00:01
My mom passed away almost 6 years ago.
I remember her, like, what she used to say or how she behaved and then, like, when I was a kid, like, she used to scold me a lot.
But, like, when I try to remember her after she passed, like, one particular thing in my head is always kind of the same.
It's like she's a little bit drunk and they're calling my dad's name with Chang, with a very cute voice.
For some reason, it stuck in my head and that's my memory of her. Isn't that weird?
I think it's really sweet, actually.
It's the biggest, like, memory, which I didn't realize after she passed away.
And that's very similar to, I think, what this story is trying to say about how we remember people and what we choose to sort of document and hold on to.
Konnichiwa, I am your host Mayu for 2AM OTTACK!
In this podcast, we talk all about anime, manga, movies, music, and the history through our distinct perspectives.
As a born and raised Japanese non-otaku, that's me, and an American anime fan, Cisco.
That's me.
Like recently, we have some increased numbers of followers.
Really?
Yes.
What? Hey!
Maybe we should try to tell people why audiences should listen to a podcast. Can you think of one reason?
I might be too humble to think of a good reason, but I'll stick with it's educational-ish, especially if you're trying to learn more about anime and manga.
I agree.
And also if you're studying Japanese or English. But those don't seem like great reasons, to be honest to me.
I think it's pretty educational when it comes to, like, seeing from different culture perspectives.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
Yeah, and you know a lot of Japanese culture.
I at least, like, fake it very well, yes. I'll take it. I'm not going to claim that it's authentic, but yeah.
You don't fake it. You actually know stuff.
I hope so.
I think it's very unique and interesting. So yeah, stick around and finish listening to this episode.
Fingers crossed.
Also, before I forget, please subscribe if you haven't and follow 2AMO Attack right now so that you can get, like, up-to-date episodes.
Is browbeating people, like, really the way to get them to do this?
Bribing people?
Well, bribing people would probably work better, yeah. I meant browbeating, like being like, subscribe now, dammit!
Like, I don't know if that's, like…
03:00
A lot of podcasters say it at the front.
Does that make them successful?
I think so, because people tend to forget, and it appears to, like, their feet anyway because of algorithms.
Oh, got it, got it, got it.
It happens to me, too. Like, I often see, like, specific people, but I'm not necessarily following.
So make sure.
Okay, that's a good reminder then, I suppose.
Alright, today we are going to talk about…
Sayonara Eri, or Goodbye Eri. It sounds really different in English, huh?
Is it, though?
Well, just the harshness of the R. I don't know. To me, like, I think it's written, it's romanized as ERI, E-R-I.
But because you can pronounce Eri as Ellie, Ellie is, like, a name that girls use in America, too.
Like, short for Eloise or Eleanor or something.
Wait, isn't that Eri?
Yeah, it's romanized with an R, but what I'm saying is, like, whenever you have a narirurero sound,
when you're romanizing it, you can choose to either romanize it as an R or as an L,
because Japanese does not have either of those sounds. It has an in-between sound.
Right.
And thus, like, I mean, you know, whatever, I speak Japanese, so I just thought of it as Eri the whole time,
which is a Japanese name. But, like, it was surprising to me that they chose to romanize this with an R
instead of, like, two Ls and a Y, which would be the same pronunciation, Ellie,
but would make it a little bit more, like, immediately feminine? I don't know.
I didn't think about it. Yeah, they could have done it, right?
Well, I mean, and I think with the title, especially, often the manga artist or the author gets to have a say
in how those decisions are made. And I think, like, Eri is fine, because it is, but, you know,
you're forced into a choice in English between R and L. And so the R makes it seem more like a Japanese name.
The L would have made it seem a little bit more like an American name.
Anyway.
I want to find out about it. To Japanese people, it sounds exactly the same.
Correct.
Yeah. So it doesn't really matter.
But, like, as I just said it now, goodbye, Eri. Like, Eri doesn't sound particularly Japanese or feminine,
whereas Ellie at least sounds feminine, if not very Japanese. And Eri, like, is only a Japanese pronunciation.
It felt weird to go from sayonara Eri to goodbye, Eri. You know what I mean?
