Agency, consent, and queer monstrosity in This Monster Wants to Eat Me

Content warning: discussion of suicide ideation, self-harm, and grief

Spoilers for the This Monster Wants to Eat Me anime

This Monster Wants to Eat Me is a slow-burn horror that invites its audience to feel it more than it asks for comprehension. Through the use of metaphor, subtext, and symbolism, you’ll find yourself submerged in the aftermath of loss and trauma, alongside the protagonist Hinako, an orphaned teen who is learning to make sense of those concepts for herself. But just as the ocean is vast, and an iceberg’s tip hides its depth, this series ventures beyond the grief—and the supernatural drama—on its surface, and the waves roll back to reveal the core themes of agency, desire, and consent. These themes show themselves in subtle ways, through deafening silences, charged gestures, and heavy implications, and play into the series’ broader portrayal and exploration of monstrosity.

The Peculiar Meeting: A Visitor on the Ocean Floor

This Monster Wants to Eat Me is a yuri fantasy series that follows Hinako, a grieving teenager silently harboring a deadly secret, and Shiori, a mermaid who yearns to eat her. Enveloped in the imagery of an endless sea, both peaceful and suffocating, the early episodes put on an emotive display of Hinako’s alienation and passive suicidal ideation, setting the emotional tone, and the watery scene, for the tale ahead. The story emerges deep inside Hinako’s psyche, where she is endlessly sinking into the ocean, the same place she lost her family. She possesses a deep, dark longing to rest there, but her family’s dying wish, “Hinako, you must live,” habitually echoes as a reminder for her to stay. Floating through her days slightly elsewhere, supported by her dearest friend Miko, Hinako never fully collapses, nor lets the tides take her. But she still ponders at the ocean’s edge, hoping for something uncontrollable to swallow her, too. 

It is at that very edge, gazing into those waters, that Hinako meets a girl named Shiori who resembles the ocean, with eyes the color of sapphire and salt-scented skin. The girl is also gentle, like a tame current, appearing to pull Hinako away from the water, and cautioning her against standing too close. This sparks Hinako’s initial curiosity about Shiori, but there is something else, too. When Shiori says, “I thought you were planning to throw yourself in”, her concern penetrates Hinako’s mind on a few different levels. Not only does it emotionally resonate, as suggested by her fear-filled eyes, it also triggers her subconscious memory of her family’s wish. More notably, this is the first time Hinako’s desire to die is named out loud, which creates the feeling of being exposed, just as much as it makes her feel seen. Additionally, Shiori named it without attaching judgment to it, making the notion more compelling to Hinako. 

Once something taboo is safely witnessed, the mind gradually moves toward normalizing it. So even though Hinako consciously resists the idea, Shiori’s seemingly neutral acknowledgement acts as a tiny seed of permission in Hinako’s subconscious, prompting questions like, “Could I really do that?”, making her later agency over her life, and death, possible. The next time Shiori and Hinako cross paths, Shiori reveals herself as a mermaid to prevent Hinako from being eaten by an Iso-Onna. She then utters six words: “I came here to eat you.” This empty promise alters the trajectory of their paths, though exactly how is not apparent from the first episode alone. In the beginning, it looks like Hinako is the unwilling prey of a mermaid who has a swelling appetite for her, but Hinako secretly tilts the situation in her favor by deciding to leverage Shiori’s appetite to make her darkest longing a reality. After all, it was the first time she realized she had it: permission to surrender.

“What Are We, Really?”: The Liminal Space Between Predation and Kinship

From the very first episode, the girls exist in an uncanny, ironic relationship: Shiori’s eerie, yet endearing, pledge to be Hinako’s savior only on the condition that she gets to kill Hinako herself. Shiori tells Hinako she came into her life for one reason: to eat her. Yet despite the sinister overtones of such a declaration, her behavior toward Hinako skews more toward protective devotion. Some of Shiori’s behaviors toward Hinako also appear more territorial or possessive, including the way she postures around Miko, another supernatural being who has devoted herself to protecting Hinako, creating a fiery foil to Shiori. But these are always matched by affectionate gestures that reaffirm Hinako’s personhood, showing that Shiori sees her as more than just a meal. 

