Don’t be put off by the title, I Want To Eat Your Pancreas isn’t a film about cannibals or zombies but a touching coming-of-age tearjerker. Based on Japanese writer Yoru Sumino’s web novel of the same name, I Want To Eat Your Pancreas is a 2018 anime directed by Shin'ichirō Ushijima (One Punch Man) and animated by Studio VOLN, best known for its adaptations of the manga Ushio And Tora and Karakuri Circus. Before the anime arrived, Sumino’s novel had already been adapted into a manga and a live-action film in 2017.
The plot of I Want To Eat Your Pancreas focuses on the friendship formed between two people from opposite ends of the social spectrum at their high school – introverted loner Haruki and the bubbly and popular Sakura. Despite their differences, the pair are brought together when Haruki finds Sakura’s diary and unintentionally discovers she’s terminally ill with a pancreatic disease. Hoping to live out the rest of her days as normally as possible, Sakura hasn’t informed any of her friends about her condition and entrusts Haruki with her secret. She also enlists him to help check things off her bucket list and – in the process – brings the outsider out of his shell.
While its title is suggestive of a movie with a far more nefarious nature, I Want To Eat Your Pancreas is a heart-warming and often very sad anime about friendship, life, and loss. The bizarre title has poignant meaning too. Sakura explains to Haruki a few folkloric factoids she’s learned while dealing with her condition, like how people suffering from organ problems used to believe that eating the corresponding organ of an animal would cure them of their illness, or how some cultures believe eating the flesh of a loved one means the deceased’s soul will live on inside them. Hence, the title becomes their motto of sorts – an expression of how much they mean to each other.
It’s not a spoiler to pre-warn viewers that Sakura does indeed die in I Want To Eat Your Pancreas – she’s terminally ill, after all, and the opening scenes show her funeral. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the movie is predictable. There’s a subtly foreshadowed plot twist towards the end that expounds a lot of what Sakura tries to teach Haruki about appreciating every day as if it were your last.
The plot of I Want To Eat Your Pancreas has seen it compared to fellow anime like Your Lie In April and A Silent Voice and Western live-action movies like The Fault In Our Stars and Me And Earl And The Dying Girl. Like those films, watching I Want To Eat Your Pancreas requires a tissue or two to mop up the tears that’ll inevitably be shed, but rest assured – no pancreases were eaten during the making of this anime.