’Look Back’ review: Art will break and remake your heart

Kiyotaka Oshiyama delivers a spectacular, heart-breaking adaption of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Look Back.

With an enormous amount of vivid and artistic flourishes, Look Back, based on the one-shot manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto (Chainsaw Man), taps into something raw. Begging the question of what motivates us to pursue art and the stresses, relationships, and creation borne from it, the film is a glorious undertaking. Look Back understands the vulnerability of creation and the ever-moving line that determines our success and cuts you to the core.

Based on one of Fujimoto’s one-shots during his Chainsaw Man break, Look Back separates itself from his previous work from the start. While it has all of the touchstones of the Fujimoto look in terms of character designs, emphasis on movement, and biting introspection, a softness initially dulls the impact. We first meet our protagonist, Ayumu Fujino, who is an elementary schooler and will subsequently follow her into her adulthood. Bookended with scenes of Fujino studiously working away at her desk, she begins as a gifted child whose talent for drawing manga is highlighted in her school paper. Her little means of triumph, however, is threatened by another student, Kyomoto. 

Kyomoto is a truant due to her agoraphobia. This, Fujino reasons, is why Kyomoto must be so talented when her manga shares the page with Fujino’s. And thus begins a one-sided rivalry as Fujino tirelessly works to achieve greater artistry. And it’s in this opening segment where we get one of the most integral messages of the film. 

The give and take of collaboration.

Do we create art because we want to be the best? To be celebrated? Because we love it? Does loving it make it harder when we fail or don’t meet our own expectations? What bar must we clear, and who raised it? What does art afford us as those making it? Fujino hears often she’s a great manga artist, and she believes it. She works hard at it — this is evident in the opening moments as she stays awake late to complete her piece for the school paper. So much of the film dedicates itself to the view of her back, hunched and curled over her desk as she scribbles away. The tools she uses to create may change but the form remains.

However, this rivalry doesn’t last long as soon both girls work together, with Fujino driving the story and Kyomoto settling into landscapes and background work. Where both were once isolated, they now come together, perfectly content and happy to create art side by side in Fujino’s cramped room. Together, they create works that transcend their age and experiences, creating one-shot’s that make major debuts that ensure their serialization once they graduate. However, after spending so much time following in Fujino’s more expressive, extroverted steps, Kyomoto is ready to find her passion and attend art school to create a stronger foundation. She still pursues becoming a better artist. 

Diverging paths

The way that the story follows these two and their journeys always suggests a potential deviation. They’re simply too different, but therein lies the beauty of Look Back and its inherent tragedy. Regardless of our differences, art loops us together, ready and willing to engage in our spirits through expression. How aren’t we supposed to bond with those who love what we love? 

Throughout the film, Fujino displays a tumultuous, aggressive even relationship with drawing. It’s difficult to tell if she ever truly loves it or if she simply desires to be good at it. Fujimoto’s writing lances us straight through the heart, observant, a little scathing, as he pokes at the life of artist types. Creating is binding, be it through love of it, praise of it, or critique. Fujino is a wonderfully dynamic character because of this. Her burdens lie solely in the center of her chest, manifesting physically throughout the film. 

The tireless nature of artistry.

In one of the most explosive, infectious sequences of Look Back, we watch Fujino traipsing home after her first meeting with Kyomoto, her joy palpable through her motion as we watch her weave through a sun-kissed countryside. This rambunctious movement captures a truly dazzling level of spontaneity, her movements unrefined. This awkward, youthful expression of glee is top-tier, a rallying cry of animation as an art form (one of many in a chorus), and demonstrative of director Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s spectacular skill. In this one scene, we gain everything we need to know about Fujino, even if she fumbles when expressing herself later on. 

The animation thrums, alive and tactile, exuding boundless personality. The kinetic direction by Kiyotaka locks us in with tangibility, expertly capturing the rawness of Fujimoto’s story but imbuing it with grace — with sweet, heartbreaking melancholy. The character designs are loose and informal as they adapt and mold to every scene, while the backgrounds are breathtaking. A montage of the passage of time, married with haruka nakamura’s twinkling, effervescent score, bleeds with life. Kyomoto might be the one being pulled along by Fujino’s gravitational force, but we, too, follow right along into the oppressive depths of suns sliding out of view, making way for purple-bruised nighttime skies. The depth of the background work suggests the greater world these girls are both on the cusp of experiencing. Of the many worthwhile lives and many paths. 

The bottom line.

The film envelops us whole. There are, no doubt, hints of Fujimoto’s inherent nihilist sensibilities. And there’s a very real tragedy baked into the soul of this project. But the adaptation makes room for romanticism, for the characters and the craft, and for how both link up. The film pleads hypocrisy. From the solitary nature of a manga artist clashing against the desperate desire to collaborate to the selfless nature of art reverberating against an artist’s selfish desire to create, Look Back works in circles. 

Fitting, considering the film’s message about destiny and our tethers to what we love. An artist will create and be self-sacrificial no matter the obstacles or different courses our lives take, the film broadly suggests. Those who make up our rough drafts and the springtime of our youth etch themselves into the lines of our self-imposed self-improvement and discipline. They are the vowels that make up the language of our lives. Look Back is so impossibly heartbreaking, so impenetrably life-affirming, because it suggests that no matter the path, art finds a way, and no matter the outcome, the accolades and devastation, the artists walk it. 

Look Back is out now in select theaters.

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Images courtesy of Studio Durian and GKIDS.