Our story begins with a lone bookworm, living out his solitary life in the highschool library. He’s never had any friends, let alone a girlfriend, but that doesn’t really bother him. He has no need for anyone, and he has a hard time believing anyone has any need for him. This all changes when he picks up a mysterious lost diary from the ground, and instead of turning it in to the lost and found, his curiosity gets the better of him and he takes a peek inside, immediately learning that the owner is dying from an unspecified pancreatic disease... Just as said owner catches him in the act. This one chance encounter, initiated by the seventeen years of seemingly random and inconsequential choices that preceded it, would soon drag him mumbling half-heartedly into the story of an outgoing, impulsive classmate who intends to live her life to the fullest with the time she has left, and she’s bringing him along for the ride... Provided he’ll allow her to eat his pancreas.

Up until this particular review, I had never heard of Studio VOLM, but considering the fact that they’ve only been around for less than ten years and they’ve only released a handful of anime titles, I guess that’s not surprising. I’ve haven’t seen any of their other works, either, and while they do have some roots that stretch back to Studio Madhouse, this movie looks nothing like what I’d generally expect from a Madhouse anime. What I mean by that is, this film clearly had a pretty lavish budget. I’ve heard countless people call this movie beautiful over the last few years, strange title notwithstanding, and I’ll give credit where it’s due; As far as the visuals are concerned, I can’t argue with that claim. I Want To Eat Your Pancreas is a damn good looking movie, and while I have been wrong about this before, I didn’t notice a single second of its runtime where it looked like it was employing any budget saving techniques, or to put it another way, I don’t think they had to cut any corners.

The animation, from start to finish, is damn near flawless. There are moments that could be mistaken for being thrifty, like a few instances of broken frames here and there, but they never clash with the mood of the scene... In fact, it’s quite the opposite, these shots actually work almost every time. Other than that, just about every movement is fluid and believable, from graceful character motion to something as simple as a shot of someone flipping through the pages of the book. There’s a lot of casual animation that may seem meaningless at first glance, but obviously called for a ton of extra effort from the producers. We didn’t NEED to see Sakura spinning around in her chair when she was bored, but these little touches add extra life to characters who desperately need the help(we’ll get there). I also really like the character designs, which swing almost entirely towards anatomical accuracy, and the immaculately detailed and immersive backgrounds.

The music is mostly comprised of soft piano ballads which fade seamlessly into the background, only really amping up in tune with the emotional beats of the story, and while tracks like that might usually be kind of boring when you listen to them out of context, I can’t really say that here. They’re all fairly pleasant and relaxing. The end credits song is a pretty generic folk song by Sumika. The title is Haru Natsu Aki Fuyu, which not only translates to Spring Summer Autumn Winter, but is also the name of an erotic yuri manga, do with that information what you will. It is, appropriately, a song about longing for a loved one from your past, and Sumika does sing it with the right amount of raw emotion. Honestly, it doesn’t do much for me unless I’m reading the translated lyrics along with it, but it does tickle that little nostalgia nerve in the back of your heart, which I think was the point all along.

The english dub was produced by Bang Zoom, and as you may have guessed if you’ve seen the movie, there was a pretty small cast attached to it. I’ll confess I’ve never really given Robbie Draymond the attention he deserves... Up until this exact moment, I’ve always confused him with Brian Drummond of Death Note fame... But he’s had a long and fruitful history voicing both western cartoon, video game and anime characters, dating all the way back to Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, and while I think he was probably over-qualified to play the sullen, throaty and kind of one-note protagonist, he still does the job perfectly. Erica Harlacher arguably had a lot more heavy lifting to do as Sakura, as she had to play both sides of a somewhat nuanced character, but she still does an equally solid job. Kira Buckland plays Sakura’s busybody friend Kyoko, and... Look, I have a lot to say about these characters, I don’t want to spoil too much of it just yet, let’s just say she does what she needs to do. Aside from Harlacher, there really aren’t any individual standout performances in the dub, it’s just a solid dub that I’d recommend.

So here we go again. This is yet another anime that everyone told me to watch because of how heartbreaking and beautiful it is. It is, if you’ll excuse the expression, a ‘feels’ anime. I’m gonna be honest, for those of you who are new to my work, I don’t have a great track record with these kinds of anime. That’s not to say I haven’t EVER agreed with the crowd, I do believe A Silent Voice deserves every ounce of praise it gets, but I’m also the guy who hated Clannad. I didn’t care for Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. I had mixed feelings aboutYour Lie In April, and I’ve stated many times that I don’t like it when any anime uses manufactured tragedy porn to manipulate the audience into showering it with perfect scores and hyperbolic claims that it’s a masterpiece. In other words, I’m some jaded prick with a cold, black heart who just can’t appreciate the anime that made you cry, and no matter how many condescending messages you send me about not understanding the material and not appreciating the magic of Ghibli, I’ll never truly realize how wrong I am.

