Is being an artist worthwhile? – the moving answer offered by ‘Look Back’

Is the pain of being an artist worth it? This question hangs over the beautifully fleeting 57-minute film adaption of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Look Back, an enchanting story about hard work, failure, perseverance, joy, and loss. Adapted into film by director Kiyotaka Oshiyama, it follows two aspiring manga authors on their journey into adulthood. The following review will discuss major plot points and detail the entire story.

The story opens at the desk of Fujino (Yuumi Kawai), a confident, outgoing fourth-grader, who publishes amusing manga strips in her school’s magazine. She is soon upstaged when a new artist – the shut-in truant Kyomoto (Mizuki Yoshida) – begins to do the same. Her art is considered by her peers to be of a professional standard, whilst Fujino’s (who had previously basked in the attention she received) is said to be amateurish in comparison. Thus begins a montage of Fujino studying how to become a better artist. Dozens of sketchbooks pile up around her as the seasons change, whilst instructional manuals on anatomy and perspective line her shelves. The film uses such montages frequently, often to easily indicate the passage of time. This first one focuses on Fujino’s almost obsessive desire to become a better artist, neglecting her friends and personal life in favour of mastering her craft. The shots of the landscape changing, in contrast with her cramped and confining desk space, beautifully illustrate the priority Fujino is giving her work. Later in the film – once she has befriended Kyomoto – another montage shows them living their teen years together, taking experiences they have shared as friends and putting them into their manga. The colours are vibrant, the scenes are light-hearted, the love for their art is undeniable. Both montages reflect a clear passion, but the second is certainly a healthier way of living for the pair of them.

The last montage before the gutting third act twist, shows Fujino, now a successful author, working on her breakout serialised work. Now without Kyomoto, who has gone her own way to study at university, we witness (once again) the unhealthy lengths Fujino goes to in order to create her manga. The colours are muter, like that of an office space, and whilst her passion is still there, the montage focuses on popularity charts, sales numbers, and Fujino practically living out of her office. She has greatly progressed as an artist, but deeply regressed back into an unhealthy work-life balance.

Oshiyama frequently trusts the crew of the film to deliver emotion without dialogue; this is unusual for anime, which often utilises intense, emotional performances to convey a scene’s power

Entering the third act, the story undergoes a remarkable shift in tone. Fujino learns that Kyomoto has been killed during an attack at her university. She falls to her knees, blaming herself for not trying harder to make her stay by her side. It is an abrupt moment in a scene of stark silence, and Fujino’s incredibly human reaction of desperately calling Kyomoto, over and over, is a beautifully tragic depiction of shock and grief. Oshiyama frequently trusts the crew of the film to deliver emotion without dialogue; this is unusual for anime, which often utilises intense, emotional performances to convey a scene’s power. However, his trust is well placed, as Yuumi Kawai’s restrained performance, in conjunction with expert sound design and unexaggerated animation, creates a scene that leaves the viewer in as much shock as Fujino. One almost doesn’t believe it to be real.

It is no coincidence that Look Back’s source material was released almost exactly 2 years to the day of the arson attack on Kyoto Animation. On the 18th of July 2019, 36 people were killed at the production studio, making for the worst mass killing in Japan since 2001. The suspect of the attack was a man with a history of mental illness, who claimed that the company had plagiarised his novels. Within Look Back, the perpetrator of the attack on the arts university Kyomoto attends, has a strikingly similar motive to the real-life tragedy: he is mentally unwell and claims the university is stealing his artwork. For the original manga of Look Back, the publishers were incentivised to remove any reference to this plagiarism motive due to criticism that it stigmatised mental illness. The choice to return to this motive in the film adaption is a bold one, and it is unclear whether this was decided by Fujimoto, Oshiyama, or the studio as a whole. Either way, this event defines the film. With it, we can understand to what extent Tatsuki Fujimoto wrote the manga as a reflection of his own experiences as an author.

We are invited to consider how much of this work is autobiographical or, at the very least, heavily influenced by Fujimoto’s own experiences

Fujino and Kyomoto are both clearly meant to represent Fujimoto, with their names
containing the characters of his (Fuji[no] + [Kyou]moto). Fujimoto came second in a manga competition at a young age like the two leads, and also graduated from an arts university similar to the one Kyomoto attends. The characters grew up in a small rural town, the same as Fujimoto. Fujino’s successful serialised work is a clear homage to Chainsaw Man, Fujimoto’s most popular work. With these parallels we are invited to consider how much of this work is autobiographical or, at the very least, heavily influenced by Fujimoto’s own experiences.

Fujimoto wrote this piece whilst on an extended break from his aforementioned series Chainsaw Man, during which he would not have been under the constant pressure of weekly publication. I believe that Look Back may be his way of expressing the experience, frustration, and pain he has felt as an author, all the while showing his audience why he creates his art in the first place. The montage of Fujino as a serialised author shows the harsh conditions manga authors live under every day, whilst the early lives of the main characters reflect the young naivety many have before fully entering into a professional field. The attack that kills Kyomoto, and Fujino’s reaction to it, is almost certainly Fujimoto’s – and, by extension, all who work within the manga/animation industry’s – way of expressing the grief felt about the incident.

All of this is to determine Fujimoto’s answer to the question that started this article: is being an artist worth the pain and the effort?

Absolutely.

A fact perfectly conveyed in Fujino and Kyomoto’s first scene together. It begins when a series of fortunate (or perhaps unfortunate) circumstances bring Fujino to Kyomoto’s house to deliver her graduation certificate. After an embarrassing mishap, Fujino quickly leaves, but a sudden shift to first-person perspective sees Kyomoto running out of the door to proclaim that she wants Fujino’s autograph, that she is her biggest fan, and that she has read every issue Fujino has made for the school magazine.

Fujino finally having her efforts validated by another is a moment I am positive will resonate with anyone who has ever doubted their own ability to create something meaningful

The scene ends with Fujino walking home in the rain, as Haruka Nakamura’s score rises, before she begins to march, and then to skip. As the score reaches its peak, Fujino is dancing, kicking up puddles and running back home, filled with an awkward but unbounded joy in the film’s most beautifully animated scene. With a renewed passion and love for her art, the first act of the film ends at an emotional peak, and sees Fujino back where she began, drawing at her desk. She has a new reason to create. This scene shows Fujino at her truest: a brash, at times arrogant person, but ultimately one that wants to create art. Fujino finally having her efforts validated by another is a moment I am positive will resonate with anyone who has ever doubted their own ability to create something meaningful.

This is Look Back’s ultimate thesis: Fujimoto’s years as an author put to life. There will be failures, successes, pain and loss. People will discount your efforts at a glance. You will make the wrong choice. You will lose so much. But so long as there is someone to look back at your work and tell you it was amazing, that they want your autograph, that it inspired them to create as well, then you know you have created art.