[Weeb’s Pick]

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is Weeb‘s second movie night pick since joining The Goblin House (I didn’t review his first one because I basically missed the entire thing; I’ll be re-watching it on my own to give it a fair chance). THIS REVIEW WILL INCLUDE SPOILERS.

This anime movie features a teenage girl and boy as our main characters. The boy goes unnamed for the majority of the movie, and the girl is called Sakura. They meet by chance in a hospital waiting room and Sakura reveals to him that she is secretly suffering from pancreatic cancer. Seemingly because he is unmoved by this information, she latches onto him and makes him into her friend.

Right at the beginning of the film, we are informed that Sakura is going to die, as the first scene is on the day of her funeral. The rest of the film plays out as a flashback, until finally meeting up to present-tense with the new information and (predicted) emotional investment in the characters. I found that to be an interesting use of storytelling–setting up a main character’s death in the very beginning of the movie and telling us outright that it will happen. It creates a unique sense of hesitance and anticipation while we wait to see how and when it will happen. Additionally, the use of specific details surrounding her death creates what almost feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy in the eyes of the viewer; it has to happen because we know that it’s going to happen.

While the climax of the movie was gripping, it did not deliver the emotional devastation expected due to the lack of character depth and relationship development throughout the story. While we can see on a surface level that the two characters have developed some sort of close friendship, much of this happens offscreen, and apart from interacting with each other, we don’t know much about either of them.

All in all, this reported tear-jerker did not even glean from me a watery eye and left hardly any impression at all.

Rating: 💬 I have now seen this movie.

My best friends and I (known affectionately as Goblin House) have a regular movie night where we all sit down together and watch a movie one of us has chosen. Most of these reviews will come from a Goblin Movie Night, so they will be tagged with the nickname of the Goblin who picked the movie.