When Shiori places a finger on Hinako’s lips or brings her treats, those are signs of affection, and when she says things to Hinako like, “Do be careful” or “All I care about is that you’re you”, that is her communicating, “I see you as precious.” She represents Hinako’s impending death, yet is overtly kind and tender to her. In the context of this being a horror series, it creates an unsettling juxtaposition between her actions and her true nature. But it also nurtures the shape of Hinako’s desire to die. The girl who’s promised to eat her is so kind that the danger simply melts away… how could she not feel drawn to her? 

Hinako’s feelings toward Shiori are a lot more muted, but they are present; they leak through in the way she welcomes Shiori intimately, even trusting her to hold her scarred skin. Both of them seek closeness with the other. Shiori expresses it through physical proximity, while Hinako does so by inviting her to places. Their mutual desire runs a layer beneath everything else, revealing itself in how Hinako is reserving herself to be eaten by Shiori, who is solely devoted to eating her. This is how the series uses monstrosity to illustrate commitment between two women: their supernatural and morbid connection is the vessel for a unique form of intimacy, both emotional and physical, through the trust Hinako places in Shiori by agreeing to be eaten by her. 

On the supernatural level, their bond is unusual: how do you explain the feelings that exist between yourself and the mermaid who has adoringly promised to devour you? The two young women exist in an atypical relationship structure that is unfathomable to normal, human society, embedded in taboo like the “mixing” of humans and monsters and the deliberate pursuit of death. Likewise, when it comes to the line between platonic or romantic intimacy, Hinako isn’t sure how to categorize their relationship, but she feels like there is something deeper driving their connection. This is the reason she asks Shiori if they were friends; it was her questioning whether or not her feelings toward Shiori are reciprocated. Shiori’s refusal of the friendship label is both an acknowledgement of their atypical bond and confirmation that she feels that way too. “Just friends” couldn’t hope to capture their deadly pact, nor could it account for the romance brewing between them. It’s in this way that the yuri and horror elements intertwine with one another, showing how the queer and the “monstrous” resonate with each other as in many works before.

“I Choose the Person You’ll Be After Today”: Shiori’s Will Stripped Bare

This relationship is made even more complicated by the revelation of their blood-bond, which reframes their interactions and flips the story’s premise on its head. At the time they first met, Shiori was floating around the sea, immobilized from her injuries, and she happened to wash up in front of Hinako, who was just a kid. Hinako returned to Shiori daily to feed her, and she made a full recovery. Shiori never forgot that act of kindness, or Hinako’s light, when it had not yet been clouded by the trauma of losing her family. For this reason, Shiori gave Hinako the gift of her blood to keep her healthy. At the same time that Shiori bestowed the gift of her blood, she took something from Hinako too—her memory of them meeting. She didn’t want to obstruct the natural course of Hinako’s life or dim her light, even if it meant she would hold the memory alone. 

In a cruel twist of irony, Shiori’s magical blood that allowed Hinako to survive the accident when the rest of her family didn’t, is also what caused the survivor’s guilt and trauma that now haunts Hinako’s existence. To add to this, the monster blood mixed in with Hinako’s makes her taste disgusting, which contradicts Shiori’s earlier promise that Hinako would be delicious. Not only did Shiori cause Hinako’s suffering, she can’t free her from it. Her actions have left Hinako to grapple with an unlikely fate, and erased the vital context that would help her piece together why. Shiori took this same approach when she told Hinako she wanted to eat her, only because she couldn’t accept that she wanted to die: making grand gestures and using her powers to save her, but ultimately withholding critical details from Hinako without considering what she actually wants. 

