An unnamed protagonist happens to find a diary in a hospital one day. The diary belongs to his classmate, a girl named Sakura Yamauchi, who is revealed to be suffering from a terminal illness in her pancreas, and who only has a few months left to live. Sakura explains that the protagonist is the only person apart from her family that knows about her condition. The protagonist promises to keep Sakura’s secret. Despite their completely opposite personalities, the protagonist decides to be together with Sakura during her last few months. – ANN
Release: Limited Theatrical Release (English Dubbed Version)
Episodes: 1 (Film)
Review: Please be aware that this review contains spoilers for the film.
As anime titles go, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is certainly one of the more eccentric ones I’ve come across. While the wording may conjure up images of cannibalistic zombie-like entertainment, the film (which explains its odd moniker fairly early on) has no relation to the undead. Instead, it wears the clothing of a bittersweet, ephemeral teenage romance, telling the story of a young man’s coming-of-age after meeting a girl who will never have that luxury.
The unnamed protagonist has made a lifestyle out of his lonerism, avoiding interactions with others as much as he can manage while still going to school. He spends most of his free time reading, and it’s this attraction to books that leads him to pick a stray one up from the ground at the local hospital, where he’s there for a medical follow-up. The book is a diary belonging to Sakura, one of his classmates. She reveals that, though she may not look it, she’s actually suffering from a pancreatic disease that will eventually kill her, and the diary is her way of coping with that reality.
Following the awkward encounter, Sakura starts to worm her way into the boy’s life bit-by-bit. She joins him at his after school job, walks home with him, and invites him to various cafes and restaurants under the guise of crossing things off her “bucket list.” He initially resists Sakura’s disturbance of his introverted lifestyle, but as time goes on he begins to sense some of the fear and desperation she tries so hard to hide from others. As it turns out, he’s the only person who knows Sakura’s medical situation – not even her best friends realize that her time in their lives is limited. The boy is thrust into the position of Sakura’s confidante, sounding-board, and social experiment; it isn’t until her genuinely unexpected death from other circumstances that he realizes the full extent of her interventions in his life and the connection that they formed together.
This film, a tale of two very different people encountering one-another at a pivotal point in both their lives, treads some well-worn narrative pathways and manages several moments of decent emotional climax. That said, some nagging issues begin to reveal themselves when one digs down to examine whose story is actually being told, creating a frustrating conflict between narrative and characterization that leads to some emotional disconnect in those of us who might be tired of these type of stories told in this way.
As I’ve said in the past, I have an affinity for redemptive character arcs, and the male protagonist’s journey from lonely introvert to an introvert who understands the value of human connection does a good job of illuminating the importance of even subtle personal betterment. Speaking as someone who’s not the best at engaging with people outside of my very small group of friends, I found Sakura’s observations about the fascination and value she finds in other people to be a good reminder of how easy and convenient it can be to limit ourselves to people who share very similar viewpoints (or to consumable media that serves to reinforce our worldview). Her vivacious enjoyment of life’s experiences eventually start to rub off on her male counterpart, and while his personality never becomes fundamentally different from what it always was, he begins to honor Sakura’s memory by becoming willing to initiate social connections with other people.
The issue is that the film describes a relationship between two teenagers, but by its nature only one of these two characters is allowed the benefit of major character growth, thanks to the sacrifice of time and emotional labor from the other. Sakura flits into the protagonist’s life long enough for him to learn various lessons about himself and his engagement with human society; through her intense intervention (in which she gives of her very limited time fully and enthusiastically) he’s dragged into the sunlight and given a second chance to form social connections. We also learn how he’s actually a Very Nice Guy™ beneath his stand-offish nature, because he isn’t outright violent and abusive like Sakura’s ex-boyfriend. The narrative puts in a lot of work to prove the male protagonist’s story worthwhile while reaping the benefit of Sakura’s limited time frame to idealize her rather than provide her with a similarly compelling story.
That criticism might sound harsh, and in some respects I suppose it is; my complaints with the movie are actually pretty minor compared to my overall enjoyment of it, but those complaints are rooted in a long-standing frustration with a particular storytelling trope. The trope goes by many names; I sometimes call it “Anime dead-girl syndrome” or “mysterious anime-girl wasting disease,” but what these facetious terms reference is the lazy, all-too-common storytelling device of using a female character’s tragic death to wring emotion out of an audience and provide some kind of motivation for another (usually male) character. By no means does the use of the trope mean that the media attached to it is automatically meritless; one of my favorite anime, Den-noh Coil, features a plot that is in part jump-started by the death of a boy’s female best friend. Without some other mitigating factors (such as a robust cast with characters of different genders), though, it does suggest a hierarchy of whose story is really “important,” and when young women repeatedly become disposable in pursuit of young men’s growth, one starts to lament the young women’s stories that were never given the opportunity to shine.
Luckily in this case Sakura isn’t simply a “manic pixie dream girl;” while the mask she presents to the world is of an outgoing, bubbly, slightly-eccentric teenager who’s made peace with her fate, she’s revealed to have fears and sadness as one would expect of someone in her situation. She’s fiercely devoted to and protective of her friends, and she’s fascinated by the male protagonist because he’s so different from herself – something that ultimately serves his story but still fundamentally speaks to her nature as a person. I’m disappointed that so much of what we learn about Sakura is essentially in retrospect – through the words of her very intense friend Kyoko, or through the writing in her diary, which she wills to the protagonist – because I think her story of coping with the reality of her impending death is one worth telling more completely and through her own words. I would have loved for the story to focus more directly on her writing in the diary or given her an internal monologue as a direct window into her experience. Again, though, this lack-of-focus speaks to the priorities of the narrative.
The version I watched was the English-dubbed showing in my local movie theater. I’m not typically a dub-fan, but I was out-of-town for the subtitled showing and still wanted to experience it in the theater. The performances we well-acted for the most part, though they exemplified some of the consistent problems I have with many English performances in anime – the actors sound a little too much as though they’re attempting to “sound young,” especially Erika Harlacher as Sakura. Perhaps this was an attempt to more closely-match the Japanese performance of the character, but to me this type of performance just sounds strained and slightly unnatural. No hate towards dubs in general, but as a student of the Japanese language, they’re generally not my preference.
The visuals and animation are above-average in many respects and do a good job of capturing the atmosphere of the film. While the use of rain is a fairly simplistic analogy for sad story elements, its gray, damp oppressiveness in the opening scenes contrasted with the brightness of the cherry blossoms in spring when Sakura debuts in the protagonist’s life are suitable analogues for the moods of those respective moments.
My problems with this film are those which I doubt many people are likely to share; of more concern to others may be a scene later in the film which reads like an assault, or an honestly shocking, somewhat violet twist that aims to disrupt the expected story arc. Those instances are more concrete and likely more specifically disturbing to a wider range of viewers. For me, though, confronting the dissonance between the emotional truth of the story (which did make me tear up, honestly) and its reliance on some lazy storytelling elements is a frustrating experience. It’s difficult for me to take in the more profound things the story has to say about the formation of connections when the connections being made are constructed from building blocks that, by their nature, downgrade people like me to tools in the stories of others. It unfortunately takes away from my appreciation of what’s otherwise a pretty decent anime film.
Pros: The film portrays an interesting relationship between two people – not quite friendship, and not quite romance. The central message about being willing to form connections with others rings true even considering some of the film’s missteps.
Cons: The female lead, whose story could have been more interesting if handled differently, ends up as a tool to provide the male protagonist’s motivation.
Grade: B-