Film Review: Kiyotaka Oshiyama's "Look Back"

"Making manga is hard. Even if I draw all day I still don't finish. We should just stick to reading it" Fujino thinks to herself in a flashback at the end of Look Back. The act of creation, on its face, is meaningless. If you're good enough, and lucky enough, you might get into a position to grow a career and gain some fans; a good reward but miniscule. Going after that reward requires sacrifice: decades of continued hard work, frustration, cut connections, getting rejected, others not believing in your future. Reading manga is meaningful, can even be life changing, but is enjoyable and often effortless. Faced with these questions, Kyomoto asks Fujino "then why do you draw?" 

4th grader Fujino is a naturally gifted storyteller, and her art is rough but has an obvious charm. With no competition and nothing but praise from her peers, she coasts on the validation and is convinced that she is a once-in-a-generation talent and the best of her age group. Her talent is genuine, and the film renders her school newspaper comic strips in delightfully rough animations, capturing the amateurish charm of her artwork and the obvious humor of her writing in the sort of memorable visual style that reminds me of the large-eyed, thick-lipped doodles my peers in elementary school liked to draw. The concepts and execution of her comics are legitimately high quality, as evidenced by everyone in my theater including myself laughing out loud at her gags. But this is rough talent brought with little effort, and when compared to a clearly more refined artist once shut-in Kyomoto shares the newspaper slot with her she comes face to face with the meaninglessness of creating art. 

One reason Fujino draws is for validation. Her initial motivation is because she likes the praise from her classmates. When Kyomoto is given the slot she treats it as if it's a given her work will stand out in comparison, and when a classmate says the exact opposite she desperately works to improve hoping to win that validation back. When her friends complain that she's not hanging out with them and she realizes she's not improving fast enough compared to her competition, she gives up, but later when she meets Kyomoto and is praised, they hit it off and become friends, the validation rekindling her motivation as presented in one of the film's most memorable and beautiful sequences when Fujino skips home in the rain.

But validation is never the complete picture. Fujino is also great at sports, a classmate tells her it's a potential alternative to becoming a manga author, but Fujino never considers it. And when she quits, it's reluctantly. Moreover, their complaints are not about her skill, they're about how little attention she gives them. Only Fujino thinks about the quality of her work, meaning that she does care about it. In her triumphant skip home, it's not just validation that creates the euphoria, but pride in her work. Her rival respects her, and was inspired by her, and the fact that she can make a difference to someone is meaningful to her. The most meaningful thing Kyomoto says is "thanks for pulling me out of the room," a line that cements their bond forever and puts forth great art into the world, all stemming from Fujino's desperation to create art. 

The second half of the story challenges this narrative. Without spoiling anything, events force us to question the worth of pulling Kyomoto out of her room. The prior parts of the story are dedicated to cementing the bond between these characters and the wholesome, positive effect it has on both of them, but in the end, their relationship has holes poked in. Even in Fujino's alternate universe fantasy, nothing truly changes, both characters take a similar path and continue to make art, and still meet and connect, but something still feels lost. Art is important because it creates empathy, it is unique in its ability to draw people together and change lives. There is something strange about the way that art can impact people, and a life spent experiencing and creating art that helps people live feels preferable to one where we do not; a world where Kyomoto doesn't leave the room. Art is the very essence of life, we must create art to allow people to live. It is a burden, but that is the joy of artistry, and one way they fight to survive. 

To that end, director Kiyotaka Oshiyama and his team at Studio Durian have created incredible life of their own. Look Back is a work by artists for artists and about artists, those who are keen on details will adore everything about the way this has been constructed. The director said he was given significant freedom to adapt this work how he wanted, although making Fujimoto-sensei happy was a primary goal. He wanted to give the film the aesthetic of an independent production, and also wanted to emulate the medium of manga that it celebrates in specific. The characters are designed loosely and Oshiyama said he hoped to allow the individual touch of his staff to stay in the final work, which can be felt in how differently the characters behave in animation at various points in the film. He also said he hoped the background art would emulate those found in manga by applying techniques like cross-hatching, and I believe that comes through in the detail, shading, and perspectives of each shot. Character acting is realistic and lively, but will shift into something looser and more freeing if it makes a climax land harder or gives extra personality to a character, and the shot compositions is always great but stands out in the moments where it prioritizes subjectivity, like when Fujino sees Kyomoto's art for the first time, realizes she's not as special as she hoped, and becomes lost as an unremarkable desk in a huge sea of classmates far larger than her actual class. Look Back is an utter visual joy, stunningly directed and constantly animated and with clear respect for the various art forms that went into it. 

In particular, I want to give praise to voice actors Yumi Kawai and Mizuki Yoshida. This was both of their first times voice acting and they were perfect fits for their role. There's a nervous energy to their performances that Oshiyama claimed he was attracted to in them, even telling Mizuki to not practice because he liked the roughness in her performance. As Fujino, Yumi has a performative confidence to her tone, the character puts up an act of bravado which realistically comes off as confidence for the 4th grader, but evolves into something more hesitant later on and especially during a climactic confrontation between the leads. Mizuki's Kyomoto always sounds labored, as if she's physically struggling to force her words out. It's such a perfect fit for the shut-in Kyomoto that I instantly understood why the director told her to not practice. Kyomoto is a person who is rough around the edges, nervous but well meaning and always trying her best, so gaining confidence would hurt the portrayal of the character. That struggle to express her thoughts is vital to her character, and gives extra weight to when she does manage to get things out. While Fujino is better at talking, Kyomoto is better at making people understand her feelings, and that dichotomy shines in these performances. 

