Diva's Movie Review: I Want To Eat Your Pancreas - Overly Melodramatic But Will Still Make You Tear Up

Before the anime version of Yoru Sumino's novel “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”, there was a live action adaptation with a slightly different title. It was called “Let Me Eat Your Pancreas”, starring Minami Hamabe and Takumi Kitamura in the lead roles. Red Dot Diva caught the tearjerker during a long haul flight, and thought it was engaging even though typically sentimental in that Japanese way. What is it about teens dying from terminal illness in several Japanese tragedies anyway?

The animated film “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas” directed by Shinichiro Ushijima is no less sentimental. In fact, Red Dot Diva found it overly dramatic, and repetitive in many instances (it seems that the novel was like that too), making the movie longer than necessary. Still, it had its moments, and the odd couple's sentiments about mortality, love and friendship were sincere and heartbreaking.

As you can probably guess by now, the bloodthirsty title, “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas” is not a horror movie or a film about the zombie apocalypse. Nope, it is actually a romance story about two people of opposite personalities. Sakura, a bubbly girl suffering from a life-threatening illness, decides to make use of her limited time on earth completing her crazy bucket list of things to do. Not wanting to become a shadow of her sickness, she strives to it a secret, and during her journey through life, she decides to befriend a seemingly boring, moody, anti-social guy from the same school that no one seems to like, and whose name remains a mystery till the last few minutes.