[00:02] smokes. Her neighbor is a streamer whose name is, and I need you to understand I'm not making this up, the easygoing anal angel. There's a mangaka in the building whose pen name translates to Dick Tatsudo. Another neighbor is a cat
[00:14] girl who drinks alcohol like it's water. Another is a literal drug addict. And their landlord has a beastfolk blow-up doll that he uses intimately. But largely, this show looks like a shitpost. Sometimes a very literal
[00:27] shitpost. You have a lot of very valid reasons for not watching Chainsmoker Cat. But if you do, and you look past all of the stuff that specifying in this video might get me demonetized for, if you
[00:40] look past all of that, this could potentially end up being one of the most honest shows of the season. Welcome to Glass Reflection, where today we're talking about Chainsmoker Cat. You've probably already heard some things about
[00:52] this show, and allow me to fill you in if you are one of the uninitiated. This is a cat girl apartment comedy. The main character of the series, Yanni Neko figure that one out. She lives in squalor. She exists in an apartment
[01:05] building full of beastfolk who are all their own varying degrees of messed up. It's being animated by Studio Bibury, who you may know for 100 Girlfriends, and they're going really hard on this show that I could easily argue does not
[01:18] deserve it. And after one episode in, I put it in the A tier on my seasonal list. Honestly, it's still there, even though I will flat-out say, you shouldn't watch this. Cuz putting it in A tier, I still think was the right
[01:31] call, just for the wrong reasons. It was an A tier for the absurdity of it. It's staying in A tier for the honesty of it. I want to be clear, this is not a pitch for this to be a hidden gem of the season, something you missed, something
[01:45] that I was wrong about. No, because I mean, having a character that accidentally drops smoke in a literal pile of feces, only to dig them up so that she can still smoke them, because that's just how addicted she is. It is
[01:59] recommend to people. And as I said at the top, she is not the only one. This show is full of varying degrees of really use that description lightly. Like the show is gross. It is
[02:12] disgusting. It's also funny. All of these things can coexist. It just depends on your own personal boundaries, I suppose, on whether or not it would be enjoyable to you. But despite being so gross and so full of
[02:28] just literal garbage, the show seems to be sponsored by an actual Japanese main character almost exclusively smokes their brand, and it's a real brand, not a fake WacDonald's brand. And it went so
[02:42] far that in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the show has been banned for violating their anti-smoking advertisement laws. Contrast to the other smoking show this season, because, you know, like Armageddon and Deep Impact, sometimes uh
[02:55] come in pairs. So, despite this show pushing people away from smoking with just how absolutely disgusting it is, I working. Contrast that with Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You, which
[03:09] is airing this season and arguably in some ways is romanticizing the act of these shows kind of airing at the same time because it's like extreme degeneracy when it's smoking and oh no, smoking is cool, actually. It's like the
[03:25] two sides of the freaking coin here. Perfectly balanced, as all things should the protagonist is basically a raccoon with a leash who doesn't literally garbage dive, but considering she lives in a garbage heap like dive, it doesn't
[03:40] the constant scenes with characters either vomiting, urinating, or taking a dump, usually accompanied by wonderful rainbow colors cuz that can be shown on sharing it here, either, to be fair. What about a mangaka who's not beast
[03:54] folk, but is trying to draw erotic manga with beast folk characters? And you chop chop. Like, we're not having a misunderstanding here. There are a lot of characters here, and they all have their own levels of damage, and
[04:08] sometimes it's a lot. If all you want is that kind of absurdist comedy that you're just watching this in raptured because you're like, "What absolute garbage are they going to come up with next? Accidentally summoning a
[04:23] demon with cigarette butts while you're asleep and getting him to dissummon himself because you live in such squalor and fart in his face?" Real scene. Where do they come up with it? What will they think of next? If that's what you're
[04:37] watching it for, then fine. Sure. But if that was all that there was, I probably to you about it. Because even if our main character doesn't actually seem like she wants help or cares or has any level of empathy at all for anything
[04:54] except what she needs to showcase in order to get another cigarette, she is not the only member of this cast. And when you start looking into it, a lot of the different members of this show, a lot of the different characters within
[05:07] this show, have their own fights with addiction, and it is very real. It's not just with nicotine, though nicotine addiction is a big one. Every character
[05:19] has their own vice, even the ones without any vices. The show really does thrive on the concept of borrowed happiness. Yeah, you could do your best not indulge in any of these vices. You could save your money, get a
[05:35] good house, try to live a good life, but that takes time, and society likes beating you down. So, why shouldn't I indulge in this seemingly harmless indulge in this seemingly harmless habit? I mean, it's not that big of a
[05:50] deal, right? It's just a smoke every once in a while. Except it's not every once in a while. Yanni smokes through everything. She'll smoke during meals, conversations, panic attacks. And she's not the only one. Our streamer cat
