AKA: ルックバック (Japanese)

Genre: Slice-of-life drama

Length: Movie, 57 minutes

Distributor: Licensed by GKIDS, available streaming on Amazon Prime.

Content Rating: 16+ (drawn violence/blood, dark situations)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Animation Runner Kuromi-chan, Whisper of the Heart

Notes: Based on the manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto (yes, the same guy who created Chainsaw Man, believe it or not). It was published in the July 2021 issue of Shonen Jump+.

Rating:

Look Back

Synopsis

Fourth grader Ayumu Fujino likes to draw manga, even having it published in her school's paper, despite not taking her craft seriously. But one day a stay-at-home student, Kyomoto, takes over half of her previous comic space, and her art blows Fujino's out of the water. Fujino spends nearly the next two years of her life trying to improve her art to compete, nearly alienating her friends and family in the process. After both groups tell her to "grow up" from her hobby, Fujino, feeling like she'll never catch up to Kyomoto, does just that. But when she graduates from sixth grade and is tasked with dropping off Kyomoto's graduation diploma, Fujino finds out that Kyomoto has been a fan of her work for years. The two slowly become both friends and partners in manga, with Fujino drawing the characters, and Kyomoto doing the backgrounds.

Review

Back in sixth grade, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I doodled dozens of pages of comics, even limiting myself to a smaller space like you would a daily comic strip, with three "daily" comics per page, and a full-page Sunday comic on a third one. The daily comics would be done with pencils, while my more elaborate Sunday strips were done in pen and crayons. I even tried to publish some of my comics in my middle school's newspaper. (I never got the part, though I did get to design a banner for my school's supply store.) But as the years waned on, I settled on just doodling for fun in high school. By the time I finished college I basically stopped drawing altogether, as writing about anime became my new side hobby. So I saw a bit of myself in Fujino when she decided to just give up on something that once made her happy. It's real, it's harsh, and it's organic. And Look Back has plenty of moments like this.

And I think that's why I think I really enjoyed Look Back so much; it feels so raw and focused. Fujino and Kyomoto are not overnight successes, and spend years perfecting their craft. They enter contests, take trips for inspiration for their work, pull all nighters, and even sleep in the same room so they're always together and focused. Fujino is the go-getter of the two, while Kyomoto shyly follows behind her. And this is where the "raw" part comes up again for me. Because despite finally coming out of her shell and adventuring outside for meetings with manga publishers, as well as trips to places, Kyomoto is still really shy and awkward around people. It's not something that instantly goes away just because she has a friend. If this were a typical anime, she'd have an arc of her finally come out of her shell and being more social and outgoing. You won't find that in Look Back.

This also applies to Fujino, too. Even as a kid she was a bit stubborn and full of herself, thinking that she was funnier and a better artist than she actually was. This, too, does not change with time. And because of this, when it comes time for a major chapter in Fujino and Kyomoto's lives - one that could make them both incredibly wealthy and famous - they each have their own thoughts on the matter. I won't dare spoil the results, as well as the rest of the movie.

And now I want to give props to the main actresses of the movie themselves. Yuumi Kawai and Mizuki Yoshida are both great as Fujino and Kyomoto. You wouldn't know the two never voice acted before given how passionate they are with their voices. And they both manage to do so without being pigeonholed into the typical "cute" voice acting you'd expect here. Kyomoto doesn't have a shy, Rina Hidaka-esque moe voice, and Fujino doesn't talk in a tomboyish/genki voice; they sound like, well, real people. (Though this does unfortunately have the side effect of them sounding a bit too old when they're kids.)

So far I've been gushing about Look Back. But if you look to your right, you might notice a fifth star is missing from my otherwise glowing review thus far. Why is that? Well, there's two reasons.

One, and I don't know if this is the result of the film having a low budget or not a lot of time to animate, but the animation is pretty distracting. In fact, until the post-movie commentary at the movie theater I saw this at informed me, I initially thought the characters were roto-scoped or even done with the assistance of computers. It reminded me a bit of Flowers of Evil, a series I otherwise quite liked that had distracting rotoscoped animation.

The second one is, well, it's a bit short. It ends natural enough; it doesn't feel rushed or out of nowhere. But when the credits rolled, my thought at the movie theater I saw this at was, "Wait, it's over? That wasn't even an hour!" Still, it's a very nice hour of cinema.

Look Back is a film that asks YOU, the person watching it, a question; "Why do you do what you do?" In my case, I still write for T.H.E.M. Anime over 20 years later because I like love to express my feelings for the anime I watch. and I highly recommend this anime to anyone else who's ever engrossed themselves in something they were passionate about, whether plants, art, music or, well, anime (heh).

Be prepared to cry, though. Just a warning.

Stilted animation and a bit of a rushed pace due to being only 57 minutes long costs it a fifth star, but Look Back is still one of the most touching anime I've seen in quite a while. I enjoyed near every minute of it. — Tim Jones

Recommended Audience: There's some dark subject manner in here I cannot talk about due to spoilers, but this movie gets dark in its second half. Some of Ayumu's comics she draws in her youth, while very funny, also contain blood and death in them. Older teens and up.