Look Back
“I'm glad I came out of my room.”
As a big fan of Tatsuki Fujimoto's and of the original Look Back manga, I had been excited for this film since it got announced, and I'm very happy to say it was even better than I hoped.
To start off, the film looks absolutely gorgeous. The colours of the characters and stuff like the furniture and books and other props (for want of a better word) pop out against the backgrounds, which are stunning and look fantastic as well. One of my favourite things about Fujimoto's works has always been his art style, and this movie recreates it masterfully, while also working perfectly in colour and in motion. The animation is absolutely amazing, and the score is beautiful too. The voice acting is great and overall all the more "technical" elements of the film are fantastic.
The story centres around two girls: Fujino, a schoolgirl who draws four panel manga stories for her school newspaper and Kyomoto, a truant student who soon decides to also publish short comics in the same paper. When Fujino's classmates say that her drawings look average compared to Kyomoto's, she begins to really try and improve her art, sacrificing her grades, hanging out with her friends and family to get better at drawing so she compete with her newfound rival. However, Kyomoto doesn't attend school, therefore having much more time to practice her art. Fujino eventually gives up, and later graduates middle school. She is asked to deliver kyomoto's diploma, and upon visiting her house finds piles and piles of sketchbooks outside her bedroom door. She sees an empty little comic strip, and decides to draw a little story on it, which she drops and it floats under Kyomoto's door. She leaves in a hurry, and Kyomoto finds the courage to leave her house and talk to Fujino. Kyomoto reveals that she has looked up to Fujino and admires her comics in the school newspaper, and they eventually become friends and draw lots of manga together.
After a few years, the pair finally manage to get a manga serialised, however Kyomoto decides to attend art school instead and leaves Fujino to work on the series without her. One day, however, a crazed man enters the art school with a sharp weapon and kills and injures multiple students, tragically including Kyomoto. Fujino, feeling almost responsible for her death as she was the one that got Kyomoto to leave her room in the first place, visits her house and breaks down. She imagines an alternate scenario where she had never drawn that comic strip and therefore never met Kyomoto. She imagines saving her from the murderer and meeting that way instead, becoming friends later on rather than as children. She then snaps back to reality and reminisces about their time together drawing manga.
For a film that runs at just under an hour, there is so much substance packed into its short runtime. I find the story to be so beautiful and heartfelt, and I love the characters so much. I loved this film so much and I really hope that Goodbye Eri, another of my favourite Fujimoto stories, gets a movie adaptation soon too.