[06:02] streams instead of dealing with her life. She prefers to live on her stream despite what may get shown. There's Sayori who works herself into the ground actually has to sit and think for a while. Yaku is probably the hardest on
[06:15] herself, but even then it doesn't stop her from doping up. None of them are having like a good time. You can't say that any of their lives are good. They're just managing barely. And that's the problem. That's
[06:27] the story here. Yanni will light a cigarette and her life is great, you know, for about 5 minutes. And but she loves that 5 minutes. It 5 minutes feels cigarette is done and well, you might as well grab another one, right? Let's get
[06:42] another 5 minutes in here. Hell, let's do two or three. Take 10, 15 minutes. the cigarettes are done and gone, nothing's changed except you just want to do it all over again. None of them with any of their vices seems to fully
[06:57] acknowledge what it's doing to their lives. It's like they don't care that some of what they're doing is literally killing them. And largely that's because later in their life is a luxury. Because the argument is what is the point of
[07:12] worrying about what's going to happen to you in 20 years if you keep smoking when the now is just so unbearable. You're barely making it through the now. Who cares about what you're like in 20 years? Yeah, it's reckless, but at the
[07:25] same time it's like an emotional triage. And you know, the show doesn't lecture people about this, which is probably why people consider it to be quite pro-smoking and pro-vice cuz very rarely do we actually go on to some like
[07:38] moralistic rant about the dangers of smoking. It assumes, probably rightfully so, that we all know how bad smoking is, but that's not the point. We don't need Yianni to like pull up a smoke and be like, "Ah, well, I know this is bad for
[07:52] me, but we're going to go through it anyway." Like, we live now in a in a media landscape that if addiction gets brought up, it is like front and center capital B bad. It's a focus here, and it's used as a bit for comedy a lot, but
[08:06] largely the addiction, the various addictions of all of these characters, I mean, for some shows, addiction is the most significant subplot of its entire narrative. But for me, it was a Tuesday. So, this is a show
[08:21] about a smoking cat, and this character relates to people that happen to have ADHD [music] and potentially anxieties and a lot of executive dysfunction. Hi. And the normalization of all of this is is what is slightly fascinating.
[08:36] residents within this one apartment building, have been dealing with this so long that they're just able to handle each others like various health crises with a level of nonchalance. Did one of them nearly OD? Oh, well, just another
[08:50] day. You're coughing up blood or vomiting all over the place? Well, we've played as a comedy. These are very serious things that are happening. These are very not good things happening to these characters. And yet, we're
[09:04] supposed to be laughing. Sometimes we do, but then you start noticing these characters and how they're a little messed up as well. Yianni's got a sister. She's all prim and proper and put together. She's the normal one.
[09:16] Except, she's not though. The most functional person in the show has her own dysfunction, and that is that she needs to function by helping others with their dysfunction. We're not shown her hanging around well-adjusted people, and
[09:29] I think it's cuz she doesn't want to be around well-adjusted people. She can't help well-adjusted people. But her sister, oh, her poor, poor sister who just can't seem to go a single moment without putting a cigarette in her hand.
[09:43] That's something that the sister can help with. She needs someone to fix, and she'll get her own weird enjoyment and kick out of doing it. If you got a person that looks healthy in a room full of addicts, guess what? She's got her
[09:55] own problems. Being needed is her addiction, and arguably it's just as bad. But that need to be needed, it doesn't exist in a vacuum because the world around Imoko rewards her for it. As long as she keeps performing. Like
[10:10] she is showcased as the one that is put together. She is the most normal, the most human-like. She is praised for acting human, for kind of accidentally
[10:26] accidentally does something not human-like, people start talking. And in a world and a society like Japan is where, you know, sticking out is not a good thing, being a beast folk means sticking out all the
[10:41] time. Any part of her beast folk nature that is positively talked about, it's usually like in the realm of it's a novelty. Oh, you're purring so well today. Oh, isn't that great? Imoko as a character gets
[10:57] accepted when she's able to perform as a human. She'll get shut out if she doesn't. She's never allowed to be herself, which is just wonderful social commentary against minorities from this show about a cat
[11:12] girl picking up cigarette butts from a piece of feces. And the show does like to remind you that occasionally some of these characters likes to do, you know, something to get out of it. There's an episode where Yaku wants to go beetle
[11:24] episode where Yaku wants to go beetle hunting, and no one is either willing or able to go with her. And in the show that is otherwise a comedy, it is not played for as a comedy here. It is played for as
[11:38] sad. Not sad in because she wants to do this weird thing that like little boys in the Enoch all like to do, but more sad just because she's trying to do something normal for once. And she's not able to get anyone to really help her.
