To avoid confusion, I also reviewed the manga that the film was adapted from, click here to read that review! Thanks, and Enjoy!
Following up on the review of the manga it was adapted from, Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Look Back leaped off of the manga page and onto the Silver Screen, serving as a test to see how Fujimoto’s work would be perceived by audiences worldwide before Chainsaw Man makes his gory debut in theaters.
Look Back is about two artists. The first girl is named Ayumu Fujino (Yūmi Kawai), who was a manga artist for her school’s newspaper, and the other girl, who also was a manga artist, has become a shut-in and is named Kyomoto (Mizuki Yoshida). While they were different, there was something that brought them together, a love for creating manga. As the story continues, we see the girls become closer and take on the world through their love of drawing.
In a world that is on the brink of losing creativity due to the rise of AI-generated work (Including writing, art, and animation), it was Studio Durian and Director Kiyotaka Oshiyama who helped bring Fujimoto’s work to life and it pays off tremendously. Despite its 57-minute time frame, Look Back is faithful to its source material, but doesn’t leave much space to articulate the relationship between the two, it does offer a nice montage of watching the girls improve their drawing skills and create something entirely new together.
In terms of what Fujimoto has offered in the past with his protagonists, they are often flawed and tend to fall into the tragic category. Fujino and Kyomoto despite their artistic skills, are very flawed, Fujino is the most talented artist in her grade and draws four-panel comics for her school’s newspaper. After a while, Fujino has an ego with selfish impulses that she never really grows out of, Kyomoto is someone I can relate to as someone who has social anxiety and has become a recluse since she has a hard time connecting with others, despite having with her rival, Fujino, who we find out the rivalry is a bit one-sided. Despite their flaws, these two are driven by a common goal, and that is creating manga and improving their artistic skills along the way, even up to when they became young adults, even up to the last day when tragedy would strike.
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER: The “Look Back Animation Film Art Collection”
Aside from the premise, Studio Durian’s animation style breathed new life into Fujimoto’s work, with the characters moving with a naturalistic smoothness and showing off each character’s personality. What I enjoyed the most about this film was the way it shifts into a different perspective, shifting into animated renditions of both artists’ manga, each offering a look into their art styles and the energy in their work. Fujino’s manga offers a dark sense of humor, judgmental students, etc. It has a way of pulling the viewer in to see why they decided to get into art and what they want to offer to their audience. After watching this film, I can see why people speak highly of Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s work, and how he has a way of showing off visual dynamism in his work such as Flip Flappers. Look Back is the prime example of what makes creating art so great, how it drives people to create something new while highlighting the reality of creating, manga. As for what I have mentioned previously regarding AI-generated work, it has gotten frightening how far it has grown, how much people have gotten lazier and are willing to replace creativity with Slop labeled as being creative. Between artists, writers, manga creators like Tatsuki Fujimoto, Animators like Kiyotaka Oshiyama, Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki, and finally, stories like Look Back make it clear that the inspirational power of human-made art will always persist. Just have to be willing to put in the hard work and sacrifice to make something memorable.
Look Back is available now to stream on Prime Video, you can watch it by joining Amazon Prime today. And be sure to check out the film’s inspiration, which is also available now both in print, digital, and on Viz Media’s Shonen Jump app.
Final Grade:
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