[Spoiler Warning] 'I Want to Eat Your Pancreas' is a common drama production to this industry. It offers generic school settings with rather superficial teenage characters. The only thing it tries to accomplish is toy with its viewers' emotions to the point of some cheap tearjerking. Those who are okay with this will most definitely see how the movie accomplishes exactly all the thing it wants to. Those who want something more from anime, should look elsewhere. This movie is a story about death. It starts when the most perfect mary sue on the planet starts randomly talking with a no-life loser dude who happens to beher classmate. Our characters start frequently interacting with each others and supposedly grow close. They hang out and talk about dying all the time. That's pretty much the entirety of their relationship. It feels random and forced and unnatural.
Our dude is dense and has never had any friends during his pathetic life.. that's pretty much him. Our girl is really perfect and chill and that's also pretty much her. The catch being that she will die soon which further makes these two character - who are the opposites of each others (according to the narration at least) - even more the opposite because the dude is actually alive. Great.
The drama is a separate entity in the work, mainly because it is there constantly whispering to the characters --and especially to its viewers ears-- that shit will go down, just wait and see. Since the great twist is obvious from the start, the whole thing relies on the journey... where nothing spectacular ever happens and the characters feel more like meridians that try to connect the viewers to the emotions.
One could defend most of the events by looking it more from the characters perspective. I found this to be quite hard as they don't feel like real, genuine people at all. If they did, it would be understandable for our heroine to open up to a stranger, as to most people, it's often easier to talk with 3rd parties than to people close to you. Especially the whole fear of death is amazing as a concept, but I don't really see it as anything more than waste of potential in this case.
The whole main dude realizing that people actually die in real life is definitely quite an interesting idea as well.. at least to those who have never experienced this type of thing or considered that all of this could happen to literally anyone. I doubt any person who is aware of how fragile thing person's existence is, can find this specific work do them any further waking up enlightenment, other sudden realization of such things or offer much feels at all. If this movie ever serves someone, it's those viewers who are unaware of how life works, and instead of following our characters for what they are, fall into self-insert. This is one of the rare things with what the author seems self-aware of, as they say "to live is to empathize with someone." And moreover, named the male lead simply "boku" which means "I/me".
There are also several other things I'd want to complain about. Like the claim in narration that our characters are "pure and innocent." Which is really just a try hard attempt on making the viewer accept these thoughts, but the content (teenagers and alcohol) and our characters behavior (random snapping incidents) among several other scenes is the polar opposite of what I'd considered to be either of these things.. which further makes me question the author's ability to even recognize their own work for what it is. I can't say I feel very respected as a viewer when such contradictions exist in the narration.. or perhaps my comprehension of "pure" just differs with the writer.
Our writing is practically a collection of romance cliches. The only remotely original things are the concepts which it deals rather poorly with. Every event, every side character archetype and every moment that drives the story and the relationship development onward, is loaned content. There is not a single thing any romance fan hasn't seen at least 50 times before, and not only that, but the execution is so lame that I would call it offensively bad if the work managed to be less bland, but unfortunately it's not even worth of getting mad over.
If this had been 50 episodes long tv series that offered a real character portray to both of our main characters and their life, connected them, dealt with the same heavy themes. all the copy-pasted events and cliches had been abandon and the story was written by Adachi Mitsuru: this could have been the best drama the anime industry has to offer. Now it mainly looks like a random, shallow past story from any fighting tournament shonen from Nanatsu no Tanzai to Naruto except there is no character depth present in this movie and therefore it is significantly worse than let's say zero arc from Fairy Tail which dealt with rather similar concept.
Mixed Feelings
Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai, also known by the English title "I want to eat your pancreas", is a drama anime film with tragedy. It is about an outgoing girl who has a pancreatic illness which she has not told anyone except her family that she has this illness. A boy from her class stumbles upon her diary that she left in the hospital and she comes back to fetch the diary only to realise that he read it so she ends up telling him about her illness. Due to this secret knowledge of theirs that none of their classmates know about, they start togrow closer. Sakura Yamauchi, the girl with the pancreatic illness, notices that the boy is a bookworm and does not talk with anyone and does not have any friends so she feels she has some sort of duty to become friends with him and change him for the better. This all sounds good on paper, but it falls short due to the way this film was structured along with other things that this review will touch on. Some scenes felt out of place and did not add much too the film's main story.
The animation of this film was quite disappointing. It seems that this anime film didn't have much of a budget and a lot of the animation was quite lazy. This film was very much heavy in dialogue to make up for the still shots of animation that had a pan effect on the cinematography showing several still animated shots in one after another that conveyed the character's activities rather than animating their movements. This made the movie tell the story verbally rather than showing it to us and it felt very lazy. Due to this sequence of several still shots throughout the film, it felt very rushed in terms of pacing as it was evident they were trying to squeeze as much as they could into this film.
