"I've come to eat you." So softly utters the mermaid Shiori as she emerges from the sea and takes highschool girl Hinako Yaotose by the hand. Hinako lives alone in a seaside town and possesses an unusually delicious body that's irresistible to nearby monsters. To ensure that she matures to the best condition, Shiori seeks to protect Hinako...all so that someday, she can devour every piece of her.

There's a great deal that the premiere of This Monster Wants to Eat Me (WataTabe for short) does well when viewed from a realistic perspective. A lot of people suffer from depression, and depression can make one feel like they're drowning. The worst part is, this feeling can hit you out of nowhere. I really liked the way that the show utilized water and drowning as a visual metaphor. Obviously Hinako's family died that way, so there's a traumatic element to seeing Hinako constantly submerged. However, on its own, it also acts as a perfect visual representation of how she feels.

From the cinematography to the dialogue and how scenes are cut, it implies that this is supposed to be some semblance of a horror show. Hinako is sought by underwater creatures who probably had something to do with her parents' death, but it's okay because she has a protector in the form of this mysterious transfer student who also wants to kill her, but only when the time is right. And there's where things suddenly feel much more generic and less believable. During the big mermaid reveal scene, all I thought was that it's weird that this is taking place in the back of a school and nobody notices. Also, it's really convenient that our protagonist didn't get any blood on her. It would've been tough to explain what she'd just witnessed if she were trying to keep a secret. See what I mean? Feels much less real.

To be fair, WataTabe starts strong. Hinako wakes from a dream of sinking into open water with a blank, empty expression in her eyes. She receives a text from her aunt stating that she won't be able to make it to "the anniversary", followed by a text from her friend about being late for school. She responds to both of them that she's fine, but it's clear that she's not. She stares at a picture of a smiling family, then makes her way to school, monologing about how much she hates summer as she walks past happy families. Within the first five minutes of the episode, we've learned everything we need to know about Hinako and her world, despite none of it being stated outright.

But by the end, I was pretty much over it. The visual representation of Hinako's dissociation as her being underwater was potent at first, but after it came up for like the fourth time, I felt like I was being beaten over the head with it. The animation looks brilliant at a glance--the overwhelming blues of the water imagery contrast with vivid, warm purples and oranges around Shiori, and again with the deep red of blood splatter against her white dress. However, the impact of the colour symbolism is diluted by the long, meandering panning shots and and cheap lighting effects, including overuse of lens flare.

Allow me to tell you the biggest problem with this episode though... Near the end, we get a fight between a mermaid and an iso-onna. Hinako says the following in narration:

"It was like a scene from Hell itself. I was paralyzed by the unfolding atrocity, and yet... And yet... I... I..."

But that's not what we see. We see choppy, low-framerate footage containing vision-blocking waves, extreme close-ups that show nothing, and a reaction shot of Hinako's face. The most gore we get comes from a pair of severed arms flying through the air in slow motion.

I have no doubt that this line comes directly from the original book, and that it allows the author to sidestep spending paragraph upon paragraph describing the graphic violence Hinako is witnessing and add a bit of character insight at the same time. But while this works for a novel, anime is a visual medium--you have to show, not tell. If a character says something "was a like a scene from Hell itself", we need to see it and agree.

As for the rest of the episode, it serves to get its point across if nothing else. Hinako lost her parents and brother to the sea. Since then, she's been suffering from severe depression. Her only lifelines are her best friend and her aunt. However, when not directly interacting with either, she becomes disconnected and listless, and the visuals do a good job of showing this with the visual metaphor of being underwater. She may not be actively attempting suicide, but she certainly wishes to die, to end her suffering and be with her family. And from this is born our setup: A girl who wants to die and the mermaid that wants to eat her. It's a solid enough premise for a yuri horror show, and there is a lot of drama to be had should one or both come to value the other so much they change their mind, but the make-or-break challenge facing this anime is how it acts until that point, ie. if it can keep the audience interested as it builds toward the easy drama.

As disappointed by this premiere as I may be, I'm not ready to give up on WataTabe just yet. Hopefully the next couple episodes will do a bit more to set up the character relationships and give me a better idea of what the show will look like for the rest of its run. We'll just have to wait and see if it's up to the task.