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The story
The anime ‘Yani Neko’ (“Nicotine Cat”) has come under fire for its smoking scenes, and following Hong Kong, it has now been pulled from streaming in Taiwan as well. On the thread, some pushed back with “Does anyone actually watch that and want to smoke?”, while the discussion branched out into mentions of other Kodansha titles and comparisons to the overseas version of ‘One Piece,’ where Zoro and Sanji’s smoking scenes were swapped out for candy.
Following Hong Kong, Now Taiwan Too… ‘Yani Neko’ Pulled From Streaming Overseas, One After Another — Some Call It Tobacco Advertising, “Basically an Anti-Smoking Teaching Aid,” Say Those Demanding a Retraction
It has come to light that the TV anime ‘Yani Neko,’ which has been airing in Japan since July 2026, has had its streaming halted in Taiwan — following Hong Kong — over concerns about its smoking depictions.
After local streaming services pulled the show, local fans and creators’ groups have raised voices of protest, calling for the decision to be reversed.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Now if it were a full-on "yani" video (a smoking-fetish genre), sure, I'd get it.
I decided I'm gonna start smoking, so I picked out a brand with a cool-looking pack.
Now I just have to actually go buy it.
By the way, here's the design I went with:
Making my smoking debut at 48.
Don't do it.
Tobacco chronically damages your body and mental function through nicotine dependence.
Physical effects
* Higher cancer risk: raises the risk of cancer throughout the body — the lungs, plus the mouth, esophagus, stomach, bladder, and more.
* Cardiovascular damage: blood vessel constriction and progressing arteriosclerosis sharply raise the risk of heart attack and stroke.
* Destroyed lung function: COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which destroys the alveoli, causes irreversible breathing difficulty.
Mental effects
* Nicotine dependence and rising stress: the brain's reward system gets rewired, and the irritability and anxiety of nicotine withdrawal turn everyday stress chronic.
* Worsening mental health: imbalanced brain neurotransmitters raise the risk of depression and anxiety disorders.
* Sleep trouble and emotional instability: the strong stimulant effect degrades sleep quality and affects the brain, cutting into emotional control and concentration.
Doesn't Thailand put graphic lung cancer photos right on the cigarette packs?
or not banned —
opinions are probably going to be split on that.
That's because in the overseas version they're holding something else in their mouth.
I heard Sanji got swapped out for a lollipop.
Kodansha's playing it pretty cheap.
An endorsement from a minor… that's an awkward one to comment on.
Yakuza ("893"), host clubs, meth, bullying the disabled, getting dragged into sex work by a host…
…isn't that pretty messed up?
That's Cool Japan for you.
Turns out neither one was okay.
That's Sanji you're thinking of. (´･ω･｀)
There's a manga called 'Agonashi Gen to Ore Monogatari' (lit. "Chinless Gen and My Story") that's like that — give it a read.
Just one where anthropomorphized characters sit around smoking cigarettes?
It's a manga and anime that includes a story where a guy ends up having to step outside his apartment while still, uh, inserted in a love doll, and gets helped out by a female neighbor.
That's strike two.
By the way, the new title Kodansha's pushing right now is 'Gyakukou no Kuru-chan' (a title blending "abuse" and "happiness").
This one will probably get its own wave of "isn't this a problem" voices eventually too, with an anime adaptation not out of the question.
'Gyakukou no Kuru-chan,' a mother-daughter story depicting abuse that's invisible to those living through it
https://ddnavi.com/article/1370973/a/
they never imagined something they actually like would get the same treatment.
Honestly, I think this one was a no-go from the start.
Reason's in Re: #49.
Something like Umaru-chan getting hopped up on potato chips and cola was about the line for what could get an anime adaptation —
at that level nobody gets hurt, so it was fine.
Talk about discriminating against a work of fiction.
Does "behind the supermarket" get streamed overseas too?
So just do whatever you want with it.
Well, the production side probably saw this coming — I mean, the drug stuff in it is just as bad lol.
Actually, I kind of wonder how they ever figured they could stream the non-smoking content either…
It's fine for grown men to watch.
At this point nobody thinks it looks cool or that it shows some deep understanding of freedom and fun anymore.
But kids are different.
But isn't violence and killing worse for you?
There's tons of gory stuff like that in both live-action and anime.
Violence isn't addictive, doesn't cause health damage, and isn't a business model or a form of brainwashing.
The kind of "bad influence" is just different to begin with.
Think about the era and setting it's based on…
Background and Key Points
Background readers need: ‘Yani Neko’ (“Nicotine Cat”) is a Kodansha manga adaptation that began airing in Japan in July 2026, centered on cat characters who smoke. In Japan itself, depicting smoking in fiction is essentially unregulated — there is no equivalent of the FCC content codes or EU advertising directives applied to anime. The pulls in Hong Kong and then Taiwan are not Japanese censorship; they are foreign streaming platforms responding to their own, much stricter tobacco-control law. Hong Kong’s Smoking (Public Health) Ordinance and Taiwan’s Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act both restrict depictions that could function as tobacco promotion in media, and platforms there routinely pull or edit content rather than risk liability — the same legal environment that historically led U.S. syndicators (in the 2000s 4Kids dub, not the current official release) to redraw Sanji’s cigarette as a lollipop in ‘One Piece,’ the comparison posters keep reaching for.
What the thread actually splits on is not “is smoking bad” but whether fictional depiction causes real harm at all: posters like >>117 and >>122 argue over whether smoking imagery deserves this treatment when violence, far more common in anime, goes unregulated — the counterargument being that violence isn’t addictive or a marketed product, while tobacco depiction arguably functions as informal advertising for a real, purchasable good.
What’s likely misunderstood: this isn’t a story about Japan banning the show — Japan’s broadcast and streaming continue unaffected. It’s a jurisdictional mismatch between Japan’s permissive content norms and its neighbors’ strict, ad-law-driven media regulation, with Kodansha caught in a second controversy after the unrelated ‘Mii-chan’ backlash referenced in the thread.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[Anime] ‘Yani Neko’ Pulled From Overseas Streaming, One After Another… Following Hong Kong, Taiwan Cancels Too — Some Call It Tobacco Advertising, “Basically an Anti-Smoking Teaching Aid,” Say Those Demanding a Retraction.”
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