"Kiss me again when we're reborn."
"You know, to begin with... I... don't even like drawing manga. It's not fun. The entire process is a hassle. It's super unglamorous. You can draw aaall day long and still be nowhere near finished. Really, I'd be better off just sticking to reading manga. I shouldn't draw it."
Look Back (ルックバック) is a 142 pages long one shot manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto of Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man fame, published in Jump+ in July 2021. It centers on two middle school students and their journey to become mangaka, and the tragedy that befalls them.—Fujino
An animated adaptation, directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama who previously directed Flip Flappers, was announced on February 13, 2024, and released in Japan on June 28th the same year. Teaser
.
Due to the length of the one shot, all spoilers are untagged.
Look Back contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The manga was released in 2021, and set from 2002 to 2016. This isn't really relevant to the plot, but a detail that makes it so Fujimoto's Author Avatars were born around the same time he was.
- All for Nothing: Fujino says a variation after Kyomoto's death:Fujino: "Drawing is completely useless."
- Ambiguous Ending: Kyomoto's pursuit of an art career ends in her murder, causing Fujino to fall into a deep grief and feel extremely disillusioned about her manga career, openly calling it "useless". After a Dream Sequence about a timeline where Fujino was able to save Kyomoto, she enters Kyomoto's room and sees how she still was Fujino's biggest fan after everything. Fujino pulls herself to her feet and gets back to work on her manga, though with her motivation remaining unclear. It's left up to interpretation as to whether Fujino does so to honor the memories she has of Kyomoto, because of the fans who get joy from her work like Kyomoto did, or because after so many years spent on manga, she simply doesn't know how to do anything else.
- Armor-Piercing Question: The one-shot ends with Fujino admitting her disillusionment with drawing in general, but an unknown voice then asks her why she even bothers, then. Notably, Fujino's answer is never given, setting up the Ambiguous Ending.
- Art Shift: The manga sometimes shifts to a more crosshatchy look. This briefly becomes the dominant style when it shows the killer attacking Kyomoto.
- Ascended Fangirl: Kyomoto, as Fujino discovers, is actually a huge fan of her manga in the school paper, and she's later taken in by Fujino as her background artist.
- Author Avatar: Both Fujino and Kyomoto are decomposite stand-ins for Tatsuki Fujimoto. Both end up leading lives that very much reflect his own and Fujino's series Shark Kick is a very obvious amalgamation of Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man.
- Book Ends: The Dream Sequence begins and ends with one of the two heroines making a critical decision after reading a comic from the other timeline that one made about the other.
- Chekhov's Skill: In the alternate timeline where Fujino and Kyomoto never met (at first), the karate skills Fujino learned after giving up drawing is what allows her to save Kyomoto from the attacker.
- Creator Cameo: Fujimoto's editor and partner-in-crime Shihei Lin can be spotted having left a comment of praise on Fujino and Kyomoto's first one-shot.
- Creator Thumbprint: Fujimoto's love of movies and especially the movie theater experience makes its obligatory appearance when Fujino and Kyomoto's day out in the city includes going to the movies.
- Dream Sequence: Near the end of the one-shot, Fujino imagines a world where she had given up on manga, and learned karate with her sister, and was thus able to save Kyomoto's life.
- Establishing Character Moment: Fujino is first seen humble-bragging about her skills as an artist, but also mentioning that she has no desire for an entire career in manga and prefers athletics. This sets up how Fujino ultimately has no passion for drawing beyond her pride and making Kyomoto happy.
- Foreign Language Title: Even in Japanese, the series title is in English.
- Friendly Rivalry: Fujino and Kyomoto have elements of it, with both being deeply inspired by the other to improve their art. It's tragically used as the reason Fujino blames herself for Kyomoto's death, feeling like her friendship pushed her to go to art school.
- Good-Times Montage: Three of them.
- After earning money from their one-shot, Fujino treats Kyomoto to a day out in the city, bringing her to places she never had the courage to visit due to her agoraphobia. The montage ends with the two returning home on a train, with Kyomoto thanking Fujino for bringing her out of her room.
- Fujino and Kyomoto have another one where they are shown having fun creating their manga one-shots and going on trips with their newly earned money, eventually culminating in the fateful news of Fujino being serialized that would soon tear them apart due to differing life goals.
- After Kyomoto's death, Fujino goes through a depressive bout and realizes that she actually dislikes drawing manga. When asked why she bothers, a montage answers the question in the form of all the times Kyomoto happily approved of all of Fujino's rough manuscripts.
- Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight:
- After many hints throughout the one-shot, Fujino fully admits near the end that she actually dislikes drawing manga. The inciting incident that led to her focusing much of her childhood on her art was her anger that Kyomoto upstaged her in the school paper after enjoying success as their school's best artist. But the ending makes it clear that while she ultimately has zero passion for it, the happiness it brought Kyomoto and possibly others was what kept her going, which she does after coming to terms with Kyomoto's death.
- Kyomoto herself is an inverse. She is incredibly shy, but is genuinely passionate about art and spends her days drawing while she was too scared to leave her house. What drives her and Fujino apart was her wanting to improve her craft by attending art school, which would clash with her commitment to being Fujino's background artist.
