Look Back

Ayumu Fujino may only be in the fourth grade, but she already basks in high praise for her hand-drawn four-panel comics featured in the school's newspaper. However, when she is asked to share the page with Kyoumoto—a reclusive student she has never met—Fujino feels inadequate for the first time: her free-spirited drawings look embarrassingly amateurish next to Kyoumoto's breathtakingly detailed art.

For a year, Fujino shuts out the world, obsessively studying manga creation and drawing tirelessly to catch up to her faceless competition. But Kyoumoto's talent far exceeds hers, and Fujino quits it all. Another year passes, and on the day of their graduation, Fujino finally meets Kyoumoto. This unkempt, shy, and stuttering girl has actually been Fujino's biggest fan all along. Their encounter reignites Fujino's passion for art and sparks the beginning of a years-long friendship built on rivalry, admiration, and their shared love of manga.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kyoumoto Main

Yoshida, Mizuki Japanese

Fujino, Ayumu Main

Kawai, Yuumi Japanese

Man Supporting

Oka, Kouta Japanese

Woman from 4-frame Manga Supporting

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Man from 4-frame Manga Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Caster Supporting

Miyajima, Takeshi Japanese

Classmate Boy Supporting

Fujino's Older Sister Supporting

Maki, Kureha Japanese

Fujino's Grandmother Supporting

Taira, Masumi Japanese

Classmate Supporting

Endou, Rina Japanese

Nagano, Yuuki Producer

Shinozaki, Shinya Producer

Matsumura, Kazuto Producer

Kawaji, Yukino Assistant Producer

Reviews

Aug 11, 2024

InfinityDude88

Recommended

Well-written

With the monumental success of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man it is no wonder that studios immediately turned to adapting more of his works. The concern of course then becomes whether there will be a rush to pump something out regardless of the quality. Thankfully, much like Chainsaw Man, Studio Durian was able to uphold and even uplift Fujimoto’s Look Back and, in the process, create a beautiful, heartfelt and devastating movie that will surely leave an impact for years to come.

Clocking in at only a little over an hour Look Back is a very short film, however it absolutely makes the most of that ... runtime. Beautifully sequenced timelapses emphasise the feeling of constant time passage which establishes a real sense of progression for the film. There is also no time wastage, with every scene playing an important role in either the plot or at tugging on your heartstrings. I also wouldn’t say I was left wanting more by the end, rather that it had an entirely satisfactory and fitting conclusion – perfect for a self-contained movie.

Despite being a relatively new studio, Studio Durian took the opportunity to show off their animation skills with some of the most mind-blowingly smooth and fluid animation in the business. For a film about the creation of manga, crazy animation was certainly not necessary, but it does make the overall package that much better. Any scene with movement whether it be running or paper floating about features dynamic action shots with constant flow, employing the common modern technique of 3d environments to stunning effect. This animation style also perfectly reflects Fujimoto’s style of drawing, with realism less important than the impact and emotion behind the scenes. The thinner, sketchier art style of the manga is also reflected in the movie. I think the perfect example of Durian’s desire to go above and beyond is the opening scene, where they fully animate Fujino’s first yon-koma manga in her style creating an exciting opening out of what could otherwise have been a fairly standard scene.

The music in Look Back is another aspect executed flawlessly. Nakamura Haruka crafted a fitting soundscape composed primarily of piano and strings. Whilst it swells up at times, particularly during the montages, it also knows when to remain minimalistic in order to let the raw emotion be displayed in full. The ending theme (played at a brilliant moment I might add) remains in much the same style as the soundtrack with the addition of soothing vocals to encourage reminiscence on the short but moving experience that just occurred.

I finally want to touch on the theme and story. It is clear from the outset that Look Back is largely a distillation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s experience as a mangaka (if you couldn’t figure it out from the premise, the appearance of the Chainsaw Man parody Shark Kick later on will surely suffice to demonstrate that fact). Fujino’s feelings of incompetency, her struggle to maintain friendships, the clashes in her partnership, the choice between art university and becoming a mangaka outright, and on and on. All of these elements feel as though they are coming from Fujimoto’s heart directly which makes them all the more impactful and realistic when they occur in the film. Even when things exit the realm of reality towards the end, they do so to emphasise the need to push forward and move on whilst respecting and building on the events of the past that is central to the overall message.

