MEIK0TO's manga / #One shot(11)

This is an amazing one-shot with a bittersweet ending. It has fast-pacing but its a one-shot so what do I expect? This plot is among the most unique that I’ve read. There are no flaws in this.

This is really interesting. Apparently, the black haired dude grew up super ‘ugly’ in a supposedly perfect town with beautiful people. And I agree, his appearance is unsettling but it’s really just his nose that is unappealing to me, he should get a nose job. And I find it weird how the boy with the telescope just died like that. I think he jumped off a building, it’s very weird and makes me wonder why he jumped off? His skin literally breaks into pieces like egg shells as he jumps off. Now the black haired dude wants to fix him, it was similar to fixing a doll. And now the telescope guy is now transforming into a girl. At the end, the black haired dude tries to steal the eyes of a statue so that he could give it to the telescope dude but unfortunately gets caught by police officers. He runs away and then decides to give the telescope dude his own eyes. They should’ve shown the black haired dude taking out his eyes, that would’ve freaked me out and I would’ve given it an instant 5 star. The black haired guy jumps into the ditch and dies as the telescope dude wakes up. I can see why this won an award, it’s really good.

Bleak ending. The plot twist was weak. However, this is an interesting concept that is hard to execute.

Beautifully tragic. The wife treated her husband badly so that he could let go of her easily. Actually, this type of story has been lingering in my mind and I finally found something like it. I’ve been into one-shots recently because they aren’t a huge waste of time.

That is literally so sad. Even without an explanation, we can immediately infer what happened. The way that he immediately bursts into tears after realizing is so tragic. He’s going to live his whole life thinking that he killed his brother. And the way the adults are congratulating him is so disgusting. This really pulled on my heartstrings. But both of them looked the same so I don’t understand why the other brother was talking down on himself and saying that he wasn’t smart or cute. Normally, I don’t like reading an art style like this but for this story, I think it’s very suitable. The author’s work is amazing and I recommend it.

A profound story. The author portrays that the boy has no resentment towards people who treated him badly and he just simply wants to move on from that life. It makes sense to me. After death, I would also like to leave everything behind instead of hanging onto loose ends.

A lazy high school student earns the power to warp time. However, the catch is that he cannot turn back time and that he will have no memories of the time period that he has skipped. He ends up getting stuck in a “time crevice” but the time guardian manages to pull him out. He wants to go back to that time crevice in order to watch suspense TV shows forever. He then proceeds to skip until the end of his lifetime in order to step into that time crevice again, he doesn’t succeed. It’s a pretty interesting concept but it could’ve been utilized better if the MC wasn’t a fool. The plot is a bit nonsensical. The way that a random “time guardian” jumped out of nowhere and gave Yamada powers is ridiculous, I’m not buying it. I am annoyed that we had to follow through it with such an unambitious main character. He got what he deserved and he even ended up watching less television than the average Japanese person. Lesson learned, don’t abuse your time warping powers so you can watch more suspense mystery shows like an idiot.

