Anime
Episode 11 – Chainsmoker Cat
© にゃんにゃんファクトリー・講談社／ヤニねこ製作委員会
I was fortunate enough to take my first ever trip to Japan just this past summer, and I am very excited to finally have the ability to watch an anime like this and do the “Leonardo DiCaprio Whistles and Points at a Thing He Recognizes” meme reaction from Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. This week, multiple generations of catgirls (and their psychology unstable human chaperone) go on a trip to beautiful Kyoto and feast on matcha-flavored treats. I also got to take a trip to beautiful Kyoto and feast on matcha-flavored treats! The catgirls visit the cracker-eating deer in Nara, and I also got to give crackers to the deer in Nara! The gang visits the “dark anus” of a local temple to learn how the beastfolk were once forced to wear skimpy swimsuits and be whipped with bondage gear for the shogun’s pleasure. I, too…okay, I have to admit that my visit to Japan did not contain any horrifically titillating tales of sexual subjugation. I’ll have to ask my wife to keep an eye out the next time we fly out.
If you had told me that Chainsmoker Cat would become one of the summer’s coziest comfort shows after I was finished washing out my eyes and mouth and nose in the aftermath of that season premiere, you might have ended up with a face full of pepper spray and a restraining order, because I don’t remember inviting you into my bathroom, you freak. By now, we have all come to terms with how much we actually enjoy just spending time with these gross, smelly cats. This week sees the show dramatically paring down its raunchy excess to provide an experience that is almost — dare I say it? — normal. Sure, Yani encounters a sentient Deer King who waxes melancholy about the slow but inevitable decline of his once proud civilization, but this is the woman who unconsciously repelled an invasion of hellspawn with her asshole stank. A smoke break with the depressed, lonely monarch of the ancient deer empire is just another Tuesday, by comparison.
Here is the surest sign of how badly Chainsmoker Cat has broken my brain: Late into the episode, we check in with our beloved Landlord, who is enjoying a quiet and shockingly functional night at home without any of the catgirl shenanigans to distract him. He enjoys a meal and some warm sake, he checks in on a quaint local ghost-hunter show, and he turns in early with only a mild jumpscare from Penpen to disrupt his affairs. It’s all so peaceful, and yet all I could think the entire time was, “This son of a bitch had better start doing something gross and pathetic with that sex doll we all know he keeps stuffed in that closet, and he’d better start soon.” It’s gotten to the point where some dark, atavistic part of my brain now demands the disgusting, depraved antics that we’ve been subjected to all season. I nearly breathed a sigh of relief when the Landlord started getting busy with his vinyl mistress.
As the season winds to a close, I am struck by how much I am going to miss these losers and their deeply stupid lives. All the little scenes of Imoko and Yomuko bonding on their class trip are so wholesome, and even the older catgirls’ day out goes off with almost no hitches whatsoever. It’s unfortunate that poor Saori’s manga is getting cancelled, but hey, the gang survived the violent car crash that Saori got them all in when she heard the news! That’s Chainsmoker Cat in a nutshell, isn’t it? Life sucks most of the time, but you get by as best you can with your friends and your vices of choice.
Episode 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 views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Anime News Network, its employees, owners, or sponsors.
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The official website for the anime of Mai Matsuda‘s Walking Home with You (Hōkago Kitaku Biyori) manga opened on Wednesday and confirmed the anime’s television format. The website also unveiled the anime’s teaser visual and April 2027 premiere on the NTV channel.
©松田舞／双葉社・ハイパー帰宅部
The tagline on the visual above reads, “The requirement for joining the club is walking home with me.”
Matsuda also drew a commemorative illustration:
©松田舞／双葉社
Digital manga publisher Omoi licensed the manga and describes the story:
Shun was the star of his middle school’s soccer team, until an injury forced him to give up on his dream. Now in high school, he’s adrift, with no real interests or passions … until he meets his oddball upperclassman Naoki. She ropes him into joining her unofficial “Hyper-Epic Heading Home Club,” a club with only one member dedicated to turning every walk home into an adventure. As Shun follows Naoki through her flights of fancy in search of elaborate detours, secret treasures, and anything else that catches her attention, can the Heading Home Club bring color back to his drab everyday life?
The manga’s anime adaptation was first announced in March 2025.
Matsuda launched the manga in Futabasha‘s Manga Action magazine in August 2023. Futabasha will publish the seventh volume on Thursday.
Matsuda launched the Hikaru in the Light! manga in Manga Action in May 2021, and ended it in August 2022. Futabasha published four compiled book volumes for the manga. Omoi (then Azuki) licensed the manga, and released all four volumes in English.
Sources: Walking Home with You anime’s website and X/Twitter account, Comic Natalie
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Smartphone/PC game launched in 2022
The official website for the Code Geass: Lost Stories social game announced on Wednesday that the game will end service on December 7. Sales of the in-game Sakuradite currency, Lost Stories Pass, and Starter Pack has also ended on Wednesday.
The game launched for smartphones as well as on PC via the DMM Game Player in May 2022. The game is free to play, with optional in-game purchases available. Rock band FLOW performed the game’s original theme song “Pendulum.”
The game’s English version launched for iOS and Android in September 2023 and ended service in August 2024.
The action role-playing game had been originally slated to launch in winter 2018 as a PC browser game, but was then listed with no release window. DMM Games then announced in November 2021 that it was restarting the game’s development process with f4samurai as the developers.
Game developer JORO launched the separate Code Geass Knightmare Survivor game for iOS and Android on September 15. The “survivor action” game is free to play, with optional in-game purchases.
The Code Geass franchise is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and onward with several projects, including a new anime titled Code Geass Hoshi Oi no Aspal (Code Geass: Aspal the Star Chaser), a new musical stage play, and an exhibition.
Source: Code Geass: Lost Stories game’s website and X/Twitter account via Yaraon!
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Manga to enter final stage with 15th volume out on December 8
© Hiromasa Okujima
Retailers are listing the story of Hiromasa Okujima‘s Baban Baban Ban Vampire manga as entering its “final stage” in its 15th compiled book volume, which will ship on December 8.
Dark Horse Comics licensed the manga, and will release the first volume in English on November 10. Dark Horse describes the manga:
An unassuming worker in a long-established public bathhouse is really the lustful 450-year-old vampire Ranmaru Mori! The heir to this esteemed Koi No Yu Bathhouse, Rihito Tatsuno, is a fifteen-year-old virgin—who is about to fall in love for the first time with a girl in his class! Ranmaru begins to weave a desperate plan to prevent Rihito from losing his virginity and to make him fall for Ranmaru instead, so the bloodsucker can eventually have pure, eighteen-year-old virgin blood for his own vampiric self!
Okujima launched the manga in Akita Shoten‘s Bessatsu Shōnen Champion magazine in October 2021. Akita Shoten published the manga’s 14th volume on August 6.
The Baban Baban Ban Vampire anime adaptation premiered in Japan on January 11. The anime is streaming on Netflix.
A live-action film of the manga was originally scheduled for a February 2025 release, but was postponed due to “various circumstances.” The preview screening scheduled in January 2025 was also canceled. The film opened in July 2025, and ranked at #5 in its opening weekend in Japan.
Sources: Amazon, Rakuten Books
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