Look Back
Started crying 2 minutes in. Seeing a room filled with manga and sketchbooks hits with the impact of a dump truck when it’s the type of environment you’ve lived in for years. The montages take up a lot of the film’s runtime, but those elicited the biggest emotional responses from me. I’ve read the Shōnen Jump magazines Fujino and Kyomoto read, I’ve studied the hands they studied, I’ve drawn the comics they’ve drawn- fuck, I’ve even hated my work the way they occasionally do- because I am an artist.
I always front loaded that with “I draw dumb comics” as a way of coping with my perceived lack of skill or embarrassment at the melodrama of the stories that exist purely in my Id- but I am no longer ashamed to draw comics, and one day I’ll look back on the stuff I was proud to make and be able to say “I’m better than I was.”
There’s something so beautiful about seeing two people form an unconditional love for one another through their artistic collaboration, and watching it made me realize I need to go find people to draw with or voice act with. Those are the people we aren’t afraid to be vulnerable around, and art in it of itself is vulnerable.
Watching this with a packed audience of Fujimoto diehards was so beautiful. The references to the Chainsaw Man volume covers got a chuckle out of all of us, which made this already beautiful project feel like a wonderful inside joke we all got to be a part of. It’s corny, but we did clap.
I’m going to draw something tomorrow.