Goodbye, Eri
a review by Almeidolas
a review by Almeidolas
I was finishing a reread of Chainsaw Man. I wanted to read more works from its author, Tatsuki Fujimoto. I have yet to read Fire Punch, but I had already read Look Back. I thought it was great, but not to the level of Chainsaw Man, but this review isn't about that. It's about his other oneshot, "Goodbye, Eri".
Goodbye, Eri introduces Yuta, a middle school student whose mother is ill. She could die from her illness and asks Yuta to record her so he can remember her. Yuta obeys and does so. He starts recording her everywhere. It seems they're a happy family, and although they know mom's possible fate, they deal with it happily. We find dad crying, possibly due to his wife's ilness. Yuta's videos reach a very long runtime due to him recording them almost everywhere. We find dad crying multiple times, with no answer as to why he is doing so. Yuta's mom reaches her final moments, but Yuta doesn't record her. Why is that? He is afraid of his mother dying. He can't bring himself to record her final moments and doesn't do it. The hospital explodes just as he is running away. This obviously leaves the reader confused as to why that happened.
We find out we were actually seeing a movie about Yuta's real life experiences. The audience hates it, and multiple people tell him exactly that. People also use it for jokes shaming the movie. Yuta can't take it, he wants to commit suicide in the roof of the hospital his mom died. He meets a girl there. The girl, Eri wants him to watch movies with him and brings him to an abandoned house. She wants him to make another movie, a movie for her. They slowly bond by watching movies. Yuta and Eri build a goal, they want to make a movie that 'will make them bawl their eyes out!'. As they keep working on the movie, they get closer and closer (they literally get closer).
Eri goes in the hospital, and reveals that she wanted the movie to be made because she related to his mom and that she will die soon. Yuta's dad reveals his wife's final moments and we are hit with a minor plot twist. Yuta's mom was an asshole. She thought Yuta was useless and just wanted the movie to be made to look good for the future. She abused Yuta and got into fights with dad. I believe that is the reason as to why dad was crying in the beginning of the manga.
We go through Yuta's shots of Eri which make the reader emotional.
Yuta releases the movie and a friend of Eri's says that Eri was not like the movie represented her at all, but that she will remember her the way the movie did. Although the movie was a success, Yuta keeps editing the movie, just so Eri's displayed perfectly in the movie. Yuta goes back to the abandoned house and finds Eri there, even after she died. Turns out she is alive, and is a vampire, and although that seems weird, it's okay because everything needs a pinch of fantasy.
As Yuta leaves the house, it explodes, just as the hospital did.
As you can see, this very accurately represents the 'shaky camera' effect.About the four-panel way of drawing it, I think it helps us to feel more emotional when the pages are not in a four-panel format (e.g Yuta's shots of Eri before her 'death'(which are two-panel pages), and various one-panel pages).
Another thing this manga really dives into is how we want people to remember us and how we can manipulate that. Yuta's mother wanted to be remembered as a kind, caring mother, even when she wasn't.
Recordings can be manipulated and made to be just as we want them too. Eri's friend tells us that Eri wasn't as we thought she was, but Yuta's movie made us think otherwise. This is a concept that Fujimoto obviously wanted us to note and think about. I also think that he is hinting at the movie industry, and that they can edit movies however they want them to be, and that not everything is the truth. I'm not really sure about this one so I won't talk more about that.
I believe that 'Goodbye, Eri' is, in its entirety, a movie made by Yuta. A beautiful and emotional movie made by Yuta. Whether it's real or not, I don't know, but I don't really think it matters.
I usually wonder what makes something a 10/10. I normally think that I have to nitpick everything about it, and if I don't find anything wrong with it, it's a 10. But I don't really think that's right. A 10 is something that stays with me. A 10 is something that makes me emotional. A 10 is something that stands the test of time. A 10 needs to have a connection with me.
Unfortunately, Goodbye, Eri doesn't quite reach that status. But its not the work's fault. I just think that a one-shot can't be compared to any actual manga series because of how short it is.
I give Goodbye, Eri a 9.5/10, simply because it is a one-shot.
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