All that being said, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I was hesitant for a long time to watch I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, and yeah, that title did not help things. I never actually believed it was going to be a cannibalism anime, but you better believe I made jokes about it being a cannibalism anime. Well, I finally watched it for my most recent vacation from work, and it turns out there IS a reason for that title. We find out very early on that Sakura has some vague, unspecified pancreatic disease, and there’s apparently some old belief that you can eat organs to make your own corresponding organs stronger, and she states... Jokingly, I think... That she might be able to get better by eating the protagonist’s pancreas. I said it was a reason, I didn’t say it was a good reason. I mean, at least it’s an understandable title now, but I still don’t like it. Not only is the entire concept kind of unimportant to the story, unless you take it as some kind of twisted metaphor for their relationship, but there’s also the more literal interpretation that she wants to kill him to save herself. I know that’s not actually the case, but the title does kind of imply it.

Title aside, as for the movie itself, it honestly didn’t make a good first impression on me. As soon as I saw Sakura attach herself to the protagonist, I saw the writing on the wall from a mile away... Not only was this going to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl story, it was going to end in the pixie’s death, which is NOT a spoiler, they mention that she dies in the cold open. Now, anime tends to forgo a lot of the more common MPDG tropes, but the basic story idea is still there, and I still don’t like it. I’ve always found that storytelling device to be really transparent and predictable, and I’m not the first critic in history to point out that bringing this bright, outgoing and impulsive young woman uninvited into the orbit of some depressed sad sack just to bring him out of his slump, using her as a tool for the sake of his character development like she has no life of her own, is both lazy writing and ridiculously transparent. There is an argument to be made that adding the wrinkle of “she knows she’s dying and wants to save him with the time she has left” is a fresh take on the cliche, but I’ve encountered this in one anime before... I’m not gonna say which, let’s just say it’s an anime I’ve already mentioned in this review... And at least in my opinion, all it does is reinforce the idea that these characters are disposable once their male counterparts are fixed.

Speaking of which, something else I've noticed about scenarios like this; Why is it that whenever we get an anime about some unique, outgoing teenage girl whose behavior is influenced by some personal trauma, the story is told from the perspective of some boring and down in the dumps by that she randomly attached herself to? There's this movie, there's Your Lie in April... Hell, throw Haruhi Suzumiya in there too. Why can't the Manic Pixie Dream Girl ever work as a main character? Are these writers just assuming we won't find them relatable or likeable or interesting unless we see them through the perspective of some dude whose life they're turning upside down? Maybe that wouldn't work for Haruhi, since she'd be insufferable without Kyon, but I'd pay good money to see this particular movie through Sakura's perspective.

Still, this cliche is only tipping the iceberg of Pancreas’s writing problems, because nobody in this movie ever acts or talks like an actual human being. Sakura’s initial attraction to the protagonist was based on the assumption that his lack of reaction to her condition was a good thing, that he’d be her friend without making things weird because of her illness, and this winds up being true, but it was also far more likely that he would have just wound up being an asshole who didn’t give a shit. Despite his refusal to make friends or socialize, he lets Sakura drag him around and he follows her orders because... Reasons? Don’t get me wrong, he eventually does become attached to her, but it takes a long time for the story to reach that point, and he rarely ever shows any agency. For at least half the movie, he basically becomes her accessory, and his reaction to this only ever feels like “Oh, okay, I guess this is happening now.” I didn’t care for Ocean Waves, but at least I kinda believed Taku had a reason for following Rukiko. Their dialogue doesn’t help things, either, as Sakura will not shut up about the fact that she’s going to die, and the protagonist just sort of exists for her to bounce her philosophies off of, barely speaking unless asked a direct question, only making comments when she needs the for a launching point.

You want to know why Haruhi Suzumiya didn’t immediately piss off the entire anime medium when her series debuted in the mid-2000s? It’s because her controlling and inconsiderate bullshit was balanced out by Kyon’s snarky wit and sarcastic commentary, calling her out on everything the audience might condemn her for and thus neutralizing our critiques before we could make them. I would love if the protagonist of this movie were to do the same, but for that to happen, the writing would have to be self-aware enough to realize the flaws in the story that need to be called out, and it’s not. A good example of this is Sakura’s friend Kyoko, a girl with the personality of a wild boar who butts into conversations uninvited, jumps to conclusions that nobody bothers to correct, and when she’s confronted with the truth about what Sakura was going through, she goes from sceptical to having a full on breakdown in the middle of a public place with little to no transition inbtween, because fuck subtlety I guess.

