Goodbye, Eri Review – A Haunting, Heartfelt Masterpiece by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Goodbye, Eri
Goodbye, Eri is a manga written by Tatsuki Fujimoto, who many of you may be familiar with through his much more widespread work, Chainsaw Man. The manga was originally released in Shonen Jump in April of 2022. One of its most notable characteristics is in the art of manga, which is framed like a film using cinematic paneling and smartphone footage to guide you through the narrative. This, however, is not your typical “found footage” story.
As I adventured through the story of Goodbye Eri, I found myself being pulled into a world that felt all too real. A world in which life wasn’t fair, tragedy abounds, and a world in which sometimes we wonder if we belong. Being a creative person myself, I felt the pain, trauma, and ambitious desire of our protagonist, Yuta. As such, this story brought some healing and a rekindled sense of creativity.
As I try my best to break down what made this story so impactful to me, I hope you feel the admiration and warmth within my writing.
BE WARNED, SPOILERS INCOMING!!
PART 1 – YUTA’S STORY
Goodbye, Eri begins with a simple, painful premise. Yuta is a boy whose mother is dying. She gives him a smartphone and asks him to record her final moments—every part of her decline, so she won’t be forgotten. And he does. Quietly, obediently, and with a kind of numb devotion. He films the joy, the pain, and the ordinary in-between moments. And when she finally passes… he couldn’t stand to be there, so he made a fantastical edit to the movie.
He screens it at school. It ends with a twist—Yuta running from the hospital as it explodes behind him in cinematic fashion. But people don’t like it. They laugh. They call him weird. They say he betrayed the realness of grief.
The hate is overwhelming. And Yuta, crushed by grief and shame, climbs to the top of the hospital building his mom passed in with the intent to end it all.
It’s all devastatingly human—
PART 2 – ENTER ERI
On that rooftop, Yuta meets a girl named Eri.
She’s not like the others. She says she liked his movie. She got it. And more than that—she wants to help him make another one. Something better. Something that will make them all cry.
So begins their strange, tender partnership. They spend their days watching movies together—classics, dramas, action films, anything they can get their hands on. Eri has this presence about her, a quiet charm. She’s a little blunt, a little awkward, but deeply kind in a way that feels earned. Real.
And together, they filmed.
They build a story. Yuta decides to play a fictional version of himself again—this time meeting a beautiful vampire girl. She saves him and helps him live again. But she’s dying too.
They argue over details. Work out emotional beats. Laugh at tropes. You start to realize, these movie discussions are more than craft—they’re their way of coping, of translating something unbearable into something beautiful.
And then... life imitates art again.
Eri collapses. The truth: She’s dying.
PART 3 – MEMORY AND MOVIES
They keep filming. Even as Eri’s body fails, they continue—capturing the joy, the melancholy, the beauty in her last moments.
There’s something unspeakably moving about these scenes. They aren’t flashy. Just two people trying to make something lasting out of something fragile.
Eventually, Eri passes. The film premieres.
This time, the audience does cry.
Yuta did it. He told her story, and people felt it. He made something meaningful. Something true—despite the lies. Despite the fiction. Or maybe because of it.
PART 4 – YEARS LATER
Years pass.
Yuta grows up and moves on. Finds love, gets married, has a daughter. He seems okay. He seems like he made it.
But grief, as it always does, finds a way back in. A tragic car crash takes his family from him. And once again, he’s left alone. With no will to continue, he decides to die where his most fond memories reside, the abandoned building he and Eri had spent so much time in.
And then... Eri is there.
Young. Unchanged. Waiting.
She reveals in a heartfelt moment that Yuta’s film doesn’t contain enough fantasy. Naturally, he rebuts with the aspect of her being a vampire, and then Eri, charming as ever, reveals that it isn’t fantasy at all. Her terminal illness was due to her brain starting over with a clean slate, as it does every 200 years due to her vampirism.
Yuta’s movie saved her from her loneliness. Just as she once saved him.
It’s surreal. It’s beautiful. And it blurs the line between reality and fiction so thoroughly that you stop trying to separate them.
Because that’s the point.
PART 5 – WHAT IT MEANT TO ME
When I finished Goodbye, Eri, I cried.
Not in the way I expected. Not a loud, dramatic cry—but something quieter. Something deeper. A silent ache that only comes when a story touches a part of you that you didn’t know was still raw.
I’ve read and watched a lot of sad stories. But this one was different.
It wasn’t just about death. It was about memory. About grief. About how we use art—stories, movies, fiction—to make sense of the things that feel too big, too painful, too real to hold on their own.
And maybe that’s what I loved most about it. That it wasn’t afraid to lie a little to tell the truth.
That’s the magic of fiction. It lets us reshape the past. It lets us give endings to people who didn’t get one. It lets us cry safely.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Goodbye, Eri is more than just a manga. It’s a love letter to storytelling. To grief. To the human need to remember and be remembered.
If you’ve ever lost someone…
If you’ve ever tried to turn pain into something meaningful…
If you’ve ever told a story, not just to share it but to survive it…
Then this story is for you.
I’m glad I read it. And I hope you do too.
If this story touched you, too, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
And if you’ve got stories like this—ones that hit you in a way you didn’t expect—share them.
Because maybe someone else needs them just as much as you did.
If you wish to purchase this story (which I highly recommend), here is the Amazon link: https://amzn.to/4cn0F8n
