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If a fan thinksI Want to Eat Your Pancreasis something to do with cannibalism, then they are right. It eats a part of one’s brain and heart for a while until they’re left with total blankness. It is a beautiful and moving exploration of what it means to truly live, told through the perspective of an emotionally distant boy whose life is changed by a terminally ill girl. A lot of anime fans would have watched it already but for those who haven’t, it is a must-watch.
The story begins when Haruki Shiga finds a diary belonging to his high school classmate Yamauchi Sakura. The book is titled “Living with Dying” and reveals that she’s battling with a pancreatic disease. Upon return of the book, Sakura swears him to secrecy, to which our main character replies he doesn’t have any friends to tell anyway. With this statement in mind, Sakura grows interested in the boy and strives to become his friend.
The godfather of dense romcom MCs, Haruki Shiga
In a lot of rom-com anime, the main character is typically well liked and outgoing, romantic, basically someone who isn’t exactly relatable to closet weebs. But the one they can probably relate to is someone like Haruki Shiga. They are not necessarily evil, as they often act out of fear, insecurity, or sometimes even past trauma. These flawed protagonists paint a much more realistic portrait of lovers and their complex choices by subverting conventional expectations of romance.
Haruki Shiga, a high school senior, is a man of many adjectives: quiet, friendless, heavily reserved, unfulfilling, and mysterious, to name but a few. When he discovers his classmate Sakura Yamauchi’s emotional private diary and she confides in him about her struggle with an incurable pancreatic ailment, he has no sympathy for her and offers little emotional support. This characteristic of his, however, is attractive to Sakura, who sets off to build a relationship with him—one that will last until the day she dies.
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Even after knowing all her problems, Haruki wouldn’t even shed a tear or take efforts to help her out. His unsympathetic and detached demeanor is rooted in his personal difficulties in forming relationships. Due to his inclination towards isolation and aversion to emotional attachment, he is reluctant to express himself, which frequently leads to insensitive encounters. Sure, he does change later, but that doesn’t mean what he did was right.
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As the story continues, however, it is shown that he is a coward and is afraid to have any relationships as he doesn’t want him and others to get hurt by his actions. He tries to shoo away Sakura but she is intrigued by him and strives hard to get his company. For instance, she pestered Haruki to no end by either volunteering to be his partner in the library duties or with her countless morbid jokes about her impending death, on which she retorted that everybody would die in the end, it was just a matter of when.
Despite her condition, Sakura’s unrelenting positivity and openness soon push Haruki to fight against his aversion to relationships and to be more honest with himself. The more time he spends with Sakura, the more he imbibes some of her qualities. The reason why Sakura wanted to be with him is because unlike others, including Kyoko, who would overreact and be crying all the way if she were to tell her, he gave her a feeling of normalcy upon her reality.
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She didn’t have to put up a front. She didn’t have to hide anything. She didn’t have to pretend that everything’s normal. Nothing would change in the revelation of reality as long as she’s with him. And when the time to die came closer, Haruki had already developed feelings for her and just as she was about to die, he sent her a text message saying, “I want to eat yourpancreas,” implying that Haruki would eat her illness just for her to come back again.
Haruki explained that no one really understood his and Sakura’s unique relationship, which was beyond being just mere friends or lovers; they were more like soul mates. And this is a huge changeover from the silent, cowardly person he was before he met her.
I Want to Eat Your Pancreasis available to watch on Netflix.
Anand Bhaskaran
Articles Published :134
A Dragon Ball fanatic who also loves to read and talk about Indian spirituality. An MBA finance graduate with a passion for doing everything that is unrelated to it. Anand has over 4 years of experience under his belt, having worked with leading content heads in the anime community. Currently, he’s more into Slice of Life and Romcom shows than actual Battle Shonen. But unfortunately, he’s stuck with a job writing ONLY about Battle Shonen (smh).
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