Explanation + Summary for those who are confused: “Goodbye, Eri” follows the story of Yuta, a young boy who captures the last days of his mother with his phone. Yuta does this on request from his mother, who wishes to stay alive even after dying. As requested, Yuta spends several days witnessing his mother’s life with a camera. However, he couldn’t bring himself to record her final moments. So, instead of getting inside the hospital with his father, Yuta runs away from the hospital. Following those events, nothing stays normal for Yuta. After spending so much time behind the camera, Yuta starts looking at his own life as an outsider, and Fujimoto very beautifully tells the story from Yuta’s camera perspective through his art. It’s one of those rare stories that leaves the ending on readers’ perspective. The ending leaves you thinking if what happened with Yuta was real or it was just something that Yuta imagined for his movie. Even after his mother’s death, Yuta doesn’t give up on all the recorded footage. He spends several hours editing all the stuff he has recorded and makes a movie out of it. But surprisingly, Yuta adds a bit of fantasy at the movie’s ending by showing the exploding hospital as he runs away from the building. Following the humiliation after his movie’s failure, Yuta decides to end his life by jumping off the Hospital’s roof. However, before Yuta could end his life, he meets Eri, the only person in the school who liked Yuta’s movie. Eri thinks that Yuta’s movie was amazing, but at the same time, it lacked something. So, Eri decides to guide Yuta on making a better movie to prove his worth to everyone. However, before asking him to write a plot, Eri shows Yuta several good movies, so he could find the required knowledge to make his own movie. After several attempts, Yuta decides to continue the story that started it all. He writes a plot where a boy was attempting suicide after everyone hated his movie. However, he finds a girl on rooftop who is a vampire. This vampire is dying of a mysterious disease, so she asks this boy to shoot the rest of her days with a camera. So, basically, Yuta decides to make a movie about everything that has happened in his life, but with a touch of fantasy. It turns out that Eri was really dying of a disease, and she loved Yuta’s mother’s idea of getting captured on the camera before dying. Eri thinks that Yuta captured her mother beautifully, and Eri wanted to experience the same thing. So, by filming Eri in her final moments, Yuta finds perfect ending for his movie, “Having filmed a death, the thing he couldn’t do for his mother, the protagonist regains his will to live and make movies, the End.” Yuta continued his life after Eri’s death and becomes a family man, but he never stopped editing Eri’s 2,728 hours of footage. Years later, Yuta loses his wife and daughter in an accident. He couldn’t bear the burden of losing anyone else, so he decides to end his life at the place where he and Eri watched the movies. Surprisingly, Yuta finds Eri in that same spot, who tells Yuta that she is, in fact, a vampire. The Eri Yuta knew really died, but she came back to life after three days. However, this new person doesn’t remember previous Eri’s life. Apparently, the previous Eri had her death filmed so the new Eri could watch Yuta as many times she wants. So, no matter how many times Eri dies and forgets her life, she’ll always remember Yuta through the movie. This whole plan would save her from falling into despair. Yuta leaves the room, and says his goodbye to Eri. At this point, Yuta realizes why he wasn’t satisfied with Eri’s movie ending, “because it was missing a pinch of fantasy.” Finally, we see Yuta getting out of the building just when it explodes in the background. Explanation: ‘Goodbye, Eri’ very smartly plays with your mind, forcing you to wonder what’s real or not. Apparently, Yuta was inclined towards fantasy to deal with his childhood trauma. Yuta’s mother was abusive towards him and his father. But even after all that, he showed his mother beautifully in the movie. Yuta ended the movie with a touch of fantasy to deal with his mother’s death his own way. He tried to remember her through the lens, which presented her as a good mother. Now, on one side, there’s a possibility that Eri was indeed alive, and Yuta did in fact say goodbye to her. But personally, I think that Eri wasn’t a vampire in reality, and she really died in the hospital all those years ago. Everything about Eri being alive was part of Yuta’s perfect plot for his movie. Yuta ended his first movie with hospital’s explosion, and said goodbye to his mother like he wanted to. However, he didn’t find closure with Eri’s death, the woman he loved. So, he decides to add the “Vampire” part to make it easy for him to find closure. Fujimoto Tatsuki's work is excellent. It leaves you with a multitude of interpretations, almost cryptic-like. It leaves many unanswered questions for the readers to decode. Weird how a coming-of-age story about a boy would captivate me like this. I am not a picky reader, but stories that force me to think for this long deserve five stars. Support the author on official platforms. Happy reading, everyone.

Well. That was weird. It feels like the author purposely wrote a story that ended up going nowhere. Although I suppose dreams end that way, with no explanation or closure. I liked the initial idea of relationship between a guy who dreamt intensely and a girl who could not. But it seems like the guy wanted someone who could not dream at all, and he was displeased when the girl was finally able to dream. I think the guy wanted her to completely rely on him, perhaps he wanted her to be jealous of his ability to dream. I don’t know, it didn’t make any sense. I don’t really care for the second story. It could’ve been a collection of stories, with each story being related to dreams. How disappointing. The art was very nice. I admired the light tones and streaky texture. The coloring has a lot of negative space, but it preserved the integrity of the colors. Such a unique artstyle, it’s nice to see every once in a while.

“I have wings. I can touch the floating dreams that call me from afar. Through the wind, Take me.” The beauty of short pieces like these are that they’re meant to portray an emotion. You may wonder about this girl’s backstory, however you are still sympathetic for her. It’s profound.