This is a spoiler free review of the film and manga, but if you want to check out the story first, here are some links:
Look Back One-Shot Manga: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/look-back
Look Back short film: https://www.amazon.com/Look-Back-Kiyotaka-Oshiyama/dp/B0DH5DFNDG
Tatsuki Fujimoto is known as that guy who created that weird manga where a boy gets emotionally manipulated and turns into a chainsaw. And though Chainsaw Man is considered one of the best written stories in the space right now; because it successfully mixes the absurd nature of manga stories with grounded issues like abuse, manipulation, and attempting to find where you belong; Look Back is something cinematically different.
Look Back is a slice of life story that focuses on the lives of two girls as they compete over a space in their school’s newspaper as manga artists. With the girls exploring the joys and struggles of rivalry and collaboration.
As the story follows their lives into young adulthood, each girl ends up with their own views on art and manga and this eventually leads them down separate paths that end at a major turning point in the story. Though the events of Look Back are not directly inspired by Tatsuki Fujimoto’s life, the message that is imbued within its pages and scenes are deeply personal to his experiences with art and helplessness.
In this article exploring the inspiration for the story, the article references 17-21, a collection of One-Shots in which Fujimoto expresses feeling helpless during the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami that rocked Japan. During that time, he expressed how “drawing felt meaningless” and how even his actions (volunteering to clean up) seemed so insignificant in the wake of the tragedy.
Reading this after watching Look Back rocked something deep within me. This idea that even when you think that what you do is insignificant, you are making a difference. Whether it’s making art, music, comics, or videos on anime for example; what you create may not change the world but it can make someone smile, it can change someone’s view on the world in a positive way. It can make someone’s day. And that is a way of changing the world.
This was a much needed reminder that even when I feel like making videos about anime isn’t going to change the state of the world and everything wrong within it, it can still help someone find peace, or laugh, or simply learn more about a show they love.
It’s not THE most important thing, but it still means something. And as long as it means something to someone, I want to keep creating.
Look Back reminds me why I love stories and why I love over analyzing them. Regardless of the medium, stories reflect our struggles and help us come to terms with concepts that are often too difficult to express on our own. Understanding ourselves is fundamental to being open to understanding others.