All of this praise needs to be placed in context though. Look Back is a movie heavily involved with human relationships and the passage of time, and while I think it has succeeded better than anything on the level of thematic cohesion and its heartfelt love letter to the necessity of art, I feel it falters noticeably in these additional human elements. The relationship between Fujino and Kyomoto is central to the film, the two of them form a close bond and are seen growing up together from 6th grade through college age. However, Look Back's length totals just 62 minutes, leaving limited ways of expressing the passage of time and changes over time. I feel as if Look Back is almost too tight for its own good, every second of the film progresses the story and characters so there's little fat to serve as emotional texture or connective tissue.

For example, most of the growing bond between Fujino and Kyomoto is conveyed through montages. They cover numerous years of time, and because their routine never changes across these montages it becomes clear to us that they continue to grow closer by sharing that routine over the years. They develop a workflow and spend most of their time together, their rooms changing and becoming warmer as more work and pride piles up. These montages capture the essence of their relationship, but they do not let me actively live through it. For all the time the film wants to convey these characters sharing, I do not feel that I've spent a comparable amount of time with them, and I never get to see the specifics of what their dynamic feels like both in and outside of their work. There are limited individual moments where they get to bond, but even those feel truncated. In one scene, the girls trek through winter weather to a convenience store so they can see the results of a competition in a magazine. Each step in the plot is animated, we see them walking to the store, going to the magazine rack, and reacting to their results. But there are so many more emotions present in the scene that the viewer doesn't get to experience; the anticipation as they leave home and suffer walking in the cold, the tension of opening the page to see the result, them running back home in excitement; the sorts of things that make relationships between characters feel tangible and the emotions of a moment feel palpable. 

After this scene, the girls spend a day out celebrating and buying a bunch of stuff. We get the before, where Fujino shows the money and insists to spend time out, and we get the after, where they've already been out and are reflecting on the day, but we get none of the actual moments they spend having fun together, not even a montage; despite this moment being among their most friendship defining. The moments the film chooses to let us live through in earnest are its climaxes, which play out for a fair duration of time. Its most triumphant and most tragic moments are played in real time, and it makes them impactful emotional punches. But that same ability to live through the moment in real time is not afforded to the mundane moments, and I'd argue they're even more important. Although Fujino and Kyomoto are absolutely charming dorks in many individual moments, and have surprisingly complex psychologies, I always felt at odds with the intimacy of their actual relationship, never feeling it on the level that I feel I'm meant to at any point in time. When the characters argue and Fujino is hiding her real feelings behind harsh words, it did affect me, but a part of me also thought "I don't feel like I've seen your connection enough to fully empathize with this motivation."

Perhaps there is something an artist can intuit about their relationship which I cannot. Their relationship isn't just friendship, it's respect and collaboration as artists who bring each other to greater heights. As someone who would love to create but has reservations about using any medium I have available to me, and who has made very little art, part of me thinks I might not be privy to the kind of intimacy the film wants to convey. This is a film by artists for artists and about artists, I know that artists can understand and intuit each other in ways the average person cannot, and I am an art appreciator but not an artist. That is a bias I bring into the film, I am a person living out Fujino's comment about "sticking to just reading because making art is a pain," for better and for worse. 

Nonetheless, I feel that this aspect of their relationship could have been improved. And I don't feel my lack of experience with art creation impacts my perception of time. Because many years pass in the story, change is implied to have occurred. But due to the brisk pace, I never felt I could settle into any particular time period and intuit the changes between them. Pre-montage and post-montage never felt different for me in the ways that matter, the characters age and new developments happen but I don't get to live through their lives and experiences in the everyday enough to feel those changes. I feel like everyday living is vital to the ethos of this story, the burden and joy of making art is a way of life, and that way of life doesn't feel as tangible to me because the film doesn't let me take part in their artistic processes. It's hard to look back when I don't feel as if I've lived through enough experiences to look back on. 

This is not a damning flaw, but it is a noticeable mismatch between the emotional swing of its big moments and the lived impact of the smaller ones that lead into them. I'd liken it to a baseball player who hits a ball with just about perfect form, but doesn't quite pull the bat far back enough to anticipate the hit. It hits the ball reasonably far and the player gets to the base, but it's missing just a bit of set-up to bring it to the edge of the outfield or over the fence. The big moments come and they land, but for as big as they swing the landing is never quite as far as I'd hope it is, and feel like it could be. 

Nonetheless, Look Back takes huge swings and they do land in the end. It is an ambitious movie, and an important one. We live in an era where art is seen more and more as commodity, and its real purpose as a vehicle for empathy, conversation, and emotional realization is downplayed by the ones who get to decide the future of art (which unfortunately is not the people who create art). In some ways, it's a miracle that Look Back exists in this era. It has a non-standard length for a film, a visual style that is anything but corporate, and a message that rings loud in a world of fandoms and franchises. More than ever, we need this message right now, even if it doesn't resonate with me as much as I had hoped. In spite of my own thoughts, this film has clearly resonated very strongly with people, and that is undeniably a very good sign for the future of art. That is why we draw. 

Pros:

- Cohesive, thought provoking story about why it's meaningful to make art
- Lovable protagonists with endearing chemistry
- Stellar animation, background art, and cinematography
- Fantastic voice acting from both leads
- Ambitious and important without pretension, rings true now more than ever

Cons:

- Too focused on plot and themes, at the expense of in-the-moment lived experience
- Pacing doesn't reflect passage of in-universe time
- Soundtrack is pretty but didn't stand out to me
- Being singularly from the perspective of artists might limit its resonance