Where I was like, oh, Eri, I don't like it.
Good point. This is by Fujimoto Tatsuki, the author of Chainsaw Man and Look Back.
We talked about Look Back a couple of weeks ago, and I still love it.
I still, I can't wait to watch it again on Amazon Prime.
Not that we have, but somehow I want to watch it.
We could also just buy it, you know, and, like, actually support the director and filmmakers.
Buy what? DVD?
Or we could buy it digitally on Amazon, I'm sure.
Oh, okay. Then maybe we'll do that. Anyway, we are diving into goodbye, Eri today.
06:01
I took some notes to talk about it. But before I start, I want to hear your thought.
Sure. Well, so just like Look Back, I read this story, this one shot, for the first time when it was published in the Shun & Jump app.
So I think I got to read it sort of right away. And I like this one even more than I liked Look Back.
I liked Look Back, and it was very emotional, and it hit pretty hard.
But I think I like this one even more.
And maybe that was because I had been reading Tatsuki Fujimoto's work for a longer period of time when this one came out.
And I was like, I'd read a lot of Chainsaw Man.
And it came out in the middle of Chainsaw Man's serialization, I think.
I liked what this story was trying to say.
I think it is a little bit more straightforward and discusses its own purpose to a greater degree than Look Back does.
Look Back, some of it is hidden in the subtext or in how you read the events that happen.
And this one is a little bit more like, I'm going to tell you how to interpret this.
But it's also very moving. It has some really great twists in the middle in terms of where the plot goes.
Whereas Look Back is about manga creation, this one is about making movies.
I think I said this in the Look Back podcast too, but when Look Back came out, I misremembered the story of Look Back as being the story of Sayonara Eri.
Because it made so much more intuitive sense to me to make this into a movie than it makes to make the other one into a movie.
This could be a great live-action movie, I think.
Everything about this is ready for a film adaptation.
So that's kind of cool. I feel like growing up in LA, I've always been exposed to the world of Hollywood and everything else.
So filmmaking is a medium I really understand.
Whereas manga is a thing I came to later in my life.
But anyway, I think it's brilliant. I really, really like this story.
Yeah, the whole story is just like a movie.
Like how it's set up and how, like you said, there's this twist.
So it would be perfect for animation.
I want to talk about the first movie the main character Yuta Ito made.
And it showed in front of classmates at school.
And everybody said it's bad. It's such a bad movie.
Some people were like, how dare you make this kind of movie about your dead mom.
Even the teacher was disrespectful and stuff.
I remember having more of the same reaction, or at least being understanding of everybody else's reaction.
Like, what the hell?
You kind of chopped together some random footage and then had the hospital explode at the end?
What's wrong with you?
I can kind of understand where the classmates are coming from in terms of being like, I don't get it.
I think it's really easy to misread somebody's hard work,
especially on the type of found footage documentary the kid puts together,
as lazy instead of intentional when being cut together like that.
09:03
And especially if you don't know what's going on behind the scenes.
You see a movie and you're like, that was just really bad.
And then he made the hospital blow up at the end.
Does this guy think it's a joke that his mom's dead?
What's wrong with him?
And in seeing the footage from the first movie that he makes,
there isn't any explanation of why he shot it together that way.
That reveal happens much, much later in the story.
And so I think I was sympathetic to it,
but I at the same time totally got why so many other people in the story aren't.
Everybody criticized so bad.
But I think it's kind of related to Japanese culture itself about death.
It's pretty intense.
Yeah, I think you're right that Japanese funerals are especially somber.
And there's really a taboo around making light of death.
And I think, I don't know, I guess that's not as true in American culture.
But I will say that if a student at a school made and screened a movie
about their mother dying of cancer that ended with a giant explosion of the hospital,
I think the reaction would be not totally dissimilar from the reaction that the guy gets in this story,
where people are just like, what the hell is wrong with you?
How could you do that?
And without a lot of compassion being shown,
especially in an environment where there's no context for what's going on with the film.
Also I wanted to say, when somebody dies in your family,
you're not supposed to visit the shrine for a year, I think.
