Ok, fuck it. I'm gonna talk seriously about Chainsmoker Cat, because I'm tired of seeing some of the most shitty takes imaginable every time this show comes up. At this point, I might as well throw my own bad opinion into the pile.
I think the biggest problem is that people insist on reading the show in one of two completely opposite directions. Either it's "gross gooner-bait fanservice," or it's Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream some harrowing, realistic depiction of addiction.
I don't think it's either. Yani Neko is based on a gag manga and, more importantly, it's a dark comedy. The cycle the show uses for its comedy is the same cycle as poverty and addiction. It's at it's core about a bunch of unemployed, addicted catgirls constantly dicking around, getting fucked up, or trying to scrape together enough money for rent and their next fix.
The comedy and the tragedy aren't separate things. They're the same thing.
The setting reinforces why, the catgirls are very obviously written as a marginalized underclass, but they're never a one-to-one allegory for any specific real-world group. They're just catgirls. That gives the series room to talk about poverty, addiction, social stigma, and fetishization without pretending it's speaking for any communitie's real experience.
They're offered worse jobs. They're poorer. The police target them more. Their neighborhoods have a stigma attached to them. None of that is especially subtle.
One thing I really dislike about the discourse around this show is the assumption that if a story has something meaningful to say, it has to become tasteful and self-serious. A story doesn't have to be refined to be insightful.
Chainsmoker Cat is sleazy. It's horny. It's gross. It's juvenile. I also think it's really fucking funny.
Episode 3 goes from the landlord using a catgirl blow-up doll, to Kansai rolling an unconscious Aruko onto her side so she doesn't choke on her own vomit, to the girls laughing at farts. On paper that sounds like tonal whiplash. In practice, I think it's one of the best examples of what the show is actually trying to do.
Because people's lives are like that.
Even addicts aren't living through an endless montage of tragedy. Real life isn't an indie movie. People with objectively awful lives still sit around trying to make each other laugh because that's just what human beings do. Even a group of crackheads under a bridge are probably spending half the day laughing at dumb shit.
Humor isn't the opposite of suffering. A lot of the time, it's one of the ways people survive it.
That's why the jokes don't undermine the show's depiction of addiction. If anything, they make it feel more honest. The show never pretends addiction is glamorous or that poverty is quirky. But it also refuses to flatten its characters into walking tragedies whose only narrative purpose is to make the audience feel sad.
They're selfish. They're pathetic. They're disgusting. They're friends. That's what makes it worth watching. Also it's a comedy.
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