Bibury Animation Studio’s Chainsmoker Cat (Yani Neko), based on the original manga series by NyanNyanFactory, started airing last week. The anime’s harrowing depictions of addiction, juxtaposed with slapstick poop humor, have made it one of this season’s most fervently discussed titles, and it has certainly been a “new” experience for its Japanese voice cast as well.
In a pre-premiere interview, seiyuu Yuko Natsuyoshi, who voices the titular protagonist, talked about her role and thoughts on Yaniko’s character. As she had been reading the manga herself before the anime was announced, she admits that her first reaction to being cast was a mix of happiness and a feeling of “Why did I get this role?”
Commenting on the Chainsmoker Cat’s original manga, she says “The story is outrageous, and you can basically smell the cigarette smoke wafting through the screen, but I think it has a certain magnetic pull that makes you keep reading. All the characters are terrible people, but I like how they’re all charming in their own ways.”
Natsuyoshi shares a similar opinion of her own character Yaniko, whom she describes as delightfully nonchalant. “Since she has no attachments, she seems to enjoy her day-to-day life in her run-down apartment, and even when she goes through something horrible, she’ll cry her eyes out for a moment, only to be back to casually puffing on a cigarette the next… But when it comes to her sister Imoko-chan, she shows a bit of familial love, or rather, she’s such a complete mess of a person that she doesn’t help Imoko-chan one bit, yet she still tries to act like a big sister in some way. I think her charm lies in the fact that you just can’t hate her, despite everything.”
Asked about what actually working on the anime was like, Natsuyoshi says normally “forbidden” words were flying about during recording sessions to the point that she was worried she’d start losing her personal filter. Interestingly, Matsuoka Misato, who voices Chainsmoker Cat’s second most memorable character Yakuko, notes that the anime’s sound director instructed the cast to treat “That was terrible” as a compliment during recording, which they fully embraced with generous amounts of “crude” ad-libbing.
Funnily, Natsuyoshi says the experience of voicing Yaniko for the anime has influenced her personal life, as she suddenly became a lot more proactive about cleaning her bathtub after recording the anime’s bath episode.
The Chainsmoker Cat anime is currently airing via Netflix.