Or you're not supposed to send a New Year card to the family who had the loss.
Yeah, like nobody can get married in that year, right?
Right, no celebration, like zero.
It's like you should be mourning.
Right.
As long as you can.
Yeah, I mean, I think both Shinto religion is not very good at dealing with death.
And yeah, there's like a very long social norm-enforced period of mourning.
But I know some other cultures, it's like a new departure for dead people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And some people think it should be some kind of celebration like singing or...
Sure, I mean, Irish people have wakes where everybody gets drunk and it's kind of like a party.
And I mean, you know, we're very, very close to Dia de los Muertos, where you...
I mean, it's not like the occasion of death, but like death isn't seen to be quite as like feared, right?
There's like, you know, a lot of like sense of like remembering people.
I don't know, Dia de los Muertos is not that different from Obon, in my opinion.
But more like, how can I say, colorful and...
It feels more celebratory and Obon's a little more somber, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's fair.
12:00
Oh, the line that dad said, you know, after Yuta and Eddie decided to make a movie,
and they shot a scene with Eddie and the dad.
I mean, you think that is just like telling Eddie to stop meeting him, but it's actually acting.
Right, right, right.
And he's like so into it and being supportive.
And I like he said, like,
So like when you're using somebody else's like pain to make a story, it's not fair.
If the director just sort of exploits that without also feeling some of it.
Yeah, I think, I mean, it's a really interesting idea, right?
And it sounds like a critique of directors and productions that do exactly that, right?
Like that like make a story out of someone else's tragedy,
without necessarily like being part of the story or experiencing something similar.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's one of many of the lines in the short that makes you wonder kind of like,
what is Fujimoto trying to say about this, right?
Like, is that him? Is that like his words, right?
Like trying to resonate about like something that's happened in his life or that he perceives in other media around him?
I don't know enough of his like biography to be like, oh, this is, you know,
related to people in his life's own battles with cancer or, you know, or just death in general.
But I think like one of the things I really liked about this story was that Chainsaw Man feels kind of deconstructionist, right?
Like it's got like a lot of like things happening in it, but it doesn't feel like it's clear what the point of Chainsaw Man is.
Often the violence feels like sort of meaningless, right?
Or like really over the top, but without a lot of like, I don't know, things it's trying to say.
And I think like this short helps explain the violence of Chainsaw Man in a way as like, you know, escapism or like a way that's like a coping mechanism for the person making the story to like deal with like actual sadness and grief or like, you know, other sort of stressors in their life.
And so I like that aspect of it.
Like I sort of wonder whether part of what this story is trying to say is or that part of the way this story plays out is like he is the creator of the documentary being misunderstood by other people for the sort of like graphic violent imagery when really what he's trying to say is something like much deeper and more poignant.
Reading this opened a window for me onto understanding Chainsaw Man as like a work of art a little bit by helping me see the author's like perspective on the sort of roles that explosions or sort of gratuitous violence can play in film and I guess in manga in that case.
15:11
What did you think about the part that reveals that basically your mom was like kind of terrible?
Yeah, I mean, I think that like the other thing that's really nice about this is the way that it investigates the nature of memory and what we choose to remember about people and what we choose to forget and how we preserve those memories.
And so knowing that like in the movie, right, or in the, you know, in the work, the people being portrayed often are, you know, the artist or the creator has total control over how people look and then thinking about like why we choose only certain shots or how we're trying to make characters appear to others or in front of others via like different forms of media is really important.
And I think the way in which the kid responds to like why he's chosen to do that is just really sweet, right? And very easily understandable and accessible by anybody to be like, why would I remember the terrible parts if I'm trying to hold on to what about somebody was really beautiful or good, especially if I know I'm not going to have them in the future.
My mom passed away almost six years ago. And like, I remember her like, I don't know what she used to say or how she behaved. And then like, when I was a kid, like she used to scold me a lot. But I'm like, when I try to remember her after she passed, like, like one particular thing in my head is always kind of the same.
It's like, she's a little bit drunk. And they're calling my dad's name with Chang, with very cute voice. For some reason, it stuck in my head. And that's my memory of her. Isn't that weird?
