The first episode of the supernatural fantasy animeI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Daypremiered at Anime Expo 2026 during a panel held by the anime production company Infinite. Anime Trending had the lovely opportunity to speak with producerEna Hamabeabout her involvement in the series, as well as her experience working on the Fall 2025 animeThis Monster Wants to Eat Meand the growing appeal of supernatural yuri stories.
This interview was conductedAudrey Im and Melvyn Tan
The first episode ofI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Daypremiered at Anime Expo! How are you feeling after showing it to the world?
Ena Hamabe:It’s a very quiet story, with not a lot of super energetic upbeat moments, but it was still so fun to watch it with everyone. Having a lot of people laugh at certain scenes and being able to enjoy it together was a new and fresh experience for me.
Anime has a lot of production-related credits. How would you describe the “produce” role that planning and production companies like Infinite have, especially compared to the “production” credit for production committees?
Ena Hamabe:As a producer, you have to handle the business aspect, the creative aspect, and the promotion aspect — all the aspects of the anime. We really put our heart and soul into each facet to present the show to the audience as a complete whole. That’s our whole role for the production.
What aboutI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Dayinterests you the most?
Ena Hamabe:I think it’s beautiful to be able to see the unchanging and unwavering aspects of a character, and then to be able to see the changes that occur within them after interacting with all the other characters. It’s a gradual change, and watching the characters develop is one of the most interesting parts of this story.
Sheena desperately wants the war to end so she and her friends can stop dying and risking their lives, while Mimi, as an immortal, doesn’t fully realize the gravity of death. What interests you the most about their conflicting dynamic?
Ena Hamabe:Because Sheena and Mimi are so different from each other, when they’re confronted by each other’s values, they can’t understand them at first or take in what each other is feeling. But by getting to know each other gradually, they’re able to accept each other a little more and feel the other person’s emotions. I think it’s a wonderful relationship that has an influence on me as well, because of those kinds of developments.
ForThis Monster Wants to Eat Me, you told us in aprevious interviewthat the production staff focused heavily on the visuals of Ehime prefecture. Is there anything the production staff particularly focused on visually forI Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day?
Ena Hamabe:InThis Monster Wants to Eat Me, because the setting of Ehime prefecture is a place that actually exists, I wanted to make it look real and feature aspects of the area that you could actually go to. That was one of the important elements of that work. SinceI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Daytakes place in a fantasy world, the environment the characters live in is constructed through the animation. In that world, I wanted to show their everyday lives, what their normal is, and also emphasize the importance of how time flows in that space. I wanted to create that atmosphere and emulate the weight of time through the animation.
Because we show their day-to-day lives, the irrationality of the calls for war that are suddenly carried out really stands out from the rest of their everyday routine.With that contrast from the everyday aspects of their lives, the sudden calls for war, or the unfairness of the war, really emphasize the importance of the time they spend together.
This Monster Wants to Eat Meis undoubtedly a romance, but it’s also first and foremost a story about Hinako’s depression and suicidality. How did your team go about balancing these two themes?
Ena Hamabe:I think there are many ways to interpret the main premise ofThis Monster Wants to Eat Me. Whether you take it as a romance or as a story primarily dealing with depression, the supporting characters around Hinako help to emphasize both themes. I think it’s important to highlight the relationships between the characters who support the people around them. In the original manga, Hinako’s wish [to die] is emphasized over and over again, and we really wanted to make that a part of the anime, and just focus on the emotions that follow from it.
One of my favorite scenes fromThis Monster Wants to Eat Meis in Episode 11, when Miko tells Hinako she’s glad she survived her family’s accident, and Hinako completely breaks down, saying she wishes she’d died back then. To me, this is a critical point in the show’s nuanced discussion of Hinako’s depression. Could you talk a bit about the planning around this scene and the build-up to it?
Ena Hamabe:I think it’s one of those tearjerking scenes that makes the viewer’s heart ache a lot — that’s actually my favorite scene too. I really wanted to emphasize it, because it’s a scene where people could cry, where people could really feel the emotion of the characters.
This is a very important scene in the original manga. When I read it, I realized that Hinako, who had pretended not to be that affected by her past so as not to worry Miko, had expressed her true feelings to her for the first time, showing her real side. But those true feelings are the things Miko didn’t want to hear the most — or, rather than Miko not wanting to hear these thoughts, it’s that those were the words most painful for her to hear. I think that’s the moment where Miko’s feelings and the viewers’ feelings are linked, because maybe the viewers didn’t want to hear this and confront that suffering either.
BothThis Monster Wants to Eat MeandI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Dayare yuri stories with supernatural elements. What do you think it is about the combination of the supernatural genre and yuri that intrigues viewers?
Ena Hamabe:Both are fantasy stories, with worlds that aren’t possible in our reality — and it’s because of that supernatural setting that I can actually feel the simplicity of the emotions, the characters’ pure feelings, even more. In both works, there are immortal beings — inThis Monster Wants to Eat Me, it’s Shiori, and inI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day, it’s Mimi. The main characters [Hinako and Sheena] are both kind of next to death, but then you have these characters who are immortal, who have a different story, a contrasting kind of presentation. So they offer something different to the main character. With their character development, you can get more of that pure emotion that comes out of being next to someone so different.
Out of the four leading girls inI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day, which girl do you relate to the most?
Ena Hamabe:I think we can all relate to the feelings and emotions of the three other than Mimi. But in terms of personality, I want to do things by myself, so I understand Seiran very well. She’s very stern, but she’s a good girl.
What do you hope viewers take away from the story ofI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day?
Ena Hamabe:I think this is a story that many people will want to watch without being bound by its genre labels. It’s a story that has a lot of ups and downs. After watching it, I want people to take care of the people they’re close to, take care of the things that are natural to them every day, thank them again, and take care of them, because these things are not always going to be permanent. I think the takeaway is that everyday life is beautiful and something to be grateful for. And I hope people will also feel the hope that there could be more in life, not just sadness — being enlightened by the show to push yourself to be a little bit better.
As a producer for bothThis Monster Wants to Eat MeandI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day, what do you think is the future of yuri anime after working on two recent titles in the genre?
Ena Hamabe:I don’t really see these shows as being just yuri anime, but as something everybody can enjoy. But for people who do enjoy yuri anime, it’s like a present for them. More and more people are enjoying this genre with each year that passes, so I’m curious to see how it will continue, maybe becoming a trend. I want everybody to enjoy the whole thing, but for people who do enjoy the yuri, go for it!
This Monster Wants to Eat MeandI Want to Love You Till Your Dying Dayare currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
