Goodbye, Eri is a one-shot web manga that was published on April 11, 2022. It is revered to be Tatsuki Fujimoto’s heartbreaking story yet. On the surface, Goodbye Eri is a haunting story about a boy overcoming his grief through filmmaking.
About the Manga
Goodbye Eri (2022)
Author: Tatsuki Fujimoto
Genre(s): Drama, Slice of Life
Demographic: Shōnen
Theme(s): Death, Escapism, Immortality vs Mortality, Mental Health, Mourning
Status: Completed
Volumes: 1
The Synopsis:
The story follows Yuta Ito, a teenage boy who aspires to be a filmmaker. After receiving a smartphone for his birthday, his terminally ill mother requests that he films her last days to make a movie about her. Yuta does this for her and premiers the film at school. However, Yuta receives a lot of backlash for ending the film with him running away from an exploding hospital. This results in Yuta making the decision to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of the hospital that his mother stayed in. At the roof, a girl named Eri stops him and commends him for the film and urges him to make another.
Yuta and Eri spark an unlikely friendship as they study films together in a screening room. They decide on making the movie a mockumentary with fictional elements. The film would feature Eri being a vampire. As their film project continues, Eri reveals to Yuta that she is also terminally ill. This revelation depresses Yuta and discourages him from proceeding with the project. His father, though, encourages Yuta, who then decides to continue for Eri.
The duo finish the movie and then Eri dies. After screening the movie to the school, Yuta is praised.
As an adult, Yuta obsesses with editing and reediting Eri’s film. Tragedy strikes again when Yuta’s own family dies in a car accident. This rekindles his depression. Yuta loses the will to live and attempts to commit suicide a second time in the screening room where he and Eri watched movies. When he arrives to the spot, he sees Eri. In a shocking twist, she reveals to him that she is a vampire and is still alive. She explains that she incarnates after death and that she experiences memory loss after every death. The previous Eri ensured that the incarnated Eri remembered Yuta and his film. Yuta suddenly regains the will to live. The manga ends with Yuta walking away from Eri and the building as it explodes.
Memories Through a Rose-Colored Lens:
The majority of Fujimoto’s story is seen through Yuta’s smartphone lens. Yuta is the filmmaker; he is the director and decides what the audience is allowed to see. In Fujimoto’s manga, we learn that Yuta’s mother was abusive towards Yuta and his father. Even in her final days, she wanted to be filmed in near-perfect shots. She resorts to hitting Yuta and calling him useless when he cannot fulfill these constant demands. Fujimoto shows us that being remembered in a positive light is something that people want. Yuta’s father acknowledges his late wife’s terrible behavior but is relieved to see that his wife’s more positive attributes were immortalized in Yuta’s film. So, when Yuta loses his will to finish Eri’s film, his father encourages him to continue for the same reason: to commemorate Eri and to share a fixed memory of her.
Yuta the Filmmaker and Eri the Actress:
As I previously said, the majority of the story is seen through Yuta’s camera. Fujimoto separates the art from the artist in two ways: Yuta and his movie, and Eri and her incarnations. Yuta hides behind his smartphone when he films, so most of the time, he is not seen unless he is watching films with Eri, or he is filming himself. With filmmaking, Yuta separates himself from the situations he captures on his camera. It is an interesting touch by Fujimoto.
Eri is the more mysterious character. Although the story implies that she is a vampire, readers can question the validity behind her words. After all, Yuta had been tirelessly editing Eri’s film where she stars as a vampire. What we see in the end can be one of these two things: the film’s finale or the truth of Eri’s vampirism. Whatever conclusion we choose to accept will change the premise of the story.
Final Thoughts & Review
Fujimoto’s Goodbye, Eri is a beautiful manga with a simplistic art style and a dizzying premise. The tired gazes of the affected characters and constant fourth-wall breaks adds an unsettling touch to this drama. For those who are curious about Fujimoto’s work, I insist you start with Goodbye, Eri.
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