Genre: Drama
Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Edited by KnightAvenger
Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai (I Want to Eat Your Pancreas) is a light novel written by Sumino Yoru that focuses on the developing relationship between two high schoolers, one of whom is a girl dying from pancreatic disease and the other an asocial bookworm. It was first released by Futabasha in Japan, back in 2015. It got an English translation by Seven Seas Entertainment in 2018. It has received multiple adaptations, one of which was an adaptation to a manga, but also adaptations to an anime movie as well as a live action movie. I recently reviewed the original light novel translation, and here, I will be looking at the manga adaptation and translation it got into English.
I will not be talking about story all that much since I already did that in the other review and the story is largely the same in the manga adaptation. You should check out that other review. Here, I will be focusing on how well the story was adapted to the manga format.
As with all adaptations from a book, there are a lot of issues when it comes to translating the large amount of text that lets us get to know the characters deeply as well as longer and more involved dialogue into a format less focused on writing and much more focused on visuals. That is not unusual and can hardly be held against the adaptation itself, but it is something that should be mentioned as being part of the adaptation, nonetheless.
The story itself remains largely the same and I did not see any big changes in regards to any of the events, their orders, how they play out, etc. One difference present is a change in how the story is structured, specifically where the chapters end and start. The places are somewhat different from the original novel, which, for example, makes chapter 4, by far the longest chapter in the original novel, into one of a relatively normal length. That is both good and bad at the same time, as it sometimes takes away from the emotional relevance of certain scenes by either splitting them up by multiple chapters where they weren’t split up in the original work, or in cases where one chapter was dominated by a certain scene, instead adding other scenes into the chapter. The reason this is neither truly good nor bad is that it does change characterization, the perception of the story, and what is going on sometimes, but while that may seem bad for an adaptation, there are some cases in which the change suits the story better than the original. That is not always the case, though.
Speaking of characterizations changing, I have to talk about the art itself. While the visuals are slightly basic-looking and feel a bit generic manga-like, this works well with what the story actually is: down to earth, mundane, slice-of-life story between two normal high schoolers. The lack of any eccentricity is something I can appreciate when it comes to this manga. To get back to the point of characterization changing, by adding a prominent visual aspect to the story, things like facial expressions and what characters look like is not up to the reader to imagine any more, but also isn’t perfectly in sync with what is written on the pages of the original novel. Instead, everything is made more anime-looking. This turns the story from the aforementioned “down to earth, mundane” story with lighthearted moments into something much more silly looking and feeling. That makes the impact of certain scenes from the novel much lower. However, when the art turns more serious during specific moments, those have much more impact than they did in the novel. The lucky thing is that those moments that do get to be much more impactful are the most important ones from the book, and during those scenes, the manga becomes an even better experience than the source. Example of this is the ending. Even though I knew what was coming since I had recently read the original novel, the ending still made me emotional and cry a little. Much less than the novel due to the fact I could prepare myself, but the fact is that it managed to overcome that since, unlike in the novel where you read about the experiences, feelings of sadness that the characters have, you get to see it, see the characters cry, and so on.
As far as the visual side is concerned, I would say that the manga was a good standalone story, but not a very successful adaptation, if the success is measured by how closely it follows the source. That can, of course, be said of most adaptations, so I wouldn’t hold it against the manga. What I would hold against it, however, is the translation of the speech bubbles.
Since this is manga, the amount of text was greatly reduced to only the things that can fit in the speech bubbles and this applies to both the dialogue and characters’ thoughts. That is normal, obviously, but the issue is that the translation isn’t very well done. There are quite a few moments where it’s unclear what is going on, what the character is trying to convey. Most of that is due to an awkward way some speech bubbles are translated which makes it sound like broken English. This isn’t a constant issue, but it does happen a few times prominently and I suspect that I was still able to understand what was being said due to the fact that I had recently read the original novel, so I had some basic idea what was going on. But something tells me that someone who just reads manga on its own would have bigger problems. The original novel and manga have a different translator, even though they were both done by Seven Seas, and I think it might have been better to have the original novel translator for the manga, too.
Due to the fact it has some prominent translation issues and is not a very faithful adaptation of the original material in terms of characterization and the atmosphere, even though it doesn’t change much when it comes to the plot itself, I don’t think I can really recommend this as an adaptation. Maybe if you wait a bit before taking a look at it, you might be okay with it, but definitely don’t do what I did and take a look at it very soon after reading the original book. As far as someone taking a look at it as a standalone manga, I still have a hard time recommending it due to the awkward translation issues, but since it doesn’t depend on the original novel, I believe it is possible to have a good time with it, so I am more willing to recommend it. But still not really at full price, either physical or digital. If you find it on a sale or get it as a gift, give it a go, though.
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is available for purchase at the price of $19.99 (USD).
