What is the point of creating art? What is there to do when something you love so much doesn’t love you back? It’s an ever-pressing question, especially now when art is progressively devalued and commodified between generative AI, garbage working conditions for animators, and the churn-and-burn pacing of the anime and manga industries. And yet, despite it all, humans continue to create art because it’s an innately human thing to do. Even in times of tragedy or isolation, people still want to connect over the act of creation. And, perhaps, those connections will span time and space.
This innate human need for connection, and finding it through art, is the central thesis of Look Back (2024). The film follows two girls, Fujino and Kyomoto, from fourth grade into young adulthood. Although the two are complete opposites – Fujino is charismatic and personable while Kyomoto is a truant with severe agoraphobia – both share a passion for drawing manga. Their friendship starts as a rivalry, as Kyomoto’s stellar landscape art quickly overshadowed Fujino’s comedy manga. However, the rivalry fades after Fujino abandons art at the risk of seeming uncool. After Fujino and Kyomoto finally meet, they form a bond stronger than tragedy, time, and space.
For those tapped into the modern anime landscape, Look Back has some huge names attached to its production. It’s an adaptation of a one-shot by Tatsuki Fujimoto, the mangaka behind Fire Punch and the incredibly popular Chainsaw Man, known for causing readers a new form of psychological damage every week. Studio Durian, the animation studio, is lesser known, having been founded in 2017, but they’ve worked on The First Slam Dunk (2022), Chainsaw Man (2023), and the upcoming Chainsaw Man- The Movie: Reze Arc. Director and lead character designer Kiyotaka Oshiyama honed his craft as a key animator on huge projects like Devilman Crybaby (2018), The Boy and the Heron (2023), and Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009). There’s some insane pedigree behind Look Back, and it shows in every frame.
As far as manga adaptations go, Look Back is top-of-the-line. Studio Durian enhances Fujimoto’s incredibly detailed art with lush colors, a kinetic camera, and a beautiful piano score by Haruka Nakamura. For a swift fifty-seven minutes (maybe longer if pausing to stop crying as I did), viewers are thrust into lush suburbs and cityscapes. The various montages — from Fujino honing her skills to the two girls working on manga together — are stunning.
There’s also a notable use of manipulating space in a way only animation can do; there’s a particularly striking use as the girls run through the streets of Tokyo as Kyomoto holds onto Fujino for dear life. Yet, as much as the camera brings the audience into Fujino and Kyomoto’s lives, there’s an equally concerted effort to pull back. For large emotional beats, like the girls receiving second place in a manga one-shot contest, the camera pulls back and the sound drops out in favor of the score.
The saccharine feel of the first two-thirds of Look Back drops out hard for most of the film’s final act, a jarring yet completely appropriate shift. The score becomes muted, the color saturation vanishes, and the world collapses inward. Again, for those familiar with Fujimoto’s writing, this harsh visual shift concurrent with a rapid-fire succession of interpersonal tragedy is somewhat of a staple for him. Studio Durian handles the stylistic shift gracefully much like they did with Chainsaw Man, even if the late-in-the-game twist seems a bit out of place in such a grounded story. Your mileage may vary depending on the effectiveness of Look Back’s twist, but the change in tone and visual style work in tandem quite well.
Perhaps what makes the twist and general narrative of Look Back stick is its increased prescience three years after its original publication. While manga is the uniting force in Fujino and Kyomoto’s friendship, it’s also a destructive business – particularly for Fujino. Where Kyomoto always viewed art as an escape or a means to communicate with a world she’s afraid of, Fujino’s relationship with creating art is much more tumultuous. Fujino’s relationship with creating manga fluctuates wildly: Her initial love becomes embroiled in her need to succeed. Her declining passion for manga until the aforementioned third-act twist is explicitly based on Fujimoto’s own experience as a mangaka.
The anime and manga industry has a persisting issue of chewing up and spitting out animators and artists. Long hours, almost no allowance for days off, and comparatively little pay are essentially industry norms. This excludes recent developments with generative AI, which scrape, devalue, and undermine the hundreds of hours of animators and artists.
On a deeper level, it makes creating art out of passion a struggle. Fujimoto understands this conflict and imbues Fujino with this idea of creating art out of passion and out of obligation. It’s what makes her friendship and creative partnership with Kyomoto work so well until it doesn’t. Fujino succumbing to the pressures of capital in the manga industry feels inevitable, and it’s what makes the third act shift into a life-affirming tragedy hit like a truck.
Look Back is a stunning coming-of-age tale from some of the anime and manga industry’s best. It’s a story about finding love, passion, and connection despite all circumstances. Whether it be a crippling fear of failure, the churn and burn system of capital, or an innate feeling of isolation and powerlessness, love and connection through art will come through. If you haven’t had a good cry in a while, or just want to see some very pretty animation, take fifty-seven minutes out of your day to watch Look Back.
Review Courtesy of Red Broadwell
Image Courtesy of CNET