The first two episodes of Chainsmoker Cat that I covered for the Summer ’26 Preview Guide were absolutely deranged, which I of course mean as a compliment. This show is nothing if not one-hundred percent committed to depicting the raunchy, depraved, tobacco-stained excess of our anti-heroine Yani Neko’s lifestyle, no matter how off-putting or offensive it may be to most well-adjusted members of society. In fact, you can tell that Chainsmoker Cat gets right off on the thought of viewers turning away in disgust and horror, even when the sterling production of Bibury Animation Studios and Yani’s genuinely funny antics make it impossible to do anything but keep on gazing into that furry abyss.

Whether or not you will be sticking around past Episode 3 of Chainsmoker Cat largely depends on your tolerance for watching an anime that is going out of its way to rub your nose in the filthiest smells and textures imaginable while cracking dirty jokes. If there’s one thing I have been truly impressed by up to this point, it’s the show’s skill at getting its audience to experience all of the layers of Yani and Co.’s filthy habitats. Every surface is meticulously textured to look as ragged and greasy as the color spectrum of a modern television will allow. Exceptional care has been put into animating every crinkling cigarette box, every hacking spasm, and every noxious puff of smoke.

At the center of all this madness is Yani Neko herself, a whirling dervish of crippling nicotine addiction and abject poverty who leaks and oozes every conceivable odor and slime that your nightmares could dream up. This week, we get a vivid look as she hocks a nasty old loogie onto her poor landlord’s bald head, and he helpfully makes sure that we know that the cat-girl’s spit smells like a radioactive mix of coffee, cigarettes, and old feet. I don’t think an anime has ever made me gag before, but the shot of Mr. Landlord sniffing his fistful of cancerous cat mucus had me checking for an emergency vomit receptacle. Just in case.

If Chainsmoker Cat was nothing but a sophomoric parade of various body fluids and willfully idiotic puns, it might pass for decent (albeit incredibly niche) late-night comedy. What makes the show truly interesting, though, is the palpable undercurrent of melancholy fatalism that you can feel oozing out from under the floorboards and through the soggy patches of carpet in practically every scene. This isn’t a comedy-drama by any means, but there’s something about Chainsmoker Cat‘s aggressive and unflinching depiction of these characters and their world that circles back around to be quite dark. We’ve seen plenty of signs that the Beastfolk of this alternate universe aren’t exactly treated like first-class citizens, and Yani herself is basically living in squalor. She has to eat garden weeds and steal cabbage to sate her hunger; her next-door neighbor and best friend, Yaku Neko, is addicted to hard drugs, and she is plagued by regular nightmares of dying from lung cancer.

Later in Episode 3, Yani visits her friend Aruko, who is clearly an alcoholic, and the girls’ boozy shenanigans are punctuated by the shockingly grim joke of Aruko coming within a whisker’s breadth of choking to death on her own vomit. The real question here is whether Chainsmoker Cat is asking us to laugh at the character’s noxious addictions and depressing impoverishment from afar or inviting us to actually empathize with these characters through the lens of gross-out humor. Three weeks in, I think the answer is “A little bit of Column A, and a little bit of Column B.”

The sketch that ends Episode 3 sees Yani and Yaku join their pal Kansai to deliver public service announcements to the residents of Nyagamihara about properly disposing of cigarettes and other waste. Kansai gets distracted, however, when Yani rips ass with such vicious potency that everyone in the sound truck nearly suffocates on the evil fumes. Kansai and the others are supposed to be educating the public and improving society, but the ladies can’t help but be distracted, almost hypnotized, by the comedic potential of having Yani blast her butt trumpet through the loudspeakers for everyone to hear. These cats are committed to earning their godforsaken yuks, even though Yani’s wretched farts should be registered as felony-grade weapons of chemical warfare. Forget about frivolous details like shame or common decency. I can’t think of a better encapsulation of Chainsmoker Cat‘s artistic philosophy. We’re going to squeeze every last choking laugh that we can from the diseased bodies and broken spirits of these cat-girls, even if it kills them.

Episode 1 Rating:

Episode 2 Rating:

Episode 3 Rating:

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.

Chainsmoker Cat is currently streaming on
Netflix and OceanVeil.

The Critics Choice Awards revealed its nominees for this year’s sixth annual event on Wednesday. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle – Akaza Sairai, the first film in the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle trilogy, and the live-action film of KOTAKE CREATE‘s infinite-loop horror game Exit 8 (8-Ban Deguchi) received nominations for “Best Superhero Movie.”

Kazunari Ninomiya, the star of Exit 8, was nominated for “Best Actor in a Superhero Movie.”

The winners will be announced on August 6.

Crunchyroll will begin streaming the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle I film on July 28 worldwide outside of Japan and Mainland China. The film will also be able to purchase digitally on July 28 on services such as Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play, YouTube, and Fandango

The film opened in Japan on July 18, 2025, and ended its run in Japanese theaters on April 9 after screening for 266 days. The film sold a cumulative total of 27,455,968 million tickets to earn 40,200,019,000 yen (about US$252.5 million) in Japan.

Worldwide, the film has sold 98,520,310 tickets, and earned 117,917,539,329 yen (about US$740.5 million).

September 15, 2025, its 60th day in the Japanese box office. This made it the second highest-earning film of all time at the Japanese box office, surpassing Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli‘s 2001 film Spirited Away. 

The film first screened in the U.S. and Canada on September 12. The film returned to theaters in North America on March 6. Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment also brought the film to SCREENX multi-projection screens in North America for the first time.

The film had sold 89,177,796 tickets for 106,370,568,950 yen (about US$685 million) worldwide as of November 16, making it the first Japanese film to earn over 100 billion yen (about US$644 million) worldwide.

According to Box Office Mojo, the film earned US$718,491,762 worldwide in 2025, making it the seventh top-grossing film worldwide in 2025. The film was also the #2 animated film in the U.S. in 2025 (ranking #18 overall in the U.S. with US$134,487,320), and the #3 animated film worldwide in 2025.

Film distribution company NEON (Oscar-winning films Parasite, Anora U.S. distributor) began screening the film in North America on Friday.

Film distribution company NEON (Oscar-winning films Parasite, Anora U.S. distributor) began screening the Exit 8 film in North America on April 10. Exit 8 earned about US$1,404,500 in its first three days.

The film opened in Japan in August 2025, and ranked at #2 in its opening weekend. The film sold 672,000 tickets and earned 960,867,600 yen (about US$6.46 million) in its first three days. The film had the highest earning opening three days for a live-action film in Japan for 2025. The film earned a cumulative total of 4,899,067,900 yen (about US$32.10 million) as of October.

Singer and actor Ninomiya (live-action Letters from Iwo Jima, Ōoku, Gantz, Assassination Classroom) stars in the film in his first collaboration with writer-director Genki Kawamura (producer on your name., Fireworks, Should We See it from the Side or the Bottom?, Suzume).

In the game, a player is trapped at a subway train station, in an underground passageway that goes in an endless loop. To escape to “Exit 8,” the player must keep walking while looking carefully for any anomaly that foreshadows danger.

Sources: Critics Choice Awards, Deadline (Erik Pedersen)