By promising Hinako she would eat her if she became happy, Shiori intended to nurse her back to health, the same as Hinako did for her when she was wounded. However, this caring gesture relies on deception and going against Hinako’s wishes. From Hinako’s perspective, their relationship was built on mutual desire and consent, but that foundation comes crashing down once the blood-pact and Shiori’s lies are illuminated—leaving Hinako with fractured trust, and the harrowing feeling of betrayal. Shiori’s intentions are loving, but the way she expresses them often involves overriding Hinako’s choices. This is crystallized again when she kisses Hinako and accidentally cuts her lip; the mixing of harm with care is the cost of Shiori’s monstrosity, and the price of Hinako’s otherworldly attachment to her.

The Renewed Promise: Hinako’s Resolve Makes Waves

From the beginning, Hinako and Shiori’s pact was centered around consent and Hinako’s autonomy. The only way Hinako was going to be eaten was if she accepted Shiori’s conditions and chose to become happy. For this reason, Hinako began working on changing her perspective and finding joy in her life. Naturally, as her inner world became more peaceful, the sun, which once burned her skin, began to grace it with its warmth again. It was still the same sun, but Hinako was now welcoming it with new eyes. This was her settling into the reality of choosing authorship over the way she lived, along with the way she would die. Once Shiori’s deception comes to light, Hinako’s perspective is warped once again. In the past, the words, “Hinako, you must live” served as a liferaft for her; it was the reason she stayed afloat. When she learns that those words belong to Shiori, and that she never planned to eat her, the lever that is holding her back pops, causing her to sink all the way into despair. 

Hinako is grieving her agency, and a reality where her suffering isn’t endless. In the series’ climax, she seizes the opportunity to make a decision and resolves to offer herself up to a sea monster—but breaths before it can devour her, Shiori intervenes and pulls her out. In one sense, this is a repetition of past actions: Shiori’s desire (and desperation) to keep Hinako alive overrides what Hinako herself wants. The line between protecting Hinako and stripping her of her own decision-making ability is routinely blurred and crossed. The audience is thrown into an ethical quandary: on one hand, Hinako has been robbed of her choices, and she is within her rights to be upset about what Shiori’s magic has done to her. However, the alternative is to let Hinako fall into self-destructive urges and die. Looming above this is the invisible question: which of these options would be more “monstrous”? The series’ nature as a piece of horror, coupled with the monsters and ambiguous intimacies at its core, set the stage for such messy and emotional questions. 

In the end, the girls both find a way to get fragmented versions of what they want. They redo their blood-pact, but this time it is Shiori who is bound to Hinako’s will. Shiori gets to keep Hinako alive for a little longer, and Hinako reclaims some sense of agency over how she lives and how she will die. This Monster Wants to Eat Me is constantly skating an ethical line; balancing depictions of supernatural monsters with realistic explorations of mental illness, and refusing to look away from something society often finds difficult to look at. The audience is never told that Hinako’s decisions are right or wrong; they are shown her afflictions, and the kinds of decisions it pushes her to make. The series could have easily oversimplified her trauma or solely painted her as a victim, but instead, it chooses to sit closer to the reality of people who’ve been in her position. Hinako’s resilience, agency, and resolve are the characteristics manga creator Sai Naekawa chose to highlight. With her, we have a character who’s been through extreme suffering, and is constantly finding new ways to adapt to it. 

Hinako and Shiori’s relationship exists in an alternating current between what is desired, and what is taboo. On the surface, they orbit one another in ways that are uncanny, yet familiar. Each time the waves roll back, they reveal the underlying agency, desire, and consent fueling their connection. These things shine through with homoerotic subtext, such as Shiori and Hinako’s mutual desire to eat and be eaten, the mixing of blood that symbolizes their atypical bond, and the metaphor of monstrosity that represents their devotion to one another.

Monstrosity is also the lens through which judgment is made: about power, such as who is allowed autonomy in relationships between humans and monsters, as well as the ethical burden of honoring (or overriding) a loved one’s wishes, especially when it results in betrayal to oneself, or others. This Monster Wants to Eat Me offers no easy answers to the ethical and emotionally-charged questions that it raises, but the monstrous affection at its core provides a powerful framework with which to explore them, inviting the audience to dive deep into a grimly satisfying tale of autonomy and consent.