Look Back

While the mangaka Tatsuki Fujimoto is perhaps best known for his series Chainsaw Man and Fire Punch, he has also had a number of one-shots under his belt. One such one-shot is Look Back from 2021, which explores the passion behind the art process and creating manga. After reading the manga, I learned that there was an anime film adaptation in 2024 released through Amazon Prime Video, and so decided to watch it while the story was still fresh in my mind. The film not only does an excellent job of adapting the manga’s story, it even has its own small touches that add to it in an effective way.

In elementary school, Ayumu Fujino (Valerie Rose Lohman) draws four-panel manga for the school newspaper and feels overconfident in her abilities. When she’s convinced to give one of the slots to a reclusive student named Kyomoto (Grace Lu), Fujino’s confidence is shattered when she sees Kyomoto’s talent. This motivates Fujino to improve her craft before giving up a couple years later. While being tasked to deliver Kyomoto’s diploma, Fujino draws a four-panel comic that ends up getting Kyomoto’s attention, and regains her passion after learning she is a fan of her work.

As an adaptation, the film is very faithful to the source material, using the power of animation to sell the impact of certain moments from the manga. Outside of this, however, Look Back tells a powerful story about the friendship between Fujino and Kyomoto and their bond over creating manga. As an artist myself, I found Fujino’s struggles as an artist to be very relatable in some ways, even comparing myself to other classmates and spending time looking at art books for ways to improve my craft (I’ve even amassed a pile of sketchbooks over the years).

 

Fujino (Valerie Rose Lohman, left) and Kyomoto (Grace Lu, right) draw manga together.

The movie adapts Tatsuki Fujimoto’s art style very faithfully, contrasting the more refined look of the Chainsaw Man anime, which in this case works in the film’s favor, even showcasing some beautifully-rendered scenery. Some of Fujino’s manga are even faithfully animated in the character’s own style, which is a nice bonus. The film adds more of its own visual touches throughout, further selling passages of time and making the more negative moments hit harder where necessary. One particular time passage shows Fujino’s increasing success with her manga Shark Kick, which the animation depicts over a slightly longer stretch than the manga, with a nice detail of taking inspiration from Chainsaw Man for Shark Kick’s volume covers.

As with most anime films I’ve seen, it is worth mentioning here that I watched the English dub version, so my opinions of the voice acting are based on having seen that and not the original Japanese. That said, I thought the English voice actors did a good job capturing their respective characters, especially Valerie Rose Lohman and Grace Lu as Fujino and Kyomoto. While the movie has a good soundtrack as well, it also knows when to allow moments of silence to help carry the emotional weight of a scene.

Whether you’re a fan of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work or not, Look Back is a solid recommendation, though its premise and themes may resonate more with viewers with more creative pursuits. If you’re going in expecting something more along the lines of Chainsaw Man, however, you will be disappointed (Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc is just around the corner, after all).