I Want To Eat Your Pancreas

君の膵臓をたべたい (Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai)

9.3(8)

OtakuDen

8.6(676,119)

MAL Score

Ranked #138

Popularity #160

Drama
Romance
School

Episodes: 1
Duration: 1 hr 48 min
Aired: Sep 1, 2018
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

A withdrawn, bookish high school boy keeps his distance from everyone, convinced that neither he nor anyone else truly matters to the people around him. His routine shifts when he finds a handwritten notebook titled *Living with Dying*—a private diary that turns out to belong to Sakura Yamauchi, a cheerful, well-liked classmate. Sakura reveals the truth behind its pages: she’s living with a pancreatic illness, and her remaining time is limited. Aside from her family, no one knows, not even her closest friends.

Though he initially reacts with cool detachment, Sakura’s bright persistence draws him into her days, and he agrees to spend time with her. As two complete opposites grow closer, her impulsive, seemingly carefree outlook begins to unsettle his carefully guarded life, nudging him toward a more honest understanding of connection, loss, and what it means to truly live.

Otaku Consensus

I Want To Eat Your Pancreas earns its reputation through Shinichirou Ushijima’s restrained feature-length direction, a clean adaptation lineage from Yoru Sumino’s novel, and the way Haruki’s emotional rehabilitation becomes the film’s real engine rather than a side effect of romance. Critics and fans consistently single out its character-driven intimacy and post-viewing emotional impact, while the main criticism is that its wallflower-boy/popular-girl framework and tearjerker mechanics are familiar enough to feel engineered to viewers resistant to melodrama.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want a compact, character-first drama that delivers the emotional pressure of a full tragic-romance series without twelve episodes of detours. It scratches a similar itch to A Silent Voice in its focus on an isolated boy being forced into social and moral growth, but it is more literary and intimate, built around diaries, books, and conversations rather than a broad ensemble. The appeal is not mystery or spectacle; it is watching two incompatible temperaments test each other’s ideas about connection, mortality, and whether a life can be changed by one person’s attention. Viewers who like school romance with philosophical bite, a primarily teen cast, and a finale that keeps echoing after the credits will get the most from it.

Key Characters

H
Haruki Shiga(VA: Mahiro Takasugi)
Haruki is compelling because the film treats his detachment less as cool loner mystique and more as a habit he has to unlearn through uncomfortable proximity to someone who refuses to let him stay abstract.
S
Sakura Yamauchi(VA: Lynn)
Sakura is remembered by fans for how her brightness functions as agency rather than decoration: she actively authors the terms of her remaining days and challenges Haruki’s passive view of relationships.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Studio VOLN produced the film as a single theatrical release rather than a TV series, giving the material a tight, self-contained dramatic structure around two central performances.
2
The visual identity comes from loundraw’s original character designs, adapted for animation by Yuuichi Oka, with separate credits for sub-character, accessory, and costume design that point to an unusually specific design pipeline for a grounded school drama.
3
The film’s literary texture is not incidental: AniList tags it with Classic Literature at 72% and Philosophy at 80%, reflecting how much of its appeal comes from ideas about reading, self-narration, and chosen connection rather than romance beats alone.
4
Its database reception is unusually strong for a standalone anime film: MAL lists it at 8.55 from 675,901 votes with a #138 rank and #160 popularity, while AniList records an 84/100 score and 19,830 favourites.
5
English-language reception quickly framed it as more than a novelty title: Anime UK News revisited it after the novel and manga, Isla McTear’s 2018 video review called it imperfect but worth watching, and fan responses repeatedly emphasize the emotional impact rather than the premise.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The original story is by Yoru Sumino, and Anime UK News coverage specifically notes engaging with the novel and manga before revisiting the anime film on home video.
Fun fact 2: Shinichirou Ushijima directed the anime film, with Studio VOLN handling animation production for its September 1, 2018 release.
Fun fact 3: The film’s character design credits are unusually layered: loundraw is credited with original character design, Yuuichi Oka with character design, and Keisuke Kobayashi appears in both sub-character design and costume design roles.
Fun fact 4: Accessory design alone has three credited names in the production data: Yasushi Nishiya, Yurie Oohigashi, and Jinhe Zheng, alongside costume design credits for Kazumasa Ishida and Keisuke Kobayashi.
Fun fact 5: The title’s shock value became a recurring point in reviews: critics noted that I Want To Eat Your Pancreas sounds grotesque at first, but the meaning is addressed early enough that the film can move beyond the provocation into romance and coming-of-age drama.