[11:53] And it is just sad. Yeah, Yianni ends up jumping on her bike at the end of it anyway, but that's after a handful of moments where it's like, is she going to be okay? Cuz we don't know. The thing is though, it isn't just like a show about
[12:06] people with bad habits, but it's also like subtly about well, just marginalized characters that are the underclass in a world that doesn't give aren't character flaws. They are occasionally shown as, you know, just
[12:20] symptoms of a greater societal problem in this world. There's an episode where the characters are playing the game of life, and all of them draw cards for what job they get, only to have to discard pretty much all
[12:32] of them because beast folk aren't allowed to take those jobs. They have to read out a warning in case your human character ends up getting married to a beast folk character because that's not good. And their fun little game about
[12:46] life really wants to nail it home for all of its players. And like you can draw so many real world parallels that you want. You like pick your poison. It's not like the show is like directly calling attention to any of that. It is
[12:59] not preachy about these things. It's still a comedy at the end of the day. It's just very subtle about all of the real world influences that it has. The system they live in might dock their grades for who they are. It would deny
[13:13] them property because they don't have a family registry. It treats any semblance of them acting human as a performance because, you know, they're not really human. So like at the end of the day, their addictions aren't just personal
[13:26] cheapest anesthetic to life that they have access to. Cuz as the very game of life showed them, their lives were rigged before it even started. And so yeah, there's funny haha comedy jokes there, but the jokes are not here as a
[13:41] replacement for commentary. The jokes are more of just how it likes to showcase this in a way that might be more acceptable to some people. And I doesn't make any freaking sense like the freaking alien raygun that blows a hole
[13:56] through a forest and the giant tower that looks like a dick. Maybe in this world that beast folk were brought here and they're really aliens. I mean with all of the freaking cinema and film references in the show's opening, if the
[14:08] whole narrative is just a wonderful homage to District 9, I would not be surprised. And I mean the closest thing to like a relate No, he can't even be a degenerate as the rest of them. But sometimes, you know, you need a
[14:20] character in a show that actually makes you want to tune in just to see more of them. And that's the landlord. The show is great. He is a pervert and he has perverted thoughts and things that he does throughout the show, but he does
[14:34] genuinely seem to care about everybody in his apartment building. Yeah, he's a landlord and landlords, am I right? But here this guy doesn't seem to be charging any of these girls that much in rent. He lets so much slide. Many of the
[14:49] characters he treats probably better or as good as his own family. He is a character that at least sometimes tries to be a bit of stability in their lives. He's not like actively telling any of them, "Hey, you should go and fix up
[15:01] your shit." But if any of them tried to, he would be the most supportive guy scene with him and another character in his truck as they're driving to go pick up someone else that went off who knows where because she got drunk the night
[15:15] before. But they're sitting there and they're just, you know, not talking, but it's a scene that is set up in a way where they don't need to talk to really where they don't need to talk to really get things through. It's a really like
[15:28] human moment. Right? Even if half of the scene wasn't human at all because she's scene where he has to break himself out of a time loop by slapping the main way to transition to that. I'm sorry. It's just a thing and it happened. And
[15:42] that's kind of how the show operates. It'll give you something genuinely human and then immediately make you question why you're watching it. But you don't stop. That is how this show is able to tell its tale to kind of not really
[15:56] shine a spotlight but also shine the biggest spotlight ever on like discrimination against others, the other, however you want to define that whatever disgusting amounts of comedy it needs to in order to get that on the
[16:10] air. That's what this is. I gave it an A tier before and it's staying in A tier now. I can't in good conscience give it an S because But there are very few shows this season that are trying to do this much and
[16:24] landing all of it even with how subtle it is. Like did you notice any of that or were you like well, arguably me at the start who just saw that the gross all that this was going to be. Were you as surprised as I was?
[16:40] you haven't yet, you want to take a gander at this which again, I don't recommend you to do. But if you do, where you can watch this show. And lastly, here at the end of the video I
[16:53] wanted to give a shoutout to all of my supporters over on Patreon because this video is not sponsored. And however much help we get over on Patreon, the less sponsorships the Glass Reflection will need at any given time. And of course, a
[17:05] need at any given time. And of course, a very special thank you to patrons City Yamiko, Ryfen Bonaparte, Omar Showman, Ross Emerson, Geek Wig, and Aiden
[17:17] do this without your support. So, however much you are able to help, I'm now going to go and try and find something to like bleach my brain with, show because it's a freaking dumpster fire and I am enamored by this dumpster
[17:34] fire of a show. And while I ruminate on that and go try and find more enjoyable to watch, I'll see you next time. And you should watch more anime. Maybe not this, but watch more anime. And stay frosty.