“This Monster Wants to Eat Me” Episode 2 Summary & Analysis

Written from a Japanese viewpoint to help explain cultural elements and nuances in the episode. Episode 2 reveals more detailed information about Hinako. The story picks up right where Episode 1 left off—Shiori, the mysterious girl who protected her from the yokai(monster), suddenly transfers into Hinako’s class.Episode 2 covers the same events found in Volume 1 of the This Monster Wants to Eat Me manga.
If you’d like to read the original story, you can check it out here:

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This Monster Wants to Eat Me Episode 2 Summary

During lunch, Shiori sits next to Hinako and starts a conversation. Hinako has brought a homemade bento, while Shiori has nothing, so Hinako tries to share her food. But Shiori simply says that the only thing she wants to eat is her. Hinako then asks if Shiori is truly a yokai, if she really intends to eat her, and why she didn’t do it yesterday. Shiori answers that, just like pork or beef, there’s a “proper time” for eating—meaning there’s also a right time to eat a human.

Meanwhile, Miko—who had been absent due to illness—finally returns to school and meets Shiori for the first time. Seeing Shiori getting close to Hinako sparks a sense of rivalry in Miko, who tries to show that she is the one closest to Hinako. After school, while Shiori is called over by a teacher, Miko takes the chance to leave with Hinako ahead of her.

On their way home, Hinako and Miko see crowds heading toward a summer festival and realize the festival is being held that day. Miko invites Hinako to go with her, but the memory of her late parents and brother overwhelms Hinako, and she declines. When she returns home, Shiori visits Hinako’s house and invites her to the festival instead.

Shiori tells her that if Hinako isn’t mentally and physically healthy, she won’t become “delicious,” and Shiori will never be able to eat her. So Shiori forcefully encourages Hinako to go to the festival—for the sake of making her more delicious as a human.Episode 2 ends here, leaving viewers wondering whether Hinako will actually go to the festival with Shiori. Episode 3 is looking promising.

Thoughts & Analysis

Yokai appear frequently in anime, but for modern Japanese people, they aren’t familiar beings. We don’t really talk about yokai in daily life. If anything, ghosts—spirits of the dead who linger due to regrets or attachments—are much more familiar. So I’ve been curious how This Monster Wants to Eat Me defines yokai, and Episode 2 gives us a bit of insight.

Some yokai don’t eat humans, but in this series, it seems safe to assume that yokai do eat people. And they have preferences: some eat only men, some only pregnant women, and so on. Hinako, however, is targeted by every yokai she encounters, which shows just how unusual—and apparently delicious—she is.

The place Hinako and Miko stop by after school is FamilyMart, a Japanese convenience store. Most convenience stores in Japan are open 24/7, 365 days a year. They carry rice balls, sandwiches, bento, snacks, drinks, toiletries, stationery—you name it. These convenience stores are often praised internationally and frequently go viral for their quality. And amazingly, you can get a delicious rice ball for about one dollar. If you ever visit Japan, I recommend trying a convenience store onigiri along with the famous restaurants.

One amusing detail in Episode 2 is the ice cream Miko eats. The flavor is labeled “kitsune udon flavor,” which would surprise even Japanese viewers. Kitsune udon is a noodle dish topped with fried tofu—because fox spirits (kitsune) are said to love fried tofu. The fact that the ice cream has such a strange flavor makes me wonder if it’s also some kind of foreshadowing related to Miko.

Based on the packaging, the ice cream is called “Boribori-san,” which is almost certainly modeled after the real Japanese popsicle Garigari-kun.

Garigari-kun sticks sometimes have winning or losing marks printed on them. If you get a winning stick, you receive another popsicle for free. For the record, I’ve never won.

In Episode 2, the stick Miko holds has three hiragana letters on it that read “hazure,” meaning “not a winner.”

But I don’t think it stops there—it feels like foreshadowing for something unlucky about to happen to Miko. And in fact, soon after, she invites Hinako to the festival but gets rejected. Meanwhile, Hinako seems more and more likely to go with Shiori instead.

Will Hinako really end up going to the summer festival with Shiori?Episode 3 can’t come soon enough.

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