This Monster Wants to Eat Me – Episode 1

Content Warning: suicidality, gore

What’s it about? Yaotose Hinako has been weighed down by guilt since an accident killed her parents and brother, leaving her the only survivor. The quiet fog of her life is lifted when a mermaid named Shiori appears and promises to eat Hinako…when she’s ready.

---

The summer of depressed small town boys falling for eldritch mountain gods has come to a close, but fall is here for us with depressed small town girls falling for sea monsters! Truly, anime is good.

I got to see this episode for the first time at Otakon and also got to talk to the manga artist and producer, and part of me was worried that the hype glow of that shared experience would make me kindly disposed to it regardless. But having watched it again at home, I’m happy to say I was still extremely taken with this moody premiere.

It’s definitely a slow burn, with long stretches of silence meant to emphasize how Hinako’s suicidality isolates her even within crowds of people. The “bottom of the ocean” imagery is on theme, of course, but the sound design is also nicely evocative in the way it mutes but doesn’t entirely erase the sound of the scene. She is there, in a sense, but everything feels dull and unreal. It’s definitely reminiscent of how Yuu’s loneliness is depicted in Bloom Into You, but well-contextualized enough not to feel derivative. The biggest break for viewers is going to be whether you find these moments evocative and eerie or dull and aimless.

You can probably sense that I’m on the former end, though I admit that there are a few moments that feel like they could be a bit tighter. Still, it does what it needs to: Hinako’s nonchalant joy at the thought of death, not actively pursuing it but drawn by an implied end to her suffering, certainly tracks with how loved ones have expressed passive suicidality to me. Ending the episode with her first smile, brought on by the thought of death, hits without feeling cheap, and I think it’s that muted lead-up that saves it from the realm of shock value. Shiori’s appearances also feel like shocks of air whenever she appears, which adds needed oomph for her status as a monster love interest.

Probable love interest. There’s some oddness around this title in that marketing materials were very not allowed to use the phrase “yuri”—which is frustrating, in one sense, but understandable in another. I started my media criticism career during the era of “cancellation lesbians” in American cartoons, so I can appreciate doing a marketing sleight of hand to try and get to air with less scrutiny. MagiRevo was likewise cagey in its early episodes, and that is a title that is not at all shy about its lesbianism by the end. For now, we’ve got talk about friendships and an ending theme where our leads tenderly entwine fingers in a whole field of lilies, and an afterword in the manga where Naekawa mentions her editor approaching her on doing a “gloomy yuri.” There’s much to be written on the double-edged sword of marketing omissions and the nature of denigrated genres, but talking about it further here is just gonna be me pontificating to air.

Regardless of how it gets officially labeled, this is an extremely romantic story on a plain old structural level. I’m a sucker for cannibalism as metaphor for desire, and the conflict between the desire to completely subsume into one person and the mature realization that part of a strong relationship is respecting the ways you’re different and independent people. That pairs well with a story where Hinako is essentially being forced to take better care of herself in order to chase her desire to die. Stay hydrated, girlie! It’s the only way you can get that girl to eat you. Wisdom we can all learn from.

It also just makes for good body horror. The monster designs here don’t have the same terrifying oomph of Hikaru’s, but they’re solid, and despite the climactic fight scene including a literal shower of gore it still feels pretty sparing about its bloodletting. I wouldn’t mind a bit more rending and tearing, but if the story’s main goal is to be a character drama, then I get the logic of wanting to keep a leash on the horror elements.

While I worry that the one season yuri curse will descend right as the story is really kicking off, I can already tell I’m going to enjoy my time with this one. For everyone else that this isn’t laser-targeted at, I’d say it’s still worth the ol’ three-episode try.

I can’t get out of here without discussing Crunchyroll’s new subtitles, which look like butt and are significantly more difficult to read than the old font. That’s more difficult in terms of showing up against light-colored backgrounds, and in terms of differentiating stacked lines of text when translating onscreen writing. It’s not surprising given Sony’s clear lack of care for the viewership, from the buyout and enshittification of RIghtStuf into the current Crunchyroll Store to the massive layoffs over the summer, but it’s still worth getting loud about. The audience and the art both deserve more care than this.