Goodbye, Eri

While many manga are formatted with imaginative panel layouts that vary from page to page, Goodbye, Eri is formatted almost exclusively in simple vertical four-panel pages, with occasional two-panel pages and several splash pages. The straightforward panel layout in Goodbye, Eri sets it apart not only from most shonen manga, which often use elaborate and chaotic paneling to heighten action and drama, but also underscores the story’s emotional restraint and documentary style. The regular four-panel grid in Goodbye, Eri mimics the format of smartphone video recording, reinforcing the narrative’s central motif of the camera by demonstrating the act of viewing life through a lens. The static, consistent layout creates a sense of detachment and observational distance, visually echoing how Yuta uses filming to cope with trauma and make sense of loss. This design choice reinforces the claustrophobic, screen-bound world Yuta inhabits, where reality is increasingly mediated by a digital lens.

The art is drawn in standard black-and-white. The line art in each panel often shifts from smooth and clean to shaky and blurry, which signifies motion on Yuta’s camera. The first page opens with four panels drawn in shaky, blurred lines, including a close-up of Yuta’s face and his birthday cake, indicating that Yuta is recording on his phone. A blurred image panel always signifies that the image is being viewed through the camera, which functions as a mediating boundary between Yuta and his life. However, it is not always clear when clean, smooth line art indicates an outside omniscient view of Yuta and his surroundings or merely means that he is recording with more care and precision. This visual ambiguity reflects the manga’s refusal to draw hard boundaries between interior and exterior, subjective and objective, fact and fiction, mimicking the ambiguity of Eri and the manga’s open-ended final scene.

The art remains smooth and clean on pages 9 through 11, as Yuta is recording his mother in various moments. The dialogue makes it clear that he is recording these scenes. However, when the narrative shifts to the students viewing Yuta’s movie in the auditorium on pages 22 through 24, it is unclear if the view is omniscient, or if Yuta is secretly recording his classmates. On the next page, he turns his camera onto himself, saying, “My movie just finished playing. Let’s see what everybody thinks” (25), at which point he is explicitly recording. This moment signals that Yuta is not only curating memories of others but also shaping how others will remember him, suggesting that he has internalized the camera, and the act of recording, as a tool related to life and legacy. The camera serves as the only lens through which perception, whether internal or external, can occur. This function is established as soon as Yuta’s mother asks him to document the remainder of her life in order to remember her.  

The manga consistently resists a clear division between when Yuta is filming and when he is not. This blurring between the movie and objective reality is the primary metafictional technique used in the manga, which contributes to the theme of Memory and Authenticity in an Age of Curated Content. By refusing to make a distinction between Yuta’s videos and the truth or reality beyond the video, the manga demonstrates the blurred boundaries between fiction, curated content, and the authentic representation of a person’s life. This instability invites readers to interrogate their own assumptions about truth, narrative, and the line between the two.

For Yuta, this is precisely the point. Yuta’s camera is crucial to his ability to face and process his own life, particularly the painful moments like his mother’s death, though he does not explicitly acknowledge this until later in the text. The camera is a symbolic shield meant to protect him from his own sensitivity, anxiety, and vulnerability. Through it, he can distance himself from the pain and grief of his mother’s death. Additionally, the camera allows him to create and curate a story about his mother’s illness and death that helps him process the experience. This is the foundation of the second major theme, Storytelling as a Coping Mechanism. Yuta uses stories, both those he views in movies and those he creates for himself, to name and manage his experiences, giving meaning and significance to the often random struggles of life. Rather than facing emotional chaos head-on, Yuta opts for the order and distance that storytelling affords him, turning pain into plot. Like the camera, the movies Yuta clings to are a significant symbol that represent Yuta’s fear, vulnerability, and his need for distance from and control over his problems. By turning life events into a film that he can script, curate, and edit, he can control the impact of these events on his life and the lives of others. Crucially, movies and stories hold this power for other characters as well. Yuta’s mother also regards Yuta’s videos as a storytelling mechanism and a way for her to actively control the way she is represented and remembered after her death. Her performance for the camera, though rooted in illness, is ultimately a performance for legacy.

Unfortunately, Yuta’s classmates and teachers do not understand the power and value of this storytelling mechanism or the significance of Yuta’s decision to edit an explosion into the end of his movie. The classmates and teachers are shocked and disgusted by this editorial decision. They see it as flippant and disrespectful, rather than as Yuta’s attempt to regain control over a situation in which he is utterly powerless. He cannot control his mother’s death, nor can he consciously process the cruelty of his mother’s request to film her death—a cruelty no one else acknowledges or even seems to be aware of. His classmates’ laughter, and the teacher’s scolding, exposes the gap between intention and reception, between what a story means to the creator and how it is interpreted by others. Instead, their mockery and disdain indicate that Yuta has failed to control the story’s impact the way he wished to. In the face of this failure, he contemplates death by suicide. The stakes of storytelling are made literal: If Yuta cannot express his pain in a way others understand, he sees no reason to go on living.

Eri’s arrival moment is significant not only because she talks Yuta off the ledge but also because she alone understands the emotional truth Yuta was attempting to convey through the medium of his highly curated, fictionalized account of his mother’s death. She acknowledges the way he “blurred the line between fact and fiction” (53) to reveal something true and authentic. Unlike his classmates, Eri values emotional honesty over factual accuracy, and her praise reframes his movie as art rather than failure. She also recognizes the intentional, even manipulative nature of storytelling, which is why she knows she can teach him storytelling techniques that will make his classmates “bawl their eyes out” (56). Her mentorship is an invitation to Yuta to believe in the redemptive power of narrative again, even after being rejected.

Together, these opening chapters establish the emotional and structural foundations of Goodbye, Eri. The blurred line between reality and fiction begins as a personal survival strategy for Yuta and evolves into a complex meditation on art, memory, and emotional truth. The camera becomes both weapon and wound—shielding Yuta from loss while exposing him to critique—and his relationship with Eri signals that storytelling might not only preserve the past but transform the future. The stage is now set for Yuta to deepen his understanding of narrative not just as escape, but as emotional architecture.