Fujimoto, waiting for the second part of Chainsaw Man, does not stop and publishes the one-shot Goodbye, Eri on Shonen Jump: another punch in the emotional stomach that reconfirms the talent of the mangaka
Tatsuki Fujimoto returns to the pages of Jump, where he is now at home. And, this time around, it’s a comeback in style, with a 202-page one-shot. Goodbye, Eri it is an experimental tale, which we experience almost entirely as if we were looking at it through a smartphone camera.
Let’s retrace the life of earth, whose mother is seriously ill, and asks to document her last months of life, so that her son can preserve the memory. Together with him, therefore, we retrace the last sections of the woman’s life.
After his mother dies, Yuta prepares a film to show at a school event, but due to his choice to enter the hospital which explodes as he flees at the end of the film, he is not understood by his classmates and teachers. On the verge of committing suicide, he will meet Different, a peer who appreciated her work and wants to participate in something similar. A series of unexpected plot twists will follow, leaving us emotionally fragmented.
Goodbye, Eri as a metaphor for Fujimoto’s work
After Look-Back, Fujimoto creates yet another small self-contained masterpiece, always remaining faithful to its themes. We rediscover the ode to the art of cinema, which becomes a noble yet mendacious expression of humanity, as already seen in his debut work Fire Punch.
We then once again have a representation of realistic existence to the point of being cynical, not sparing macabre and dirty details of existence.
But, above all, we see a possible meta-representation of Fujimoto’s own work, and the public’s reaction to it. The mangaka represents life and death in a way irreverent, ending up offending the sensitivity of the public: this could be represented by Yuta’s work, which inserts fantastic, explosive and apparently out of context elements. The work is therefore accepted and understood by only a few people, but those people are special.
Goodbye, Eri is the most recent confirmation of Fujimoto’s invaluable talent. Looking forward to the second part of Chainsaw Manin the meantime, you can read the one-shot on MangaPlus.