Goodbye, Eri

Content Warning: This section discusses illness and death, suicidal ideation, child abuse, child death, and bullying.

“On video, you can hear my voice and see me move. That way, even if I’m gone, you can still remember me.”

Having gifted Yuta a smartphone for his 12th birthday, Yuta’s mother now asks him to record videos of her with the phone. Her reasoning for this request is that she is terminally ill and wants Yuta to have videos to remember her by. This is the inciting incident of the plot, leading to Yuta’s struggles with filmmaking and his mother’s death. This statement also foreshadows the deeper discussion of memory as performance and raises early questions about whether filming someone truly preserves them or merely captures a curated version of who they wanted to be.

“I guess my mom might not have long now…I…I still can’t wrap my head around it…So I’m not even sad about it…No…I’m sad. I am.”

Yuta records himself in a mirror speaking about his mother’s impending death. He has spent considerable time filming her life and declining health and knows she will be gone soon. This moment demonstrates Yuta’s impulse to confront his problems and pain through the camera rather than head-on, thus establishing the symbolic importance of the camera as his shield and a representation of his vulnerability. The broken rhythm of Yuta’s speech reflects his emotional fragmentation, using ellipsis and self-correction as a literary device to convey the tension between numbness and sorrow.