Aloof high schooler Haruki (voiced by Mahiro Takasugi in the Japanese-language version) randomly encounters a book in a hospital waiting room. Upon starting to read it, he learns it is a diary his hugely popular classmate Sakura (Lynn) is keeping, and then he goes to visit. Once they now become friends, Sakura tells Haruki she is actually dying of a pancreatic illness and eventually promises to tell him when the end is here. When she does die, albeit unexpectedly and not of her disease, he is encouraged to keep her diary and try to forge or reforge connections with various people Sakura once knew, alongside handling his own grief for her.
I really tried to enjoy this one, but underneath the striking visuals lay a romance narrative so wholesome and cliched it bored me to death. Now, for clarity, despite the title's connotations, I knew this was not a horror movie, and I like a lot of love stories, but this was one which, as I said, I just could not get into. Based on a 2014 novel by Yuro Sumino titled Let Me Eat Your Pancreas, which had already been adapted into a live-action 2018 film, this anime one by writer-director Shinichiro Ushijima was for me increasingly sappy and monotonous, with the two protagonists such cardboard cut-outs I thought they must've actually been taken from a cereal box. Hiroku Sebu's excessive score put me off even more.
Whether I'm beginning to watch too much anime, or if I simply wasn't the target audience for this one, I can't say. But I can say I Want to Eat Your Pancreas falls into the "overrated" category for me.
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