This review includes mentions of suicidal ideation and depression.
This Monster Wants to Eat Me is a good story, but I’m not sure if This Monster Wants to Eat Me is a good anime. Positioning itself as Fall 2025’s gay supernatural tale, I had high hopes for this adaptation by Studio Lings that quickly plummeted after the first two episodes. It was hard to keep my expectations high for both the animation and the narrative after my initial impression, and for the most part, the anime remained lackluster — but the last five episodes left me unexpectedly reeling, and for that, I cannot discard it as a completely worthless watch.
On the way home from a road trip, young Hinako Yaotose and her family get caught in a terrible car accident, fatal to everyone but herself. Years later, as a high schooler, Hinako is still despondent from the loss, wishing she too had died but unable to end her own life out of respect for her family’s dying wish for her to stay alive. Consumed by her misery, Hinako is unaware that yokai have been trying to feed on her until a different monster, Shiori Oumi, appears in front of her and slays one of these predators. Shiori offers to protect Hinako from all yokai, but only if she gets to be the monster that devours Hinako once she becomes the tastiest version of herself. Hinako, jumping at the chance for a passive death, complies, but only later does she realize that Shiori has ulterior, non-ravenous motives.
©2024 Sai Naekawa/KADOKAWA/Project Watatabe
When I read the premise of this show, I went in with the assumption that the monster-eating pact would be a tragic metaphor for the way love consumes you, or the way your hunger for love can push you to the point of destruction. In actuality, there is little desire to “eat” at all in this story; instead, there is more of a deliberate fasting. When Shiori happened upon a young Hinako, whose overwhelming kindness toward her monstrous form only inflamed her desire to devour her limb by limb, she staved off her hunger in hopes of preserving the one precious human in the world that allowed her to experience joy and belonging. Miko, Hinako’s friend and kitsune yokai, goes feral at the metallic aroma of a mere cut on Hinako’s hand but controls herself by sacrificing her own flesh, gnawing off two of her foxtails. Hinako is the only one among the main trio who really shows any hunger at all, and it’s a craving for emptiness, nothingness, death, that constantly clashes with Shiori and Miko’s restraint.
I really loved this subversion of expectations, especially with the way it spins the dynamic of Hinako and Shiori on its head. The reveal that Shiori had actually been trying to save Hinako’s life, that she found Hinako’s smell so vile she couldn’t possibly fulfill her promise of eating her, filled me with so much relief — the monster who wants to eat her wasn’t actually interested in eating her at all! Then Shiori reluctantly rekindled their pact, and the lump of dread re-lodged in my throat. This hurt more than my prediction that the eventuality of Hinako’s happiness would make both parties reluctant about their agreement. In reality, Shiori has never been in the predatory position she claimed to be in, and she resigns herself to the whims of Hinako in a desperate attempt to keep her alive. The contract they renew on Hinako’s terms reminded me of the many unspoken promises people form with themselves in real life: the vague deadline of a certain age or goal that marks when you will end your life, and that being the only real hope worth enough to stick around a bit longer.
©2024 Sai Naekawa/KADOKAWA/Project Watatabe
Much of the heavy lifting in This Monster Wants to Eat Me’s heightened moments is done by the phenomenal performances of the voice actors. Reina Ueda, who voices Hinako, delivers some stinging lines throughout the show, like the heartbreaking insult she barely whispers out when Hinako tells Shiori that she’s a monster, in the worst form of the word.
But my favorite line delivery appears in episode 11, when Hinako’s rocky emotions begin to crumble completely in front of Miko. When Miko tells Hinako that she is selfishly grateful that Hinako survived the fatal car accident that killed the rest of her family, the thin veil Hinako has been wearing over her feelings is torn apart by the flood that spills out. The shakiness in each of Ueda’s syllables culminates in a despondent cry as Hinako apologizes over and over: “Even though you care about me so much, even though I know it would hurt you for me to say this, even though I know all that, … I wish I’d died with them.”
I’m an easy crier when it comes to watching television, but rarely am I so moved by something that it physically suffocates me. To me, this scene provided such an accurate portrayal of someone experiencing the persistent throes of trauma, of the guilt and responsibility you feel for influencing others with your pain despite the pain wounding you the most. The choked sobs from Ueda rang so real and pulsating and horribly in my chest that I had to pause the show to make sure I could still breathe through my own fit of tears.
Hinako’s painful acknowledgment that Miko’s feelings cannot change her own, as well as Miko immediately running to Hinako to hug her because it’s the only comfort she can provide, felt like the apotheosis of the show’s nuanced exploration of depression. If this show does anything perfectly, it’s portraying the guilt that each of the main three experiences because of the reality of their desires: Hinako unable to let go of the pain her trauma inflicts despite the attempted support of her friends, and Shiori and Miko unable to hide their relief that Hinako is alive despite knowing how surviving that accident has gravely, unbearably upended her life.