Tldr; Look Back is a raw, stunning, beautiful and emotional ride all packed into an hour that left me utterly blown away by the level of craftmanship and heart put into it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Oct 9, 2024

Hellother

Mixed Feelings

Fujimoto-San wrote a very personal story that seemed to be a tribute to someone and it is very hard to understand the motive behind it without knowing more details. With that being said, I’m very glad that the movie made the theater and Fujimoto achieved his goal, and now the movie itself will be remembered and honored by the community.

The story itself is rather simple and plain, without much novelty. It would probably be much more touching to someone that knows the backstory of the characters and their relation to Fujimoto himself. As of now, we do not know much detail behind it and ... unfortunately, Fujimoto did not show up during the post-screen interview to explain it. I would like to know more about the backstory and I think it would help us understand Fujimoto more, about his history and personal motive as a mangaka. I think it will remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.

Regarding the production, the animation is beautiful. The music is great and makes the story so touching. The voice actresses did a great job capturing the personalities of the two characters. Compared to the original manga, the animation did a little more elaboration on the later part of the story and made it less confusing. The movie ended with an open question: ‘why do we draw/create?’ Unfortunately, I couldn’t make an inference about what motivated Fujimoto to draw and create following the movie. I think Fujimoto still owes us an answer.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Dec 9, 2025

1stDecame4Danime

Not Recommended

Oh look, another artist's anime-girl self-insert by this guy. Oh look, it's just like that other one-shot he did about the artistic Sisters' rivalry... Yay

It has a decent start with actual purpose, an actual story. But after that little cloyingly overblown initial rivalry 'conflict' gets resolved (almost handwaved away) in preference for instant enemies-to-lovers gaybaiting via montage in-lieu of any actual character interaction... yeah the story starts spinning its wheels and sputtering as nearly the exact same overblown insecurity (non)conflict recurs on the other foot to fill the screentime and with even more bizarre nonsense about how 'you can't get better by practicing art, you ... have to go to school to do that.' Very weird nonsense from an artist.

By this point it could've been an average 5/10, but unfortunately, as we fast-forward with even more time-skipping montages, the story falls off a cliff as, in signature fashion, Fujimoto decides to scrap everything by flipping the board, and now decides he's writing a KyoAni fanfic with his anime-girl self-inserts instead and just never actually does anything further, just spinning in circles to reminisce with untimely juvenile wish-fulfillment rehashing dream-sequences and flashbacks to even more montages in-lieu of any actual character interaction between these now noncharacters, and finally ends it after spinning its wheels for so long having done nothing with it, ending on nothing. Trash. "It's supposed to be trash because its thematic of trash." Yeah, le big sad, I'm aware. It's still trash.

Themes and depth were extremely shallow. Depression/insecurity. Why? Because. That's all, you're not going to do anything with it? No.
Almost nothing even happens in this artist's self-fellating story about reminiscing about its story. Barely any of it has any narrative purpose. The entire story and every piece therein is merely superficially connected by nature of its (self)-reminiscence theme. Reminds me of Only Yesterday.

The art/animation looks mediocre most of the time. It's often difficult to tell the girls apart because of how their overly simple models are almost identical. The few bits of actual effort put in were absurdly overdone artsy cringe.

The direction is extremely overindulgent, they're really stretching this little oneshot out as much as they can to just barely get to 1 hour for a full movie-length production.

The music would be best described as background noise.

Shallow references to Chainsawman door and Goodbye Eri action-hero 'splosion theater. "Ermagerd that's from the thing!"

All the 4 panel 'comics' by the other girl were literally just landscape background art, that's not even a comic, "SO GOOD" my ass. Why? Because she's the perfect background artist for this artist's self-insert to show manga with story by X and art by Y team! Ermegerd!

2/10 (where 5/10 is average)

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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	Look Back Live Action Movie Announced For 2026 Nouzen_Chainsaw - Dec 2	21 replies	by Mizukie07 »» Dec 11, 7:54 AM
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