The soundtrack was not memorable and the opening theme was just shoved into the film in a distracting and "pushy" way. The voice actors did a good job though. No real complaints in that department.
Character development was okay. It could have been a lot better. I liked how they symbolised the unwillingness of opening up doors for friendship with the rejection of taking gum when offered by a classmate. I thought that added a nice little metaphorical touch to the anime film. Where this film lacks though is the reasoning with the actions of the cast in this film. I could not get fully emotionally invested in the relationship between the two main characters as their attitudes and emotions seemed to have a convenient "light switch" wherever it was convenient for the plot to do so. Yamauchi's best friend was a character in this film which was included just to add unnecessary drama to this anime film which could have been a bittersweet tale with more character development on the main characters' relationship but it decided to be more of a rivalry with attention and dictatorship of who Yamauchi should be friends with or the reasons as to why the other characters do not open up to the introverted boy.
I still found some enjoyment watching it as there were sweet moments that occurred in this anime film. It's just a shame that it was tainted by the poorly written aspects of this anime film.
I found this anime to be similar to another anime called Your Lie in April, particularly with the motivations, actions and relationships that are conveyed in both anime. I would suggest watching Your Lie in April instead of this if you have the patience of watching an anime series rather than a film. I cannot recommend this anime unless you find deep enjoyment watching growing friendships within characters that is interlaced with tragedy.
If you do end up watching this anime film, stay to the end of the film as there is a post-credit scene which does make the film a little bit better and adds a better conclusion to the ending before the credits roll.
kokokuborou
December 19, 2018
Recommended
See you can make a memorable modern movie if you want too Japan! Made by a studio who nobody even heard about it "I want to eat your pancreas" is a rare gem that everyone must see! Like Frank Sinatra's song "Strangers in the Night" I too was a stranger before coming across this movie. This movie is a letter of love addressed to life who despite being short is damn gorgeous! A strong point in this movie is how simple and enjoyable it manages to present the story for its audience. The strong willed female lead character made the story so damn enjoyable andmanaged to steal my heart with her charisma and interactive personality. Her selfish and stubborn way of doing things is what makes her attractive.
A weak point in this movie is the cgi used in some scenes and the side characters who have almost zero influence across the whole movie, some of them managed only to annoy me and ruined my enjoyment.
Simple stuff between two friends done on a free day or after school is used to establish a bond between Sakura and Haruki, our two main characters.While their bond doesn't cross the limits of "best friends" they still have something that cannot be described by words, something that keeps them for falling apart.Together they experience new feelings and start to change and view the world with a different perspective. Despite being of opposite personalities like "ying and yang", spending more and more time together they come to understand each other and change as time passes on.
The dialogue is damn enjoyable and filled with some beautiful poetry about the value of life and meaning of love.The visuals and ost blends with the dialogue and enforces a variety of emotions that bloom like a beautiful flower. I was looking forward each time Sakura was sharing her thoughts, her feelings, her perception about life. Like Frankie's song "My Way" she did everything with in her own way, and that's what I love about her!
While Haruki is uninteresting as a character and person, his growth after his "fateful" encounter with Sakura is worth mentioning, his change made me see him in a positive light after finishing the movie.
I gave this a 10 because of the strong female lead character,because of simple and how beautiful they executed the main themes and because this movie was honest with me until the end, nothing stopped me from enjoying every minute. I experienced a lot of emotions watching this movie and one of them is hope that somewhere out-there I can meet a person that can understand me for what I really am someday. This is why I love anime and always appreciate and praise good works that manage to stir up different emotions and leave a good impression for us, the viewers.
TaTales147
December 24, 2018
Recommended
I have never given my opinion about anything in MAL. But honestly, I had to make an exception here. - I want to eat your pancreas. Impressed, amazed, fascinated and grateful. There aren't words to describe the wonderful way in which this was carried out. A story where we don't even need the name of the protagonist to feel identified; to be in his place. You could call it one more movie. But, for me it's a masterpiece made with a lot of love and commitment. It's so real. 5 minutes is enough to focus your attention to the facts. It exposes us to a form oflove so pure, so reciprocal, so... correct, that we all should take a moment to think and reflect on it.
The characters are minimally stereotyped, but what about that? Even they're not perfect, 'cause they're human.
━━ What does it mean to live?
It exceeded my expectations. This "spring" is worth every minute. I recommend it with all my honey for anyone in the world who wants to feel a little more human.
I'll leave here the most important premise:
➤ Be proud of what you do every day. However small it is, try to feel if that's the best you can do. And if it's not like that, strive to be always with your head held high.
Little spoiler/recommendation:
If you want to appreciate the ending even more, read "The Little Prince"; comes a point at which so many things happen on the screen that only once is not enough.
That's all,
Thanks for reading me♪.
