From our other sites
The story
A thread on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G board lit up over news that Yani Neko (“Nicotine Cat”), the anime known for its cat character’s smoking scenes, has had its streaming halted in Taiwan. The reason wasn’t the smoking depiction itself, but that real cigarette brand names like Mevius and Setta appeared directly on screen, which was deemed effectively tobacco advertising.
The thread initially misreported the story as being about Hong Kong before getting corrected, and posters also brought up examples like JoJo’s Jotaro having his cigarette swapped for candy in overseas releases, sparking a divided debate over how far content regulation should go.
What people said
Though yeah, they should at least zone/age-restrict it properly.
Overseas it's streaming-only anyway, right?
Japan's basically the only place that'd air something like this on regular TV.
And the reason isn't that the cat smokes — it's that showing the actual cigarette brand got ruled as advertising.
Huh, I see.
So that's a thing.
Smoking itself isn't the problem then.
Well, guess that makes sense.
No, it's Taiwan.
At least read the news properly before replying.
So Zhongnanhai (a Chinese cigarette brand) would've been fine, then?
By that logic, shouldn't the same reasoning apply to those guys smoking behind the supermarket too, not just Yani Neko?
True.
I mean, there must be tons of other shows with smoking scenes too.
Seems like it only got flagged because real brand names like Mevius were clearly shown, which counted as tobacco advertising.
Sanji's had his cigarette censored/regulated in various countries too, for that matter.
Freedom of expression only goes as far as not becoming a social harm.
And this one's flat-out harmful.
Didn't people rage and demand boycotts over the male-otaku fan portrayals in Chiramune and Nidiga (fan nicknames for two other anime)?
There's always some double-standard jerk who sneers when it's someone else's problem but flips out the second it's personal.
Overseas, Jotaro's smoking scenes get either mosaic-censored or swapped out for candy.
Well, he's a minor, after all.
If Jotaro delivers his big catchphrase and then starts licking a piece of candy, that turns it into a comedy anime.
> Tobacco products and brand names are shown repeatedly and clearly, raising suspicion that it constitutes tobacco advertising
https://www.zakzak.co.jp/article/20260819-J7S2SLO62VH7ZIEXOIJ2AE5BAM/
So that thing manga always does, calling Twitter "Twister" or some lame pun like that — turns out it actually serves a real purpose.
It says 台灣 (Táiwān) right there.
台灣 means Taiwan.
Seriously, she does look like she's enjoying it.
Everyone should already know Japanese common sense doesn't fly overseas.
It literally says "Taiwanese media reported that this happened in Hong Kong."
No, that's wrong.
This is about the anime's streaming getting halted in Taiwan.
It's about the anime broadcast getting cancelled in Taiwan.
The Hong Kong thing is old news.
There's no reason not to.
Otherwise they'd have gone extinct by now.
Background and Key Points
Taiwan’s Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) is one of the stricter tobacco-advertising regimes in Asia, banning not just ads but any media content that could be construed as promoting a specific, identifiable tobacco product. Japan has no equivalent restriction for animation — depictions of smoking, including on terrestrial TV, are governed by broadcaster self-regulation rather than law, which is why a story like this reads as baffling to a Japanese audience: the show wasn’t pulled for showing a character smoke, but for showing real, purchasable brand names (Mevius, Setta) on screen in a way regulators read as de facto advertising for those products.
The thread’s actual fault line wasn’t “should Yani Neko be banned” so much as which country did the banning and why. Early replies (mis)reported it as a Hong Kong case and treated it as a blanket anti-smoking-depiction move, prompting pushback that if depiction alone were the issue, decades of anime featuring smoking (One Piece’s Sanji, JoJo’s Jotaro) would need the same treatment. Once corrected to Taiwan, and once the “real brand names = advertising” distinction was posted with a source, the debate shifted to whether that’s a reasonable legal line or regulatory overreach — with a side debate on free expression versus social harm.
What the thread never really engages with is that Sanji’s and Jotaro’s overseas censorship (mosaic, candy swaps) is a distributor-side localization choice made precisely to avoid this kind of legal exposure — meaning Yani Neko’s case isn’t an outlier so much as a show that, for whatever reason, wasn’t localized before Taiwanese distribution.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Sad News] Yani Neko Gets Flooded with Complaints in Taiwan and Banned from Broadcast lolololololololol“.
Leave a Reply