FUJINO (LEFT) AND KIYOMOTO (RIGHT) IN LOOK BACKKYOTAKA OSHIYAMA: LOOK BACK (2024) JAPAN CUTS 2024 Animation about two girls who become successful manga artistsThis is the story of contrasting schoolgirls Fugino and Kiyomoto who both love drawing manga Japanese comic book art. Ayumu Fujino (voiced by Yuumi Kawai) is confident and attends school, wild-eyed, tousled-haired Kyomoto (Mizuki Yoshida) is a shut-in too shy to talk to a convenience store clerk. They start competing for the four pictures in the weekly school newspaper. Eventually they meet when Fugino is sent to deliver Kiyomoto's school diploma, and Fugino coaxes Kiyomoto out of her shell and they become successful collaborators, Fugino doing the foregrounds and Kiyomoto the backgrounds, winning an award even though they're still in school. When Kiyomoto chooses to go to art university, trouble comes.
Whether the trouble is dire or finds a happy outcome is uncertain since the story is told in several versions. After all, Japan is the home of
Rashomon. And this is itself based on a manga book. What is notable is these are two girls who find success in a loving collaboration doing manga art. It's also about the drive to succeed and questioning how to live one's life.
The idea comes up that while Fugino wants to become more skillful at manga - early on a set of drawings sent in by Kiyomoto seems more accomplished - and gets books and fills drawing books with her sketches to improve - her fellow students complain that she is becoming an otaku and not fun anymore. Later when she gives up drawing manga, it seems like a liberating choice. The story about the fascination with manga, anime, and other forms of popular culture also considers that in its extreme form makes someone an otaku, an obsessive. But for a while the two girls become a very successful team, producing one popular series of manga books after another.
Mixed messages here? Yes, but it seems the essence of this kind of storytelling that alternative versions are offered, flashbacks, flash-forwards, fantasies, dreams, and nightmares all considering a subject from different angles and in different moods. The last minutes of the film consist of a series of stills, again depicting Futino and Kiyomoto's happy times of collaboration and friendship.
The violence that comes to one of the girls could be frightening to young readers or viewers, and one of the conclusions is that maybe Kiyomoto should never have been lured from her seclusion. Again one is reminded of the prevalence of reclusive youths in Japan, with now an estimated half million Hikikomori, living shut away with their families. Anyway,
Look Back is made up of regrets as much as of successes.
Based on an award-winning manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, creator of the popular
Chainsaw Man,.
Look Back ルックバック ("Rukku Bakku") 56 min., debuted Juh. 10, 2024 at Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Screened for this review as part of the 2024 New York Japan Cuts series (Jul. 10-21).
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