Look Back
This weekend, I watched Look Back, a 1-hour-long animated movie directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, adapted from the oneshot manga of the same name by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Today, I just finished reading the manga version.
Both times, this work was a direct uppercut to my heart about art creation, jealousy, friendship, and grief, and I ended up crying of sheer emotion.
It's funny, because I think I read the manga once, three or four years ago, and only vaguely remembered it was about two girls who aimed to became mangaka, and it had some sort of tragic twist(?). And that's it.
Watching it and bawling my eyes out from all the difficult feelings the movie evoked, then doing so again when reading, I can't help but wonder in which state I was when I first encountered the manga, for it not to impact me much.
So. This work is about two girls - Fujino and Kyomoto - who aim to draw manga, alright.
But more precisely, it is notably a story about being jealous of someone else's art and depreciative of your own, even if what you do is good in widely different ways. It is a story that shows in extremely relatable ways how this jealousy can push you forward as much as it can break you. It examplifies, through little moments that are never stated outright but oh-so-understandable, how, when this intertwines with friendship and admiration, you sometimes can't cope except through a false veneer of superiority, a way of looking down on the other, to assuage your own fears about what you create.
Sometimes, you go as far as building a position where the other depends on you a little - even when you genuinely like them and want them to be seen too - just so that you can still feel in control: in control of what they create, in control of who they are, in control so that they do not end up shining on their own, getting recognition without you, with an art that you will never ever rival.
Confession time: I feel all this in my bones, and it hurts.
I wish I wouldn't. I wish I was closer to the admirative, sincere, very neurodivergent-coded Kyomoto - I suppose I am in some ways, sometimes.
But I can't help but see myself in Fujino, as she tries so hard to hide the jealousy that eats her away. And it feels so difficult and ugly to admit.
And so this work makes me feel seen, and it hurts, and it helps.
I hope it helps you too.
More generally, Look Back talks very directly about what pushes you forward when you make art - and why making art can be meaningful, and a way to connect, and an inescapable drive (which seems especially important against this AI hellscape we are in). In many, many ways, it feels like an acknowledgement by the author, a hand extended, toward anyone who creates; an attempt to recognize all the little things, all the ugly feelings, all the difficulty and joy and pain of making art, notably with other people.
It's beautiful. It's all the more striking to read or watch what feels like such sincere admission by someone who is notably famous for having written the manga Chainsaw Man, which has been quite the rage for a while. (I have watched maybe half the episodes of the anime adaptation, but it has proven to be too violent for me.)
(On the movie's side, director Oshiyama apparently worked on a lot of anime I have at least heard good of, too, including Dennou Coil and Flip Flappers, so this also adds to the anime version's wow effect.)
I would personally recommend watching Look Back in movie format, then reading the oneshot manga. I did prefer the movie, I think: its aesthetic, first, hand-drawn and vibrant, compared to the more hyperrealist touch of the manga; the breathing space it gives to the characters through small scenes extended a tiny bit more; and somehow the overall way Kyomoto is portrayed, that felt unexplainably more endearing and relatable to me in her idiosyncrasies.
You may prefer the manga, though. Reading it afterward, in any case, made me avoid looking at the movie with the lens of "how did they adapt this?", and instead allowed me to focus on one of the manga's strengths that obviously couldn't be replicated in the movie: its paneling. How it manages its space on the page feels like an incredible lesson in comics in and of itself; and if anything, I think reading the manga even after watching the movie is worth it if only for that.
The movie - and I mean, it's only one hour long! - does have some clever animation tricks here or there though, that are also interesting to witness.
The work, in both formats, does have some content warnings still, notably the depiction of a man attacking an art school with a pickaxe, with a vibe that makes me feel it is in part here for shock value. I will enclore more detailed CW under the following clickable paragraph, if you need so.
Detailed CW (spoilerish)
-
Major character death, grief and mourning. The work also includes a depiction of a man attacking an art school with a pickaxe out of anger for thinking he has been plagiarized (an older version of the manga blamed a mental illness; this has been cut out of reprints thanks to reader feedback). The scene is first heard of in the news, causes casualties, and includes short somewhat gruesome mentions. Later, we see the same scene unfold directly in a situation where no one dies and it ends well, making that second version tense and slightly horrific but not gore, in spite of how it is set up.
This is starting to become a long post for a simple rec, so let me end it with the quick addition of another recommendation to the pile: another manga oneshot by Tatsuki Fujimoto that had been on my to-read list for a long time now, Goodbye, Eri; I ended up reading it in the past few days because I, well, I kinda was on a roll at this point.
As it turns out, Goodbye, Eri also talks about artistic creation to some extent, though this time through movies and shooting videos from your phone, with once again a clever if near-constant paneling resembling a smartphone shooting horizontally. It blurs fiction and reality several times in incredible if increasingly dizzying ways, breaking its own boundaries more and more, causing one to wonder is real and what isn't. It is funny and moving and vertigo-inducing in turn, and meta all the way down.
Goodbye, Eri feels like a terrifying, if extremely well-executed, reminder about how biographies and supposedly real-life fictions can cut out, edit, wrap, embellish, and add to reality in ways that can tell so many different tales - losing access to what was even real in the first place.
It blew my mind a bit, and I'd love to see it adapted into film, too - it feels absolutely made for it.
I cannot help but notice how weak I am to works that talk about creating art these days. About the fear and the difficulty and the exhilaration of it.
It's nice.
Anyway. All this to say that Look Back will probably be my highlight of November, if only for the way it talks about jealousy and about art; and that I really recommend it, through one medium or another.