Greetings and welcome back to Anime Rants. Today I’m covering episodes 4 and 5 of This Monster Wants to Eat Me (Watashi wo Tabetai, Hitodenashi). These episodes focused primarily on Miko Yashiro. I was impressed with both installments, and I feel that Miko is my favorite character in the series (at least for now). I love everything about her character and story, which we learn in these episodes. This post is mostly just a recap, with only a little bit of my own discussion, but that’s the best I can do at present.
Episode 4: An Ephemeral Tie
Episode Rating: 8/10
In this episode, we start to learn the truth about Miko. In the school courtyard, Miko saw the dead yokai and blood everywhere. Shiori realized that Miko must not be human. Now recongnizing that Shirio was a man-eating yokai, Miko said she would always protect Hinako and would continue to treat yokai like meat – including Shiori, if she tried anything with Hinako. With tensions suddenly insanely high, the two yokai might have started to fight, but Hinako appeared. Miko dropped the malice and went back to her normal, cheerful self. She went to go eat sweets with Hinako.
While Hinako and Miko enjoyed their time together, Shiori investigated Miko. Then she approached the two girls on the docks a little later. Shiori started to explain that Miko was in fact a yokai who had been decieving Hinako all this time. Much to Hinako’s horror, when asked where Miko lived or about her family, she could not answer. Shiori then showed the class registry, wherein Miko had written her name. But instead of Miko’s name being there, it was actually part of a spell. Yokai apparently use both spoken words and written words when using magic to decieve a human.
Yokai like Miko manipulated human memories around them, so Hinako had vague, false memories of Miko. But the spell that had been over Hinako was now broken thanks to Shiori. Her trust began to crack. Miko didn’t take kindly to being so rudely exposed. There was a small explosion of energy and dust as Miko transformed. Shiori stood by Hinako’s side protectively as both of them beheld the true form of Miko in the mist. She was a gigantic kitsune (fox spirit).
Wow! Kitsune are so cool! Personally, I wish Miko had been honest, but I think she had good intentions all along and was never planning to prey on Hinako. In fact, we know that Miko protected Hinako for many years. I’m interested to learn why she did that if not out of genuine sympathy. On a final note for this episode, I didn’t really like the ending. It was too jarring to switch to a flashback mini-episode focusing on humor when we just saw something so intense and epic (Miko’s true form). Although it was cute to see Miko teach Hinako to cook, it felt very out of place to me.
Episode 5: The Beast of Affection
Episode Rating: 9/10
This episode was excellent for the drama, character development, and thrilling cliffhanger ending. It was also so cool to see more of the kitsune – I adore the way it was designed, and I think it intentionally looks starving and rabid to suggest that it suffers as it holds back its desire to eat people. It turns out that Miko has always been tempted to eat Hinako for her special blood. That being said, we definitely learned in this episode that Miko’s goal was not to consume Hinako but rather to protect her. The thing is, that’s easier said than done when you, yourself are a hungry, maneating yokai.
Let’s go over what happened. First, Miko in beast form tried to cut off Shiori from the water, keeping her restricted to a human form (except her monstrous claws). As the two yokai were duking it out, despite the fact that she was told to stay back, Hinako interfered. On her way to interrupt the fighting, she sustained a small cut on her hand from flying rubble. The scent of Hinako’s blood woke up an intense hunger in Miko, such that she reverted to human form to reduce the strength of her urges. This fact was pointed out by Shiori. It was clear that in addition to her avid desire to protect Hinako, Miko was a yokai with an almost equally strong appetite for her human friend.
The hunger made Miko sick and weakened in her human form. Hinako then realized that it was difficult for Miko to be around her and that was the cause for her constant poor health. This point came up again later, but before we get to that, we need to review the identity of Miko. It wasn’t entirely a lie that Miko had been with Hinako her whole life. In fact, Miko or Kitsune-sama was a local “deity” who watched over the families of those who prayed at her shrine. Hinako’s parents were both worshippers of Kitsune-sama, so she watched them grow and remembered the day Hinako was born. Miko eventually explained her whole story.
For an untold amount of time, Miko was a man-eating Kitsune. A few centuries ago, a monk subdued the yokai and made her work with him for the good of the land and the humans that lived there. Over time, Miko fell in love with humans and became connected to the land. That’s why she was treated as a local deity. But sadly, Miko was never a god – only a yokai with extremely limited powers. She had no power to protect Hinako’s family on the roads. The family prayed to Kitsune-sama for their safety, but only Hinako returned alive. Miko felt deeply disappointed and regretful. She decided the least she could do was protect Hinako forever in an attempt to make amends.
Now that the truth was revealed, Shiori loudly surmised that it would be too difficult for Miko to keep protecting Hinako when she was so hungry all the time. She could lose her self-control at any point, Shiori stated. Miko didn’t deny it, and also didn’t fight back as Shiori grabbed her by the throat and prepared to kill her with her long claws. Fortunately, Hinako intervened again. She approached Miko and spoke to her softly, apologizing for causing her friend’s illness and expressing her relief that Miko did indeed care about her. Hinako thought so highly of Miko that she called her the sun itself. For so many years, Miko was there, guarding and loving the little human.
The scene where Miko and Hinako held hands and reiterated their “friendship” was so touching and emotional for me. But this is monster romance, and we can’t have sweet and healing moments like that. Miko suddenly changed into her beast form again, opened her jaws, and tried to swallow Hinako – saying that Hinako’s kindness would only ever attract “bad yokai.” Shiori dived into action to save Hinako, but the scene cut to black before we saw the result. Damn that’s an intense way to end.
Note that Hinako wasn’t alarmed – she was probably fine with being a meal for her beloved friend. But as she expressed in her inner monologue, Hinako had one regret: not giving herself to Shiori. This shows that Shiori is probably the one Hinako will choose in the end. The childhood best friend always gets fucked over in romance anime. Anyway, back to the point: Hinako is still way too eager to die. That’s one reason why I find her so fascinating and relatable. Miko is definitely the coolest and noblest character, in my opinion, but Hinako is still the character I “get” the most.
This episode, like the last one, ended with a humorous flashback mini-episode. This was one was about Shiori and her ability to alter her human form as she pleases. It was funny enough, but I still don’t like the placement of these quirky installments. Other than that, I loved this episode. I love the characters, art, music, fantasy, and forbidden monster romance in this series thus far. As usual, there’s a lot to discuss here, but I am too brain-dead to do more than scratch the surface with this recap. (I feel like I always state this, and it’s frustrating each time, but I don’t know how to be better right now.) With that, I’ll say sayonara and take care of yourself until next time.
~Thanks for Reading~
Written by 7Mononoke at Anime Rants
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