Welcome to Yani's apartment. Please don't mind the smell. Yani is a catgirl with a seriously bad smoking habit. Every time she tries to quit, she becomes weak to the cravings and gives in almost instantly.

Behind on her rent and unable to hold down a job, her friends and sister rally around to help her out. But when she's using her pee to put out cigarette fires, they may just have their work cut out for them.

Will she ever get her life together, or is she doomed to live as a chainsmoking slob forever?

Chainsmoker Cat has story and art by Nyan Nyan Factory. English translation is done by Nicole Frasik and lettering by Chris Burgener. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (December 9, 2025). Rated OT.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

This was an objectively awful character, behaving badly, with jokes that run from how disgusting she and how much she and her room smell to the obscene addiction she has to cigarettes to shitting in her pants…and yet, I laughed, which is why this is getting 3 stars, rather than 2.

Yanni Neko is disgusting. She is lazy, stupid, gross, and obnoxious. If the character were a generic dude, not a cat girl, I can't imagine anyone enjoying this comic much. But Yanni is a catgirl and very much an animal, so jokes about peeing and vomiting, and seeing how much of the cigarette stuck in a turd she can still smoke, is the story… and I guess it kind of works. There is no redemption here, no progression; in many ways, this is the essence of the acronym Yaoi: no climax, no point, no meaning. The only plot driver is Yanni's desire to smoke cigarettes—now.

Thankfully, Yanni is not the only character here. She plays the boke to her sister's upright, hardworking straight man, and she has a kouhai who somehow admires her.

This manga is best taken in small chunks, since it definitely is working hard to put the “gag” back in gag comics, and this definitely feels like manga that has been published first online, with no connection, just a series of jokes about a walking id, in which smoking cigarettes takes the place of all other physical desires

At the very end of the volume, this feeling is confirmed as a number of other online artists contribute to an “anthology” of Chainsmoker Cat comics. These are similar to the main narrative, but the author's comments are telling – Yanni is such a trash being that she inspires readers to feel less terrible than she is. I can understand how that might work. “Well, my room is a dumpster fire, but at least I don't have termite hills of cigarette butts lying around” seems a low bar, but being able to clear any bar is a start.

I don't know if I can actually recommend this book, but for an infantile, really gross, pointless story about an unlikable catgirl…Chainsmoker Cat was funny.

Kecin Cormack
Rating:

Sometimes I regret volunteering to review certain manga. I'm not a fan of anatomically explicit BL, for example, so I tend to avoid reading anything where I might be exposed to engorged, throbbing, veiny members. In general, comedy manga is usually a fairly safe genre for me, and I rarely find something I viscerally detest. Although it's low on turgid erection jump-scares, I did not vibe with Chainsmoker Cat. At all.

Yani Neko is a disaster cat-girl who lives in a gross, rundown apartment encrusted in filth. Surrounded by stinking garbage bags she hasn't bothered to take out, with wallpaper torn and stained by the nicotine from the cigarettes perpetually hanging from her mouth, she lives in abject squalor. I already find this difficult to empathize with. Perpetually short of cash, Yani spends any spare pennies on feeding the destructive habit she freely admits gives her perpetual cancer anxiety, as it wrecks her ability to perform physical tasks. I don't find this funny, but more frustrating and sad.

She's also the butt of many gross jokes involving flatulence, urination, and public defecation. Perhaps there are some readers out there who enjoy watching this pitiable piece of feline-human wreckage engaging in actions evoking scatalogical humor, but it's absolutely not for me. I was never a fan of the TV show Jackass, where grown men deliberately ruin their bodies – this is the equally excruciating cat-girl equivalent.

I'm also not a fan of the grungy, scratchy art. Occasionally, Yani, or her more sensible younger sister, or her illegal drug-addicted friend, looks quite cute, but that's immediately undercut by the depressingly gross content. The manga's not without its charms – I did crack a smile a couple of times at some of the weirder, non-gross gags – but the preponderance of fart and piss jokes drowned these out beneath a flurry of stinking effluence. Much like the main character, I needed a shower after this.