I think it's really sweet, actually.
Yeah, it's like, I can't remember more. But it's, it's the biggest like memory, which I didn't like, realize after she passed away.
Your dad's still living. But I feel like the memory that I'm always going to have of him is him being drunk. And talking to your mom, looking at your mom, like while he's drunk and being like, she's so cute.
It's funny, huh?
That's the thing that like, I'm gonna forever remember about him, I feel like is like, also him being drunk and him like looking at your mom and like being sort of like in love with her. I think, yeah, like, you know, that's not how he is all the time. But I know, but that's like the that's the form that I feel like I'm going to choose to like remember him.
It's very interesting.
Well, and that's, and that's very similar to I think what what the story is trying to say about how we how we remember people and what we choose to sort of document and, and hold on to.
18:02
Yeah. So at the end, this is a total spoiler we've been talking about.
I mean, like, we've only spoiled the first half so far, but get ready for us to spoil the entire thing. Pause here and read it if you don't want to know the ending.
So my question is, do you think Eri is a real vampire?
No.
It is in Yuta's head.
I don't even think it's in his head, I think.
I mean, sure.
I think it's in Yuta's head.
Like, I think it's I think, like, it's a commentary to me.
The ending is a commentary on the power of fiction to, like, give us the endings we really want, even if they're not real.
Which is kind of what the whole thing has been saying the whole time.
Right. Like, the ending of his mom's death wasn't the hospital exploding as he ran away from it.
Right.
That was the ending he chose to create in order to, like, satisfy himself.
Right. About, like, what he wanted there.
Doesn't doesn't the Goodbye, Eri documentary also end with the hospital exploding at the end?
No, Goodbye, Eri is different.
Goodbye, Eri is, like, what...
Does it end with him talking about, like...
No, no, Eri says, like, basically, revenge from your first movie.
Oh, got it.
And then people cry.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, okay, yeah.
So that's, like, that's the end of that film.
Or there's, like, maybe a little...
Oh, yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
That's the end.
So in that, I think he's making the ending something that other people want to see.
I mean, I think it's a little bit for himself, but I think it's also for her.
Right.
Like, that ending with that shot is going to produce the result that she wanted from the first movie.
And then I think the end of the, you know, the end of the story, which ends again with the explosion at the very end,
is sort of a combination of maybe, like, what the reader wants from the story and what the author wants to portray.
But so do I think she's really a vampire?
Like, no.
I think that's for sure supposed to be, like, even in within this...
I mean, I don't know.
You can read it either way.
You can read it as, yeah, actually, she was a vampire, blah, blah, blah.
But I think, like, even within the story of the story, it's supposed to be like a fictionalized ending that brings closure in a way that real life can't.
If that makes sense.
All right. Let's do word of the day.
Oh, boy.
Okay.
What shall we do?
I also reread this, you know, in English.
So, yeah, I didn't read the Japanese version either the first time or when I reread it in preparation for us to do this.
Like, I've read it in English both times.
Right.
And so that's been, that's created, like, a barrier where I don't know what the original words in Japanese in the story even are.
You have it in front of you.
I'm not going to flip through the whole thing, like, while we're sitting here being like, uh, uh, uh.
21:03
Yeah, I read the whole thing in Japanese in original language.
So I'm going to ask you to pick the word of the day then.
Oh, I was thinking just yomikiri.
One shot?
Yeah.
Did we do this?
Maybe we did.
Open the, like, flip the pages to open.
Do you want to do sayonara?
Yeah, I think that's the only choice, actually.
Right.
Can you explain about it?
Yes.
Okay.
So Japanese has a lot of different ways to say words that we would translate as goodbye in English with, like, different levels of nuance.
Because saying goodbye in English doesn't, you know, is literally, I don't actually know what bye comes from.
I would need to do some etymological searching to be like, this is what bye means, right?
I think it's probably, maybe it's from by the by, right?
Or, like, something else.
But goodbye, the good part is clearly, like, good morning, good night, goodbye.
And there's no, or at least for modern English speakers, I don't think there are strong connotations around goodbye in terms of, like, what does it mean?
