Goodbye, Eri

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

Yuta Ito is the protagonist of the manga and the protagonist in the film he is making for Eri. This distinction is important because the version of himself he presents in the film is a kind of wish fulfillment that also contributes to the metanarrative aspects of the manga. Yuta is a Japanese middle-school student, celebrating his 12th birthday at the beginning of the story. In the first section of the manga, Yuta is tasked with filming his mother’s life as she dies from an unspecified illness. He later films his friend, Eri, as she too dies of an unspecified illness.

Yuta is creative, sensitive, and anxious, prone to isolating himself in the face of pain and difficulty. He is sensitive to rejection and criticism, as seen in his reaction to his classmates’ mockery. And he has difficulty dealing with loss. He feels things strongly and uses his camera as a mediator between himself and the pain in his life. It is only through the camera lens that he can face and process his mother’s and Eri’s deaths, as well as his other life difficulties.