Goodbye, Eri
a review by Erfan
a review by Erfan
Yuuta has a tough time getting through his mother’s inevitable death (as anyone would) and Fujimoto uses a very subtle and poetic way of conveying this, through what Yuuta films (or more accurately, keeps in the final cut), he gets a shot of their 3 toothbrushes right next to each other, perhaps for the last time.
He films a little bug dying, something he probably wouldn’t even notice if his mind wasn’t occupied with death.
Filming gives him the power to craft a reality he’s comfortable with, he doesn’t get to live it right now, but he gets to go over the footage and choose what everyone (including himself) will remember more clearly than everything else.
The particular reality that he wants to craft though, is one with a “pinch of fantasy”, as his father says, he likes to add a pinch of fantasy to everything.
Perhaps that means he has the soul of an artist and this whole story is about how an artist is born.
A huge emotional event happens that leaves a scar on a person (Yuuta’s mom’s death), they find a means of consoling themselves through art as a coping mechanism (Yuuta filming everything) which leads to them developing a taste for it and creating their first work (Yuuta’s first film) which won’t turn out very well but mainly works as fuel for their next project where they actually find their footing (Yuuta’s second film).
Yeah alright maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, let’s move on…
I really appreciated how when Yuuta is running away from the hospital the explosions behind him look fake, Fujimoto drew the hospital and then drew some explosions on the intact hospital building, there’s no debris and the building isn’t falling apart, this is because Yuuta’s budget isn’t big enough and he can’t create realistic looking special effects.
Think I'm reading too much into it? Well, this is what the very last panel looks like, notice the difference?
Out of all the people who give their opinion on his movie, one stands out, the only person who doesn’t say something ignorant and has gone through similar stuff to Yuuta, she seems to be his friend and even she said she couldn’t forgive him.
And right after this we cut to Yuuta saying he wants to kill himself.
Right as Yuuta is about to jump Eri shows up out of nowhere, probably to check out the location she just saw in Yuuta’s film (the hospital), her voice is heard from the other side of the balcony bars, right from here I knew I was going to get bamboozled again, with Fujimoto pulling another “it was all a movie bro” on me.
Assuming the finale actually takes place and isn’t just a product of Yuuta’s imagination (Which I have enough reasons to debunk, one of them being the way the explosion looks in the last panel, it’s real, the building is actually collapsing, the tangible reality of this universe actually does have a “pinch of fantasy” in it. I’ll list more reasons as we go on) we can also assume that Eri is about 200 years old, meaning she has witnessed the birth and rise of cinema, she’s probably been watching movies since the 1900s.
Which is why she finds Yuuta’s film to be “super awesome”, she’s seen so many movies, good and bad, that the only thing that matters to her at this point is uniqueness, she wants something that stands out from the crowd and feels like a breath of fresh air compared to what she’s been watching for the past century.
I didn't think twice about the panel below in my initial read:
But knowing the ending, I'm pretty sure this is another reason to believe she’s an actual vampire, as she can’t gain calories from food (because it’s not blood). Remember, this is before Yuuta comes up with the idea for his next film, so it can’t be a scripted sentence, this is Eri’s genuine response.
After having watched so many films Yuuta knows how to film a truly tense scene, which is why we get 3 pages of Yuuta’s dad and Eri just eating without saying anything. As a writer he’s adding tension to this scene by having the characters refuse to speak first (or he’s conveying that they don’t know how to start the conversation which makes for an even tenser scene).
He finds out Eri is dying and he runs away to his house where his dad shows him his mom’s last moments.
And suddenly he is hit with reality, seeing his mom say that, all the memories of her treating him badly come rushing back.
He realizes that even though all of those bad memories exist he still regrets not being there for her in her last moments, he thinks if he was there, then his mother wouldn’t have been so disappointed in him to say such a thing. This compels him to be there for Eri even more.
And after everyone bawls their eyes out watching that ending Yuuta looks down, and makes the iconic V sign that she made whenever the characters in a movie scored a win, because in succeeding their mission of making everyone cry, they did just that.
Now, the part that makes this one-shot very confusing:
Was ALL OF IT scripted? What about when she said she couldn’t gain weight from food? Was that not a genuine response and I was wrong when I said that that meant she was an actual vampire?
The answer to all of those questions is that I honestly don’t fucking know!
The following pages present a different perspective, that girl thanks Yuuta for giving her a fond memory of Eri and we find out they were friends and everything, then we get a few random shots (which I can’t really put into words, if you’ve seen enough movies, you’ve probably seen endings like this) and then the panels turn black for 4 pages and the last one reads “the end”.
Soooooooooo, was THIS the end of the movie? Was the “audience bawling their eyes out” also a part of it? Is THIS the true ending and was Yuuta’s conversation with the girl also scripted?
It’s years later, after Yuuta has lost his entire family, he’s telling us about how his life went after the film, he’s filming himself talking about the accident and how he looked at everything through the lens of a camera.
He doesn’t bear any injuries even though the crash was bad enough for everyone else in the car to die, so I’m not sure if this isn’t another scripted scene in another movie, but then again, we don’t know how much time has passed since the accident.
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It no longer matters, the previous pages have done everything to completely blend fantasy and reality, it’s all mixed up now, so let’s just sit back and enjoy whatever the fuck happens, the disbelief is as suspended as possible, anything goes now…
Yuuta and Eri have a pretty poetic conversation that I believe to be a commentary on film as a whole, not on cinema, but on the literal ability to record footage and replay them at a later time!
“No matter how many times I forget you, I’ll remember you again and again. Isn’t that beautiful?”
And as he walks away from the building, it explodes, is it real? Does it happen just for the sake of looking cool? What about just for the sake of referencing Yuuta’s first film? Does it happen because there’s a pinch of fantasy in this world?
By not providing any answers for any of those questions it’s like all of them are simultaneously true.
This last sentence was perhaps the most important sentence in the whole analysis, so I’ll write it twice.
Edit November 3rd 2022: *I just found out that this one shot was inspired by this movie: https://letterboxd.com/film/goodbye-movies/
There's a thread about it as well: https://anilist.co/forum/thread/60106
Haven't been able to find it anywhere but if you do know where to find it leave me a message!*
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