuu channels in January 2024. Disney+ exclusively streamed the second cours starting a day later in Japan.

While the game is set in the year 2222, the anime is set 20 years after in 2242.

The franchise also has a manga spinoff titled Synduality: Ellie, focusing on the titular character, which launched in Kadokawa‘s Monthly Comic Alive magazine in July 2023. The second and final compiled book volume shipped in Japan in January 2025. Hiroshi Mishima drew the manga. The manga also has a novelization under Kadokawa‘s MF Bunko J label. 

The franchise also has a separate novel spinoff “photo story” titled Synduality: Kaleido, which launched in Hobby Japan‘s Monthly Hobby Japan magazine in July 2023.

Source: Bandai Namco Europe’s website and YouTube channel, Synduality Echo of Ada game’s Japanese website

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.

There was a period of time about halfway through this season where I thought Chainsmoker Cat might make a genuine swerve towards dramedy, or at least dark comedy as pitch black as Yani Neko’s lungs. These catgirls all live such ramshackle, hardscrabble lives that I was certain one of them would end up six feet under before the season ended. My money was on Aruko, whose incredibly visible alcoholism was teetering right on the edge of self-annihilation from the moment we watched her almost choke on all of that rainbow-sparkle vomit.

Here, at the end of the line (for now, at least), I am glad that Chainsmoker Cat didn’t go for such a dark shift in tone. Yes, our characters remain dysfunctional addicts and enablers whose worst instincts are constantly colliding against the barriers and restrictions placed upon them by their poverty and their minority status, but damn it if they don’t keep on trucking despite it all anyways. If the show has anything to say about addiction and immaturity keeping people stuck in their lives, it’s that none of us on this side of the screen are really any different from Yani Neko and her pals (feline features notwithstanding). Everybody farts, poops, shares tasteless jokes with their friends when they think nobody else is listening, stinks if they go too long without a shower, indulges in a vice or two, and at the end of each day, tries to do their best to make it to the next one.

In that sense, it is only right that Chainsmoker Cat straddles the line of darkness and destitution without ever losing sight of its wackiest and weirdest sensibilities, because that’s just how life goes for most people, I reckon. The world is, on its best days, an absolutely deranged place to try and carve out your little corner of existence in peace. Sometimes it’s more sad than funny, but I’d like to think that the weird days outnumber the woeful ones, by and large.

This final episode of Chainsmoker Cat‘s remarkably consistent and engaging season does nothing more or less than give us another day in the lives of these stinky fuzzballs, and I don’t think I would want it any other way. Yani Neko helps Saori find a little enjoyment in a tasty crepe snack before our resident human attempts to get back into the saddle of publishing comics. After getting mad at a game, Hameko loses her mind and goes absolutely feral in a wonderfully animated little sequence. Another hilarious bit involves the Landlord discovering the extent of his beastfolk fetish when Shunran plays along with Saori’s gambit and creates a whole drag persona. Then there’s Yakuko, always the most empathetic and relatable of the gang, who goes on a bender of her own after being fired for what sounds like discrimination over her vaguely felonious history.

You’d think I’d be used to it after twelve whole episodes, but I am still marveling over how the anime with the extended jokes about giant, sentient erections and reality-altering farts has become one of the year’s most genuinely cozy comfort watches. Anyone who knows me will understand just how much it means for me to drop the “cozy” label with such casual abandon. I am usually the curmudgeon that rejects any of these new games or shows that seem to be aggressively catering to the “cozy” alternatives of traditional fare. I guess I just need all of those stories to feature more fetid halfway-houses filled with criminals, addicts, sex-freaks, and mercurial tricksters.

It helps that there are still glimpses of hope, even in the darkest crevices of Yani Neko’s many different yet equally noxious orifices. I worry for how long Imoko can hold on to her innocence and dignity if she keeps orbiting the antics of her older sister. At least there’s someone in this anime besides Yakuko and the Landlord who is mildly concerned about Aruko living in this booze-soaked den of iniquity. As much as I love all of the gremlins shacking up in this apartment, there’s no question that they’re a questionable influence on the next generation of catgirls. While I am not sure that Yomuko serving as a bikini model for Saori’s smutty manga is a literal sex crime, you can’t blame Officer So-and-So for being more than a little suspicious of just what the hell is going on in this apartment.

Then again, maybe living life a bit closer to the edge (and in closer proximity to Yani Neko’s sanity-destroying butthole) is exactly the kind of life experience that Yomuko needs to take her writing to the next level? After all, as we’ve seen time and again, these girls always come back around to lift and spur each other forward, even if that spurring is occasionally in the direction of dangerous misadventures and addictive chemical substances. I can only hope that we get more of this wonderful show sooner rather than later, because I think I’m in the same boat as Yani and Co. There’s no better way to shave years off your lifespan by indulging in self-destructive behavior and immature shenanigans than by doing it with a bunch of great friends.

Episode Rating:

Chainsmoker Cat is currently streaming on
Netflix and OceanVeil.

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.