I'd have liked it more if I hadn't seen the Reze movie before. Fujimoto obviously had a crush that made him watch movies and had an impact on his life, that's for sure. The thing is, everything in his works is very unsubtle about his self inserts and fixations. I'm sure he wants people to know it's a self insert, but the issue I have is how it ends up being megalomaniac. It's not about the mom's death, it's not about Eri, it's about how he grew up to be. Which would be fine if there WAS growth; the character depicted is pretty uninteresting, and by extension Fujimoto looks like he is.

Goodbye Eri is a good summary of the things I dislike in CSM. The guy has ONE story to tell and just arranges it a bit differently every time: important woman in his life makes him go through things and he's sad about it, but this sadness is kinda beautiful because it means he's alive, right? It's what's in Reze and it's TWICE in the one shot. He literally makes the same movie twice, and the explosion at the end makes it THRICE the same story told as some kind of meta commentary. So yeah it's NOT that interesting, we got it the first time.

Worst is, in the end, it's not truly self awareness. The only way we get to learn about the character is through the camera showing what people think of him. There's a distance between the reader and the MC (or Fujimoto, whichever you prefer); he's never thinking by himself nor showing personality. That's the core of the issue to me. I hate spineless people. Fujimoto builds powerful feminine characters because he himself idolizes the people in his life and lives through them. At least I'm sure it's MADE in self awareness; he looks like a smart guy who DID watch enough movies to make good use of his medium. It's just that I don't like this kind of self-centered, complacent approach.

I can get why people resonate with this work. It's really meant to reflect on affection and attention starving, from the perspective of the self-insert MC, but it's not really made in a helpful manner. It does not provide a way out of this behavior but simply a fake sense of comfort, trying to make a united team of self-centered little people who bond over shared passivity rather than genuine change. There's something almost cynical about framing emotional stagnation as poetic. But obviously that can't be a solution to one's growth. Best case scenario is ending up an adult mangaka who can't get over his school crushes, producing beautiful work that ultimately circles the same drain forever. Still, I suppose there are worse things to be than talented and stuck, at least there's that.

Thanks for reading this review, there may be more coming on other one-shot works