Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Look Back’ on Amazon Prime Video, a Poignant Dramatic Anime About the Pain and Passion of Being an Artist

Look Back (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) adapts Tatsuki Fujimoto’s hit 2021 manga about, well, making a hit manga. And director/animator Kiyotaka Oshiyama made it an acclaimed anime that racked up good reviews and grossed $6.4 million at the box office in Japan. It’s not the first time Oshiyama (whose resume includes being a key animator on Studio Ghibli films such as The Boy and the Heron and The Wind Rises) has worked with Fujimoto; the former worked on the adaptation of the latter’s far less gentle and far more violent Chainsaw Man series, which I’m not familiar with, but I assume doesn’t have quite as much to say about the nature of creating and reflecting upon one’s own art, like Look Back does so well. 

LOOK BACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The wind has been taken out of Fujino’s (Yumi Kawai) sails. Gut punch. Whufff. Her manga strips in the school newspaper are a smash hit, but a new artist’s strip sits next to hers and, well, ego blow. Not that Fujino’s are bad. Not at all. But this new strip is full of Fine Drawings. Amazing detailed landscapes and such. Which, juxtaposed with Fujino’s goofy comix – which are at least darkly funny – make her feel inadequate. So she drops all social interaction from her life and draws draws draws draws draws to get better. Envy and jealousy are quite the motivator.

Time passes, as it does. Fujino’s friends have given up on her and her parents and siblings are all like your test scores are down, what gives? But she’s too busy drawing to even look up and acknowledge anyone. Then her teacher passes out the next issue of the school paper and she sees the other artist’s work and gives up. Back to being a normal, non-obsessed kid. But about this mystery artist: Her name is Kyomoto (Mizuki Yoshida) and she doesn’t attend school. She stays home and does her work. And now Fujino is asked to deliver Kyomoto’s congrats-you’ve-graduated-to-middle-school diploma. She reluctantly agrees.

What Fujino finds is a quiet home stacked with notebooks full of sketches, and from behind a closed door emerges a painfully shy bundle of anxiety with hair over her face. Now, we should point out something crucial here: If Fujino’s drawings are an apple, Kyomoto’s drawings are an orange. “Comic” art is one thing and “fine” art is another. Comparing the two is silly, but we’re talking about young people who lack wisdom and are apt to veer from one emotional extreme to the other. Anyway, Kyomoto manages to stammer out that she’s a HUGE FAN of Fujino’s manga and wants her autograph. Huh. Not sure we (or Fujino) expected that. More importantly, how would Fujino’s figures look overtop Kyomoto’s backgrounds? Smashing. Absolutely smashing. Is this the beginning of a bee-yoo-tiful friendship? Spoiler alert: Yes!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Haven’t seen an anime this chill since the sweet story of friendship Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Both Kawai and Yoshida give relatively understated vocal performances that help cultivate our empathy for these characters.

Memorable Dialogue: On off-screen voice asks the question Fujino kinda struggles to answer: “Why do you draw, Fujino?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: You can sense Fujimoto and Oshiyama perhaps exploring their own efforts in the act of creating art in the subtext of Look Back – and you can also reach a bit, maybe not too far, and assert that they perhaps reflect the traits of either character here, or at least elements of them. Fujino and Kyomoto follow their youthful obsessions, writing and drawing a full manga that wins them a contest with a tidy cash prize (inspiring a spending-spree montage that reminded me of Bart and Milhouse’s all-syrup Squishee bender, and please take that as a compliment), and the narrative jumps through their teen years to a point where, sadly or inevitably or both, their artistic goals diverge. 

Throughout, and as the story follows Fujino’s success as a manga illustrator and Kyomoto’s attempts to improve her skills at art school, one senses Fujimoto and Oshiyama tightroping the line between art as a passion and art as a career. It’s a precarious place to stand. When does what you love become work? The narrative focuses more on Fujino as she sits at her desk drawing for hours, hunched and lonely and surrounded by clutter, and the implication is, even though her manga sells well, this is fairly grueling, almost assembly-line work. Is this rewarding? On some levels, yes, but she almost certainly looks back and wonders when she crossed the aforementioned line, and if the friendship she had with Kyomoto was the true reward. This latter point is underscored somewhat unnecessarily during a very YA-anime melodramatic turn, but its poignant and pointed themes remain intact: As we come of age, how do we tend to the core, naive notions that fuel our passion? There’s no easy answer for it.

Our Call: Look Back is a deep, thoughtful examination of the life of artists, and the contradictions they wrestle with. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.