Two Smoking Manga Aired This Season and the Coincidence Is the Point
A pattern this tidy invites a conspiracy, and the piece's answer is that a declining tobacco market has no reason to buy into two seinen manga adaptations.
Reporting from 1 source: Anime Herald.
Anime Herald examines why Chainsmoker Cat and Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You are airing in the same season. The piece rules out tobacco funding: neither Kodansha, Square Enix, Bibury Animation Studios, nor Asahi Productions has publicly advertised connections to tobacco companies. Japan Tobacco's 2025 investor materials point diversification toward heated tobacco products, not anime advertising, while smoking rates in Japan keep falling.
The article stacks the circumstantial case first. Smoking in Japan is falling, the government's Health 21 Japan initiative targets twelve percent adult prevalence by 2032, and Japan Tobacco holds sixty-six percent of the domestic cigarette market while telling investors it will diversify beyond traditional tobacco.
Then it takes the case apart. Japan Tobacco's stated diversification focus is heated tobacco products, and the companies that own and animate the two manga have no publicly advertised tobacco ties. The shared season is a coincidence, not a campaign.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.