It wouldn’t be a stretch to say Tatsuki Fujimoto is one of the top manga creators in the business. From Fire Punch to Chainsaw Man, the artist has pitched some wild stories with surprising heart, and then there are his one-shots. Over the years, Fujimoto has become a critical darling thanks to his daring one-shots, and a second volume was just released collecting them. And in the manga, Fujimoto recounts a wild yet moving memory of when he ate his dead pet fish.
And yes, we’re totally serious here. Fujimoto admitted to eating his dead pet fish in a new author’s note. As the artist recalls, the whole thing began in his early 20s after the fish he shared with his girlfriend died rather unexpectedly.
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“Even though we were poor, we had a pet Japanese rice fish. I found it dead one summer. I went to toss its body into the trash like in Parasyte, but my girlfriend said she wanted me to bury it,” Fujimoto writes. As you can read here, he goes on to say he attempted to bury the fish at a local park but was unable to break dry ground. He decided to just leave the fish atop some soil, but things took a turn minutes later.
“As I watched it for a little while, ants found the body and began trying to carry it away. I’m not sure what came over me, but in that moment, love for that pet fish welled within me for the first time. I brushed the ants away and then ate it,” he shared.
As he goes on, Fujimoto says he wound up lying to his girlfriend about the fish’s fate. “That brings us too now,” he writes. “The memory of lying to my girlfriend is far stronger than the guilt of eating our pet fish. Please allow me to confess my sin here.”
The anecdote is wholly weird and yet somehow entrancing which defines Fujimoto’s style. There is a gravitas to this confession you wouldn’t expect just by hearing it described from the outside. This weird little note perfectly encapsulates what makes Fujimoto’s writing so genius. So if you have not checked out the mangaka’s one-shot collections, we cannot recommend you do so enough.
What do you think about this latest comment from Fujimoto? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB.
