Pros:
I wasn't expecting Goodbye Eri to have as many shocking and surprising moments as it did. Multiple times I was flabbergasted after turning the page. Those moments were the
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first explosion, the scene where Yuta said he was going to commit suicide and how his mother wasn't as good of a person as the reader had been led to believe at that point in the story. I did see the last one coming due to good foreshadowing.
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Why would you want your son to record your last moments rather than having him just spend time with you? He's going to be spending a lot of time looking at the screen that's capturing you instead of directly at you. The screen causes a layer of disconnection and at that point he's not really spending time with you now is he? Given the title of the manga I also figured something similar was going to happen to Eri, which turned out to be correct. The manga highlights how recordings can be used to push a false view of something using editing. The movie's that Yuta makes only showcase his mother's and Eri's good sides and all their more negative aspects are edited out. Normally I would say that even the ugly parts of history shouldn't be forgotten, but in the specific case of a memorial video I think it's fair to want to remember someone by their good aspects.I read a physical copy of Goodbye Eri and the page layout really stood out to me. Granted I haven't read that much physical manga, but this was the first time the physical format stood out to me as a big upgrade. That is due to the aforementioned big reveals being hidden on first pages so that you get maximum shock value when you turn the page, rather than being able to glance towards it if it was on second pages. Another aspect that stood out was the presentation of the panels themselves. Rather than having standard panels, each panel was framed from the viewpoint of a phone's camera held horizontally. This makes it clear to the reader that what they're seeing is being recorded by Yuta. But it also helps support
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the story's very meta concept, where it's really 5-6 stories inside of each other with each layer being peeled back as you get further. It gets to the point where you're unsure which parts are real and which are embellishment's added to the movie.I liked some of the messages that Goodbye Eri portrayed related to content creation, which I can relate to, since I also create YouTube videos.
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I can understand Yuta's pain for his first movie being disliked by his classmates. It feels shit when people crap on something you spent a lot of time on. What Yuta missed at first is that you need to be able to take criticism and use that to improve your future work. It's part of the industry. Taking inspiration from existing work is a great way to improve as well, like Eri points out. I also felt like the more fantastical aspects of the story were better handled than in Look Back.
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Eri being a vampire works because it's part of the movie that Yuta made about his entire life up to that point. What really makes it click is the additional world building about her memory resetting every couple hundred years. It integrates the concept into the world of the story and also highlights how important videos are. They allow you to immortalize a moments in time, so that you can look back on them. That's the same reason I write these reviews in the first place, so I can look back on my fresh thoughts and see what I thought of something long after those feelings faded in my mind.
Neutral:
I do feel that some messages could've been highlighted and it felt like a missed opportunity not to do so. Like how
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Yuta falls into the trap of perfectionism. He's constantly cutting and recutting the movie about Eri, despite it getting good reactions at the school festival. He could've spent that time working on something new, but instead he keeps working on the same project since he feels like something is "missing". Rarely if ever is something you produce going to 100% perfect, there's always areas you can improve in. The 80/20 rule is important for a reason, you get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort. But instead
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Yuta spends years of his life trying to perfect that last 1% and it's treated like a good thing once he finally figures out what was missing. On one hand it is, but he could've accomplished so much more otherwise and I wish the manga had emphasized that part a little more.
The second message that Goodbye Eri fails to highlight is Yuta's need for fantasy and his bad interpretation of it. I think some of this comes from Fujimoto's own preference, since both Look Back and Goodbye Eri have fantasy elements, when you wouldn't expect them to.
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Yuta's first movie about his mother could've ended on a heartfelt node about being unwilling to record his mother's passing and how viewing his mother through his phone affected his connection with her. But instead Yuta just adds explosions at the end of the movie, which seems to be his definition of "fantasy". No wonder his classmates criticized him about it, it feels incredibly out of place in what is otherwise a grounded movie. The same goes for his second movie about Eri. You would think he would've learnt his lesson after consuming so many movies. Like I already pointed out, Eri being a vampire is a great fantasy aspect. But then he adds explosions to the end of the movie for no reason. It makes it seem like Yuta hasn't learned anything since he made his first movie. It also implies that Eri dies because of the explosions, as she said that even though her brain can reset, she'll still die if her body gives up. Instead of letting Eri view his immortalized videos, Yuta blows her up in the movie instead, which lessons the emotional impact and core message about the power of videos. I wish Goodbye Eri highlighted Yuta's shortcomings as a filmmaker a little more and made him overcome them.
