Goodbye, Eri

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

The first major theme is Memory and Authenticity in an Age of Curated Content. Everything from the characters and the plot, the symbolism of Yuta’s camera, and the visual layout of the manga itself all contribute to this theme in some way. The story of the manga takes place in a contemporary context, which includes the internet and social media. This suggests that memory itself is becoming increasingly tied to the digital tools used to capture and revise it. Though the characters never explicitly mention the internet or social media, Yuta’s smartphone and his computer are physical reminders of the existence of the internet and its impact on people’s lives, especially students like Yuta. These physical reminders underscore a connection between Yuta’s videos of his mother, recorded on his smartphone, and downloaded to his computer for editing, to the heavy curation prevalent in social media. Moreover, the visuals of the manga, such as the shaky/blurred line art and the camera’s perspective, contribute to the sense that everything is curated and edited by Yuta for the express purpose of obfuscating reality and authenticity and crafting a carefully controlled story.