Goodbye, Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Translation by Amanda Haley. Viz, 2023. 9781974738939. 200pp. Publisher’s Rating T+ / Older Teen.
Yuta, a middle school student with a new cell phone, starts shooting video footage of his mom at her request. When she wants him to film her dying breath, he runs away. He turns the footage of her into a movie that’s poorly received, and then, after he decides to commit suicide, he films a final message saying goodbye. But on the roof of the hospital he’s about to jump from, he meets Eri. She takes him to an abandoned building and makes him watch movies because she wants him to make a new movie. (It just gets weirder and more meta from there.)
This is a strange manga; it was hard to tell fact from fiction in the storyline but in the best possible way. Was I watching the movie? Was I seeing raw footage being filmed? Was this just Yuta’s life? Totally enjoyable, and complete in one volume.
