This Monster Wants to Eat Me

Episode 9

While I've been on board with This Monster Wants to Eat Me from the start, I've often found myself wishing I were enjoying it more. It never quite committed hard enough to its premise. It meandered. If it could focus on one aspect—the edginess, the angstiness, the toxicity, or another facet—then I believed it would be able to break through that barrier and make me love it. And this week, that finally happened. The simmering yuri drama boils over, the adaptation rises to the occasion, and This Monster delivers its best and angstiest episode yet.

Tone has been a consistent issue with the series, although not an overpowering one. Sometimes, the comedy just doesn't gel with the deluge of sadness soaking everything Hinako touches. However, this week, the opening salvo of goofs serves the material well. Ayame just hit Hinako with a big bombshell, so it makes sense that our morbidly meek heroine would want to ease into a confrontation by consulting her best friend first. And Miko's ensuing fit of sapphic panic opens a release valve that ensures the audience has plenty of room to accommodate the despair to come. The localization here is great, too. “Don't you say that! Not even as a joke! 'Cause it's gonna go past joking real quick!” fits Miko's flustered emotional state and her casual way of speaking. Hang in there, you little lesbian fox.

As an aside, I really love Miko. These “third wheel” characters don't always work for me, especially if it seems like they're only there to facilitate conflict. Miko, however, holds her own as the show's tertiary lead. For instance, I like that she backs out of providing Hinako moral support after her classmates remind her that she has cleaning duty. There are any number of ways you could have sculpted the narrative to get Hinako and Shiori alone, but here, Miko's actions reinforce how strongly she feels about her duty to the class and, by extension, to her territory as a protective goddess. While Miko loves Hinako, she also loves humans as a collective. As we see later, that may be the most important distinction between her and Shiori.

Hinako arrives at the bench and sits in the sun. Shiori arrives later and sits a pronounced distance away from her, in the shadows. The symbolism of light and dark is obvious here, but it's indicative of the increased thoughtfulness in the adaptation this week. While the anime's visual component has been fairly consistent week to week, that means it has also been consistently mediocre. Fine, not great. Time, though, director and storyboarder Zenichirō Itō recognizes this conflict as the fulcrum on which the rest of the story pivots, and he delivers noticeably nicer compositions in turn. They draw attention away from the talking heads and pull our focus into the shared emotional headspace of Hinako and Shiori as their relationship fractures. To be clear, this isn't as blatant or as honed a deviation as, say, a Kai Ikarashi feature. The overall look of the episode fits alongside its peers. Nevertheless, it possesses that modicum of extra sauce that can brighten an entire meal.

It's a shame that nothing is bright in Hinako's world. The scene literally darkens as Shiori pulls Hinako into the shade and the clouds roll in, obstructing any sunlight that might have warmed her back. Shiori, hurtfully, still tries to evade Hinako's questioning before she musters the courage to confront her directly. And when Shiori does answer her questions, it confirms Hinako's fear that she had lied to her. Even worse, Shiori reveals that her would-be devourer and savior is actually the person responsible for condemning Hinako to a lifetime of pain and guilt. Shiori has now turned Hinako's world upside-down twice over, and she deceived her the entire way. Perhaps, if Hinako had healed enough to reject her suicidal ideation, she might have been able to take the news better, and perhaps that might have been Shiori's intention all along. However, I don't think any preface would have stopped Hinako from feeling betrayed, and I can't blame her for that.

At the same time, I think I can understand where Shiori is coming from. If her explanation is true—and there are still open questions, like the nature of the favor young Hinako originally performed for her—she didn't intend to isolate her, nor could she have foreseen the accelerated reaction of her blood with Hinako's. Shiori wanted to atone for hurting somebody she cared about. Shiori, however, is an old and proud yokai who doesn't think highly of humanity. She had her own plan, and she could not objectively consider its downsides. She thought, with a kind enough smile and a forceful enough claw, she could direct Hinako and rival yokai alike into acting as she wished they would. This attitude would also protect her from dwelling on the possibility of rejection, which clearly terrifies her. Even as Hinako walks away from her, Shiori tosses out a threat veiled in a cruel joke, once again unable and unwilling to consider that she might be in the wrong. It's only when Hinako, sobbing and heartbroken, looks back at her that Shiori's eyes finally waver in horrific comprehension of what she's done. A small yet catastrophic crack finally spiders its way down Shiori's veneer, as Hinako returns to the familiar darkness of her bedroom.

Now that's what I call angst! The rest of the episode is good, too. I love Miko's huge, angry kitsune body framed against the small and crestfallen visage of Shiori. Their date together is also great, as both yokai take advantage of their shared inhumanity to pontificate openly on their relationships with humans. Miko recapitulates the story from her own arc, but Shiori confesses she can only perceive the myriad organisms around her as diverse vessels for fresh meat. Her predator instinct defines her. It may even control her. However, this might explain why she's so fixated on Hinako. If everything else in the world looks like a juicy drumstick, then Hinako is the one lifeform who stands out. She is Shiori's sole window into a relationship defined by something other than hunger or competition. Plus, even if she can't ingest her flesh, there are plenty of other mutually satisfying ways to “eat” someone. Let's see how long it takes either of them to figure that out.

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This Monster Wants to Eat Me is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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