This Monster Wants to Eat Me Gets Off To A Tepid Start

October 4, 2025

My expectations for the This Monster Wants to Eat Me anime, an adaptation of the manga by Sai Naekawa, were consistently low after watching the trailers. However, the interesting combination of dark fantasy/supernatural horror and yuri drama, plus a depressed protagonist, meant that I was obligated to keep it at the top of my Fall 2025 to-watch list. After watching the first episode, I’m not sure if it’d stay there for more than another week.

My impressions of This Monster Wants to Eat Me’s premiere were initially decent — an unhurried pace; rather nice character drawings; sombre piano notes that convey the weight felt by protagonist Hinako (Reina Ueda), who lost her family and also the will to live. By the halfway point, though, I started to feel that the storyboards (from chief director Naoyuki Kuzuya) and episode direction (from the series’ director Yusuke Suzuki) were too muted to effectively immerse me into the story, especially since the animation doesn’t stand out. Even during scenes where Hinako is symbolically submerged in water, the shot composition feels a little dry and disinterested in its own subject.

The feeling extends to the supernatural moments of the episode. When a long-haired iso-onna emerged from the sea in an attempt to consume Hinako, who’s apparently an appetizing lure for monsters, I looked away not in terror, but apathy, because the show still felt like it was in neutral gear. Hinako’s rescue by the powerful and composed ningyo (basically Japanese mermaid) Shiori — who’s protecting Hinako just so she can eat the human herself in the future — is similarly lacking in energy. Despite the solid voice acting from Yui Ishikawa, the scene doesn’t manage to provide Shiori with a sense of presence, and the slaughter of the iso-onna is delivered through hazy shots that feel uncommitted. The lack of notably impactful or creative imagery makes it feel like the episode just wants to get things done, rather than instill some emotion or reaction in me, and that doesn’t feel like the right match for this show.

It doesn’t help that the last, recently concluded anime season had Ryohei Takeshita‘s The Summer Hikaru Died, which also had queerness and the supernatural, but had a memorable series-wide aesthetic and solid animation quality, as well as strong delivery from its individual episodes. I still remember the early section of that anime’s premiere — the oppressive heat, and the shot of an overwhelmed Yoshiki being embraced by “Hikaru,” where the image loses color and darkness consumes everything but Yoshiki’s teary eye, and how the subsequent streak of the tear stands out against the almost pitch-black screen. This Monster Wants to Eat Me could stand to have at least 10% of that show’s visual impact.

Other episode staff

• Chief animation director: Nozomi Ikuyama

Series main staff

• Director: Yusuke Suzuki (Duel Masters WIN)
• Chief director: Naoyuki Kuzuya (Sweet Reincarnation director)
• Series composer and screenwriter: Mitsutaka Hirota (Days with My Stepsister series composer and co-screenwriter)
• Character designer: Nozomi Ikuyama (Yuri Is My Job! OP et al. co-animation director)
• Music composer: Keiji Inai (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?)
• Animation production: STUDIO LINGS