Makie Funatsugi admires his senpai, Sachi Mitsuhara, and really wants to know her intimately. But while he ends up keeping his romantic feelings inside, he also keeps him seeing abnormal monsters to himself too. He doesn’t know why, but at one point as a kid he began seeing them, and he was the only one who could. Since no one would believe he’s seeing monsters he’s done his best to ignore them — but the appearance of his senpai and the monster at the same time was hard to deal with emotionally. Lucky for him, Sachi can also see those monsters too!
…She can also transform into a watari, which is the monsters Makie’s been seeing, and devour them. Sachi then explains they’re attracted to him because of his smell, and whatever that smell is openly invites them all to him. By the way, this includes Sachi herself, who claims she doesn’t want to eat him, but whether she can hold herself from doing that is the question! Makie’s life already was strange, but he’s now about to become roped into something he can’t deal with alone.
How strange you say? Well he’s been seeing all these watari for years, and now he’s living alone, with his parents not around. Only makes you wonder where they are, and if the various flashbacks happen to involve his mom. We can only know that the more we read, so for now we just have to get used to the many embarrassing and blushing situations involving these two, because there’s a lot. The best one however would involve Sachi commenting on Makie being small in that particular part of the body.
Truthfully, I can’t place how I feel about the relationship between these two. At times sweet, sure, but for at least 2/3 of this read it was hard to think Sachi actually was crushing on Makie. It feels more or less driven by her being a watari, and whatever that smell is on Makie is what’s causing her to be close to him. The narrative does change at the end of the volume, though how the two respond after their date ends up revealing what Sachi’s doing to maybe not eat humans is a big question.
There’s nothing totally complex about Sachi’s Monstrous Appetite, especially since so far we’ve only met the dangerous watari and Sachi’s manager. Well, Sachi’s manager also has an assistant with her, but that assistant becomes relevant at the end when she meets up with Sachi and we see different words on her hat! Otherwise Sachi’s supposed to do patrol for a reason, and now Makie’s getting caught up in that.
So all in all the story feels like it has a ways to go, but the major appeal to keep reading is the art. Chomoran’s designs for some of the backgrounds are super lovely to look at, creating the right tone as characters enter a scene or we need a character to go after a bento. Bento are important in this series it seems; doors also were important in this volume, and them getting trapped in whatever space the watari takes them too is quite good to see.
The designs of all the watari are actually stunning. I was trying to figure out the best way to describe how it, and what came up for me was, “They just snap.” Like you turn the page after things seem quite normal, and then “snap”, we are treated to a full-page scene of a watari’s large jaw about to nom on Makie, and that is juxtaposed with him not even expecting that to happen at any point. The action in this manga is visually arresting, and that’s whether a bunch of small watari end up all on top of a larger watari or whenever Sachi transforms into said watari.
At least for now that’s a big enough draw to keep reading Sachi’s Monstrous Appetite. We’ll have to see however if the story can develop into something that will take full advantage of its gorgeous designs.