©2024 Sai Naekawa/KADOKAWA/Project Watatabe
The dialogue in this scene, done by series composer Mitsutaka Hirota, is expertly written, but it would not have been as impactful had Ueda’s acting not been so gut-wrenching and raw. In a similar vein, Yui Ishikawa delivers a stellar performance as Shiori that elevated her character in places where other elements of the anime did not. Though the coy inflection Ishikawa maintains can be grating because of how blank Shiori often looks, it makes a lot of sense once Shiori’s true motivations are revealed. The aloofness in her voice almost never wavers, but when it does, it’s a glimpse at the aching cracks in Shiori’s soulless facade.
Ishikawa is masterful at conveying these subtleties in her performance, but I only realized her meticulous craft when the show provided a flashback to a previous conversation from Shiori’s perspective, uncovering the gravity of Shiori’s words in hindsight. The flashback scene supplies little foreshadowing on its own when it first appears, mainly because the animation is very unmoving, both literally and figuratively. The voice acting is, unfortunately, not enough to make up for how bland the earlier parts of the show feel; surely there could have been a way to plant seeds of suspicion about Shiori while maintaining intrigue.
©2024 Sai Naekawa/KADOKAWA/Project Watatabe
For all the praise I can give to the voice acting and the way this show tackles the nuances of depression, I can’t discard that for most of the anime’s 13-episode run, I was incredibly bored. The animation as a whole felt lifeless, and not intentionally. I was just as unmoved by the shallowness of the “drowning” imagery at the end of the show as I was at the beginning, its repetition making the symbolism almost tacky. In my review of the first two episodes, I noted the show’s bizarre choice to pair its brightly-colored chibi interjections with a morose, dawdling soundtrack, and this too continued to happen again and again throughout.
Could this dissonance between the show’s sonic and visual elements be deliberate, an attempt to recreate the dissonance Hinako feels when she masks her misery with happiness? Perhaps, but if that was the intention, I’m not sure it executed its desired effect. Either element could’ve sufficed on its own, but the clash in the humorous and grim tones left me confused rather than uneasy.
©2024 Sai Naekawa/KADOKAWA/Project Watatabe
Only at the introduction of Shiori’s backstory in episode 8 did I feel that the anime captured my full attention, and even then, it was because of the story rather than the artistic direction. Hinako’s hollow eyes convey her sadness but fail to capture the whole spread of her emotions, which makes watching her onscreen uninteresting. Shiori’s facial expressions similarly rarely change, even when she’s more dejected than conniving; I found myself drawn more to Shiori’s ghastly mermaid form once it was revealed, because at least her expressionless despair in that form mirrored her torn-up physical and mental state at that time. At the very least, her frustrating feelings should have been apparent visually and not just vocally when she assumed her human form.
The recurring issues I had with the production choices, despite how deeply the plot and the characters’ dynamics ended up moving me, led me to believe that I would’ve enjoyed this story more had I just read the source material. I can imagine how the various comedic quips and weary complexions would appear in the manga in a way that complies with the overall sullen tone. But in a medium where each “panel” lies in a singular widescreen frame with nowhere to hide, in a medium that manipulates auditory effects to elevate the ambience, in a medium that requires movement as a critical conveyor of emotion, this adaptation didn’t blow me out of the water as much as I’d hoped it would.
©2024 Sai Naekawa/KADOKAWA/Project Watatabe
The girls’ love progression, even with its sparseness, is the one other aspect of the production I felt was executed artfully. While it wasn’t what I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed the subtlety of the yuri elements and wasn’t phased by the lack of clear romance, though I understand how the genre label could feel misleading. The romantic gestures are implicit and slight (except the blood-feeding pact and the biting kiss in episode 12, which, okay, were very gay), but given where the story is in its progression, it makes sense to put the more pressing concern of Hinako’s life at the forefront. This is only the beginning of a much longer correspondence between Hinako and Shiori, and I’m okay with witnessing a snail’s pace of a slow burn.
The thirst for romance is also quenched through the addition of Miko, whose meddling between Hinako and Shiori adds extra life to what is an underwhelming handful of get-to-know-each-other episodes in the first half of the show. Fall 2025 has really been the season for “anime with love triangles that should end in throuples,” in my opinion, and this show is definitely included in that roster. Sometimes, I was even more intrigued by Shiori and Miko’s dynamic, their initial hatred for each other adding a nice enemies-to-lovers flavor once they realize they’re working towards the same goal. I also thought it was a smart choice to have the first person to catch on to Shiori’s true intentions be Miko, and for her to be the one Shiori confides in; their outsider positions as yokai in the human world distort their lives in a way only each other can understand.
Still, my giddiness at the intricate love lines was also not enough to shake my lingering disappointment at the creative direction of this adaptation. If This Monster Wants to Eat Me receives another season, I can only hope that it irons out the kinks of the first while highlighting the small treasures that made me stick around. As it stands, I’m not desperately reaching for seconds.
