GN Expansion Pak: Look Back is beautiful, painful, and life distilled

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Tatsuki Fujimoto is a mangaka that is most well-known for creating Chainsaw Man, which is both an incredibly popular manga and anime. Before that explosive success, Fujimoto had spent years creating one-shots, which are single-entry comics that tell a self-contained story. If they prove to be successful, one-shots could be parlayed into a longer series, but sometimes they stay as-is.

While Fujimoto has a number of one-shots under his belt, he received major praise for his 2021 work, Look Back. 3+ years later, Look Back has received an animated movie adaptation from Kiyotaka Oshiyama, a director who’s worked on big-name projects like “The Wind Rises,” “Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance,” “The Secret World of Arrietty,” “Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos,” and many others. This movie adaptation is helping Look Back reach an all-new audience, and show not only Fujimoto’s range, but why the original manga became so beloved.

Look Back starts out following the life of Ayumu Fujino, an elementary school student with a penchant for drawing manga. Not only does she have a knack for fantastic artwork, she also has a wicked sense of humor. Ayumu gets to showcase her talents through the school newspaper every week via a 4-koma (4 panel comic), which basically earns her celebrity status among her classmates. That is, until Kyomoto comes along…

Kyomoto also happens to be an extremely talented artist, and she eventually gets to show off her skills in the weekly school newspaper as well. Kyomoto’s quality of work quickly steals the spotlight from Ayumu, which sends Ayumu spiraling. Kyomoto also happens to be agoraphobic, so she handles her school work and newspaper contributions from home, confined to her tiny room. This means that as Kyomoto’s 4-koma efforts continue to flourish, she has no idea she’s made Ayumu question everything and anything she knows about manga, along with her passion for it.

Ayumu does her absolute best to not crumble under the self-imposed pressure of Kyomoto’s 4-komas by setting out to up her skills by studying manga day and night. She literally spends almost every waking moment practicing and dissecting manga, but Ayumu ultimately decides she’ll never be able to surpass, or even match Kyomoto, so she decides to cut off manga completely. She shelves her art tools, throws away her sketchbooks, and decides manga is better left in the past.

While Ayumu mostly does a good job of fooling herself that manga doesn’t matter to her anymore, fate ends up undoing that. Ayumu is tasked with bringing Kyomoto her diploma, and does so begrudgingly. This sets off a chain of events where Ayumu learns that Kyomoto is her number one fan, and Ayumu is asked why she stopped creating manga in the first place. From here, the duo become fast friends, start a makeshift career making manga together, and become entangled in pretty much every aspect of each other’s lives.

Look Back is just shy of an hour long, but it packs an unforgettable experience in that short run time. To detail more of the story than what’s above would rob you of the experience, and it’s one that is most certainly best enjoyed by going in blind. You’ll no doubt experience joy, laughter, and hope, but there’s plenty of sorrow, heartbreak and melancholy to go with it. In that way, Look Back mirrors the journey of life itself. There will be moments of absolute bliss and times when you don’t know how you’ll survive, but we keep on pushing through to the next day despite it all.

Look Back, at its very core, puts the idea of obsession under the microscope. We see what it’s like to be literally consumed by someone or something, and how it can paint every area of your life. There are instances where that obsession can lead to greater understanding and achievement, but going too far can cause everything to come crashing down. A delicate balance is needed, and it’ll likely only be spotted when it’s too late. Thankfully, even when one failure is locked in, another “day one” starts, giving us a chance to pick up the scraps and try again.

The film also expertly studies the passage of time and how sometimes we’re moving with it, against it, or just getting whisked away. There will be minor happenings in life that you might not think twice about until a trigger surfaces years later, and then that event becomes a memory you’ll never want to lose. Something we did in one situation a long time ago could end up being the complete opposite of how we act now, taking a once happy memory and turning it bitter. We may not always be learning in the moment, or at least think we’re not, but time has a way of teaching us lessons whether we like it or not.

On a more surface level, Look Back also shines a spotlight at the manga and anime industry, which is an absolutely grueling environment to work in. These artists are spending unbelievably long hours crafting the books, shows and movies we love, and they’re doing so for very little money and at the cost of their mental and physical health. There are so many in the manga/anime industry (and comics/animation in general) that genuinely care about the art they’re making and cannot wait for the world to see it, but the bigger machines of publishing and production are chewing them up along the way. Something beautiful is being created by something grotesque, and it’s a cycle that has long been broken and is in desperate need of a top-to-bottom overhaul.

In the grand scheme of things, Look Back is just that; a look back at who we are, what we do, and how we continue. Life is an amalgamation of messy moments, happy times, dark thoughts, and beautiful occasions. Throughout those times, we can only do the best we can with the tools we have. Later in life, we may recoil at the decisions we made, but that’s the way the world works. There’s no way of getting around it, and we just have to keep learning and moving on. To look back is to look ahead, bringing the culmination of our experiences with us, recognizing what we did right/wrong, and applying it to wherever we go.

Look Back absolutely rocked me to my core. As soon as I got home from seeing the movie (and wiped the tears from my face), I ordered the manga. It’s one of those pieces of art I want to forever have, as it is a reminder of not just how to be a better version of yourself, but to allow yourself grace as well. It’s the kind of gut-punch, eye-opening piece that is never far from your thoughts. I know it’ll be with me as I continue down the path of life, and I have no doubt it’ll inform where I head from here.

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