The actual nature of Sakura’s illness is never really explored either... It’s never specified what kind of pancreatic condition she has, she doesn’t show any distinct symptoms of it, and for some reason I can’t fathom, the protagonist never really asks her about it. He never asks if her family tried looking for a donor, he never asks what kind of treatments she’s undergoing... The only explanation I can think of is that this movie is trying to make you feel very specifically sad about Sakura dying, and the heartbreak it inflicts on the protagonist, and if they were to get too specific on Sakura’s condition, it might cause a different reaction from any viewer who’s had any real life experience with it. If I’m right about that, you can’t call that kind of writing anything other than emotional manipulation. Hell, you never really learn anything about either character, either, aside from their general level of social skills and limited outlook on life. The only interest either of them has is reading on his end, and one specific book on her end.

Nobody in this movie acts or talks like a human being, because they’re not intended to be human beings, they’re intended to act as puppets for the writer to express their views on the nature of life and death, which they think are so deep and profound, but are actually the kind of ideals you grow out of as you mature and experience life outside of school and free meals from your parents. We’ve all had some instance where we over-stated the significance of some moment by thinking about how every previous moment of your life was leading up to it, but that realization dies once you realize that by that logic, there isn’t a single moment in your life that’s significant enough to stand out against all the others. Even their attempt to comment on the randomness and uncertainty of life leads to a twist ending that’s so out of left field, it made me laugh my balls off, and there is no way that was the intention of the scene. It felt like the kind of ending you’d write for a PARODY of movies like this, but it’s played completely seriously. I’m not going to specifically spoil it, but Sakura’s ultimate fate isn’t just unintentionally funny, it’s some genuinely well-written dark comedy, and they did not do it on purpose.

I have more thoughts on her death, but we’re going into spoiler territory here, so click on the tag if you want to.

This all sort of leads into something I noticed fairly early in the film, which is that I Want to Eat Your Pancreas feels, to me, more than anything else, like a student film. It’s badly written, but in that mostly forgivable way that happens when the writer is trying really hard to create something deep and meaningful, but doesn’t have the life experience to pull it off, and has just generally not written anything serious before. The kind of commentary and perspective you get from this movie could have felt fairly realistic if the narrative had more of a nostalgic feeling to it, like if it was written with the awareness of someone older who knew damn well just how pretentious they were back when they were in school and their brains were still not finished forming, but no, this movie takes the observations on life and death that a fucking teenager would write on their blogs, and presents it to you with nothing short of 100% sincerity.

There is one scene in this movie that felt genuine to me. Just one. There is a scene early on where Sakura is out walking with the protagonist, and they witness a biker crashing into an old lady, who he then starts to bully and tries to exploit. He wants her to pay him for the damages of the crash(which aren’t nearly as bad as he’s making them out to be) even though the entire incident was his fault. What I love about this scene is how Sakura doesn’t just charge in immediately to defend the old lady and confront the jerk, but instead, she hesitates, just for that one nervous second. You don’t even see her face in this scene, but you can tell from her body language that she’s working past a genuine layer of fear to force herself into action, likely with some mantra of how she’s going to die soon anyway, so who cares? It’s that one moment, out of a nearly two hour movie full of pretentious dialogue and philosophizing, that one moment that made me believe I was watching a character who was coming to terms with her own mortality. It's also the only moment in the movie that shows you Sakura's dilemma, rather than just telling you about it.

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is available from Aniplex, so yeah, it’s way overpriced. The original light novel and a manga adaptation, both by Yoru Sumino, are available stateside from Seven Seas Entertainment.

I don’t hate this movie. I don’t think I would be able to forgive myself for hating this movie, because it doesn’t feel like any negative intentions went into it. This movie comes across as some amateur writer’s wholehearted first ever attempt at telling a deep and meaningful story, that just happens to be undone by their lack of maturity and experience. Then again, who am I to talk? As far as I can tell, just about everybody but me is in love with this film, crying over it and telling everybody they know how brilliant it is, and I’m just that one bitter, cynical asshole who refuses to get on board. That’s entirely possible, but regardless, we have yet another tearjerker that failed to resonate with me. I think it’s well produced, the animation is outstanding, the music is good, the dub is great, but the writing in the story just doesn’t do it for me. It's an amateur effort that lacks the experience or wisdom to be as poignant as it wants to be, spending way too much time delivering dialogue that, unfortunately, doesn't have nearly as much to say as it thinks it does.

I give I Want to Eat Your Pancreas a 4/10.