Look Back

• Title: Look Back
• Genre: Drama
• Company: Studio Durian
• Format: Movie; 60 minutes
• Dates: 28 June 2024

Synopsis:

Fujino Ayumu is an elementary school student who’s an aspiring manga artist. She submits her manga strips to the school newspaper and receives adulation from everyone around her. Then one day, her teacher asks her to share the newspaper’s comics page with Kyomoto, a fellow student who’s also a shut-in. Upon seeing Kyomoto’s beautiful backgrounds, Fujino is spurred on to improve her art skills in an attempt to catch up.

Highlights

• Fujino Ayumu: Her personality flaws make her human.
• Art style: Feels raw, which helps amplify the mood on screen.
• Depiction of creatives: Authentic, true to life.
• 4-koma strips: Charmingly amusing.

Review

The moment in Look Back that will forever live rent-free in my head takes place when Fujino begins her trek home after delivering fellow elementary school student Kyomoto her diploma. She skips along, pumping her fists in jubilation. Her gait is awkward at times, but the raw triumph, the elation in her every movement, are infectious. Never mind the fact that she’s traipsing amidst a torrential downpour. The catharsis, the inspiration are beautiful. In that moment, she feels recognized, feels seen. 

Up to this point, the film has been depicting both the physical process and the human aspects of making art with unerring accuracy. Fujino’s initial motivation to draw 4-koma manga for the school newspaper is not particularly enlightening; she is vain and guzzles up the praise from her classmates. But when faced with Kyomoto’s formidable background illustrations, Fujino is compelled by a mixture of admiration and jealousy to improve. She started drawing day and night, at every opportunity, forsaking her social life and other hobbies. It became a mad, lonely obsession.

So when Fujino and Kyomoto finally meet, the scene is so heartwarming. Yoshida Mizuki’s halting, tumbling delivery is a perfect portrayal of the shy, shut-in Kyomoto. Through it, Kyomoto’s earnestness reaches Fujino in a way that only another artist could take in and appreciate. With any creative work, most will only see the end product. Unless they are practitioners, they’ll be unaware of the painstaking efforts required to get there. Kyomoto saw. She could pick out the minute improvements in Fujino’s art. And those words of affirmation made all the difference.

The resulting friendship is effectively a meeting of two kindred spirits who’ve found a wellspring from which to draw inspiration and nourishment for their creative talents. Through their collaboration, the film captured the fulfillment not only from their successes, but from their growth. But with that growth comes change, and we see the immature insecurities that lie just under the surface. Though Fujino’s pettiness is unfortunate and even ugly, it is painfully authentic to what adolescents go through. 

With that split, we see Fujino going down the path of being the sole creative force for her manga. The contrast between her working together with Kyomoto and working alone is striking. For all her successes, Fujino’s expression while creating is determined, but joyless and lonely. The film accentuates this mood by shrouding her in shadowy grays where it previously showered the two girls together with brightness and color. 

It takes a tragedy to jostle Fujino from her ennui. The moment is masterfully punctuated by a deafening silence, drawing out a tension and allowing the sickening feeling to settle in. I won’t go into full detail about what happens other than to mention that it has parallels to what happened to Kyoto Animation’s offices in 2019. 

With that, Fujino’s loneliness and emptiness are replaced by guilt. Guilt not only from their last moment before they parted ways, but from Fujino getting Kyomoto out of her room in the first place. This is where the film is at its least straightforward. I see the alternative timeline as part manifestation of how Fujino processes her grief, part wishful thinking by looking back on what could have been had the tragedy been averted. In this timeline Fujino doesn’t get to be a successful mangaka. Her life is rather pedestrian. But in her mind, it’s a sacrifice she willingly makes to get her friend back. 

But of course that’s a grief-laden flight of fancy. However they may have parted, the film shows how Kyomoto still admired Fujino. The scene of Fujino exploring Kyomoto’s room near the end was exquisitely bittersweet. Their friendship and connection was never truly lost. And so, heartened by that realization, Fujino returns to work on her manga even as we, in the audience, still need to process our own feelings.

Rating: 9

Reviewed by: zzeroparticle