And, like, so we have some other ways to say goodbye.
We can say farewell, which means, like, you're going off somewhere.
Good luck, essentially.
And, like, I think we could probably make an argument that, like, there's different connotations to goodbye and farewell.
But, like, I don't actually have really strong ones one way or the other with one or the other.
We need to get, like, an English teacher in here to, like, break that down, probably.
And, like, there, you know, there's probably other ways to say goodbye, like, I guess.
But a lot of them come from other languages, like bon voyage or, you know, bon chance or something like that.
Like, you know, adios.
Like, English borrows a lot of other languages as words for goodbye and then uses them, ciao or, you know, whatever.
So we've got, like, and even sayonara, which has entered the English language as a way to be, like, see ya, you know, like.
So but within Japanese, there are lots and lots of different phrases for saying farewell.
We've got everything from, like, sayonara, which is probably the best known to, like, ja ne, which is a little bit like see you later.
Or, you know, mata ashita, see you tomorrow.
Like, saraba, right, which is often translated as farewell, which I honestly don't understand what that means quite as much.
But sayonara is only used when you're, like, has a finality to it that other forms of goodbye in Japanese don't.
So ja ne in particular, which is what friends who expect to see one another again soon will say as, like, parting words.
And ja ne doesn't even have, like, a real translation.
Ja is, like, well, and ne is, like, right.
So, like, it doesn't actually translate very well.
It's, like, well, right.
But, yeah, sayonara has a finality that other words for goodbye in Japanese don't have.
And so I think goodbye is the right translation for sayonara.
But it, like, it really has, like, a finality to it that expresses the sort of theme that's going on in the actual work.
24:07
Do you know the origin of the word?
No.
I remember seeing, it's written, you can write in kanji.
Really?
And when you write it, it says, it's, like, hidari sama sayonara.
And sayonara means, like, so...
To the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left?
Right?
Sayonara means so, sore ja, so nara ba, kind of meaning.
Sayo?
Sayo nara.
So it has nothing to do with left.
Yeah.
Even though it's written with a kanji for left.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's what I remember.
That was unsatisfying.
Okay.
I need to Google more.
All right.
Well, yeah, I don't know.
My feeling is sayonara is, like, a, you don't actually say sayonara to most people on a daily basis if you're going to see them again soon.
It's much more like, we're not going to see each other for a while or maybe, again, ever.
And so, you know, that meaning, like, comes into play here.
Ja ne eri wouldn't make any sense as the title of this work, for example.
Also the pronunciation.
Sayonara.
Sayonara.
Because I often hear sayonara kind of thing.
Well, that's, like, American pronunciation of everything.
Japanese stresses the third syllable, like macaroni, you know, instead of, like, correctly stressing the first syllable.
Yeah.
As is more, I mean, I guess Japanese doesn't really have stress on any of the syllables.
But if you're going to stress something, stress the first one and you'll say it more clearly than if you stress the second of three or the third of four, which will make you sound like an idiot in Japanese.
So it's sayonara or sayonara.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
Sometimes you put the stress on the second syllable in a way that's weird.
Especially, like, little kids, like, when they say at the end of, like, school.
They're just screaming their lungs out.
Sensei, sayonara.
Minna-san, sayonara.
I guess that really defeats my argument about it being, like, a thing you don't say to people you see every day, huh?
What's this being polite?
Yeah, I suppose that's true.
Okay.
Okay.
After with one stroke undoing my whole argument.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay.
There are a couple ways, yeah.
I guess, yeah.
Moving on.
Moving on.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
If you liked this week's episode, please give us how many stars?
Four and a half?
No!
No?
Four and a half is pretty good.
You can't choose four and a half.
Who does that?
I don't know.
I don't even listen to podcasts.
27:00
I don't know how the rating system works.
True.
You don't listen to podcasts.
That's why I'm such a garbage podcaster.
Five.
Five stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Or like and leave a comment on YouTube.
Make sure to subscribe and follow 2AMOTAK and 3AMOTAK.
It'll keep us making more fun episodes.
See you next time for more 2AMOTAK.
Sayonara.
No.
Ja mata.
Matane.
