Look Back

With a tunnel gaze that never turns away from the sketchpad for a moment, with a bent back whose position rarely gets a break, the drawing of every conceivable gesture is practised down to the last detail. Textbooks on perspective or human anatomy pile up, while the seasons simply pass by outside the window. These are not only the creative beginnings of Chainsaw Man creator and the mangaka behind Look Back, Tatsuki Fujimoto, but also those of his protagonist Fujino. However, the usually very laid-back schoolgirl is not chasing a grandiose dream of publishing her manga, nor does she even long for such a career path. On the contrary, she told her friends that she imagines the life of a manga artist to be rather dull and that she only scribbles her contributions for the school magazine in a few minutes. Nevertheless, she collects plenty of praise from her peers for these little stories and likes to rest on her laurels. It is only when her works are put into direct comparison with those of her introverted classmate Kiyomoto that she is suddenly gripped by ambition, but also by the question of what her motivation for drawing and storytelling is actually based on?

Based on the autobiographical manga by Tatsuki FUJIMOTO (Chainsaw Man, 2018), anime director Kiyotaka OSHIYAMA succeeds in perfectly realising the driven vibe of the original story. This is his first (almost) feature-length anime, having previously directed the series Flip Flappers (2016). The voice of Fujino is spoken by star actress Yuumi KAWAI, who can be seen in two leading roles in Japannual this year: Desert of Namibia and A Girl Named Ann.