- In Spite of a Nail: The timeline where Fujino and Kyomoto never meet still has the latter taking an interest in background art and attending art school. She's also still attacked there but is saved by Fujino, and the two still end up wanting to partner up to make manga together.
- In the Style of: Analysis of the one-shot has drawn comparisons to the works of Inio Asano, a mangaka well-known for his own somber Coming of Age stories filled with tragedy.
- Loners Are Freaks: A significant part of the one-shot centers on how lonely making art can be. Fujino as a child is shown to be a relatively normal and outgoing, but starts to be ostracized by her friends and has a more distant relationship with her family as she becomes fixated on being a good artist. Even when she becomes friends with Kyomoto, their lives revolve around making art, and Fujino questions if sacrificing so much for it mattered at all after Kyomoto's death.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Dream Sequence that takes up much of the final act. It's incited by Fujino tearing up her mean-spirited 4-koma, a scrap of which slips into Kyomoto's room in the past and prevents her from meeting Fujino. Then the sequence ends with Kyomoto drawing her own 4-koma about Fujino saving her from the attacker, which is blown out of her room by a sudden breeze that startles her. Fujino finds the strip and an open window in Kyomoto's room, and tapes it above her desk at home. It's not clear if there really was some weird Alternate Timeline going on, if Kyomoto's spirit somehow passed it along to Fujino, or if it's all coincidental and merely symbolic.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Fujino and Kyomoto both dress and look very androgynous when they're young (their grade school apparently doesn't have uniforms). One could easily assume either was male until they're shown in female clothing, which for Kyomoto takes nearly half the oneshot's length.
- Pen Name: Fujino creates Shark Kick under the name "Kyo Fujino", which was the pen name she and Kyomoto used when they were producing one-shots together.
- Production Foreshadowing: Shark Kick is on its eleventh volume and promises a Volume 12 after Fujino returns from hiatus. Chainsaw Man Part 1 lasted also at eleven volumes and Look Back was created during Fujimoto's hiatus before he works on Part 2.
- Production Throwback:
- The story revisits major elements from Sisters, the oneshot Fujimoto made between Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man. Both are about a pair of female artists who feel inadequate about their abilities compared the other. Fujimoto even calls Sister "foundational" for creating Look Back in his short story collection.
- Kyomoto's 4-koma in elementary school is made up of scenery from Chainsaw Man.
- Kyomoto's background art book features art from Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man.
- On the fateful day of the massacre, Kyomoto is painting Denji's door.
- Pun-Based Title: In addition to being a reference to Oasis, many shots of Fujino working are seen from behind; the reader is looking at her back.
- Reclusive Artist: A major theme of the story. Kyomoto stopped attending school from a very young age, apparently due to anxiety and agoraphobia, and took up drawing to pass the time. It's also shown how Fujino's dedication to making manga isolates her from her friends and family. After Kyomoto's death, Fujino questions if art ruined their lives, and if her friendship led to Kyomoto's attending art school and being killed.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The one shot was released on the second anniversary of the Kyoto Animation arson attack, and midway through the story a man suffering from similar delusions of his work being plagiarized suddenly attacks artists and kills many people, including Kyomoto.
- Self-Deprecation: In-story, Shark Kick is meant to symbolize that the best Fujino could do artistically was a gimmicky superhero serial that while successful fails to meet her own high standards borne from seeing Kyomoto's beautiful paintings. On a metatextual level, it highlights how either Fire Punch or Chainsaw Man can be viewed as such at a glance.
- Shout-Out:
- The entire sequence of the timeline where Fujino and Kyomoto never met very obviously takes heavy inspiration from the similar history-diverging Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where a massacre is prevented and a notable victim is saved. Fujino is even last seen loaded into an ambulance after stopping the attacker much like Brad Pitt's character in the film's ending.
- The title of the story is taken from the Oasis song "Don't Look Back In Anger", tying in with the manga's themes about regrets.
- Kyomoto can be seen wearing a CatDog shirt in one panel.
- The books Fujino bought to improve her art are actual books and include the works of Andrew Loomis, Joseph Sheppard and Jack Hamm.
- Show Within a Show: Fujino's serialized Shark Kick, which is going eleven volumes strong and getting its own anime adaptation.
- Shrinking Violet: Kyomoto was a highly agoraphobic truant who is later shown to not even be able to handle basic eye contact when speaking to people who aren't Fujino. In both timelines shown, she eventually breaks out of it and attends art school.
- Squee: Kyomoto's reaction to meeting Fujino is to nervously beg for an autograph, then loudly becoming excited when Fujino claims that she's thinking of making a manga to enter into a contest.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Although lacking most of the author's bizarre violence and horror elements, the third act still has a disturbing sequence of the murderer attacking Kyomoto.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Kyomoto and 11 others at her art school are killed by a random act of violence by a delusional man halfway through the one shot. The remainder of the story is centered on Fujino dealing with the grief of losing Kyomoto.
- Technician vs. Performer: Kyomoto is the Technician to Fujino's Performer. Kyomoto's art focuses primarily on scenery, making her art high quality, but otherwise nothing more than Scenery Porn. Fujino's talents meanwhile is based on her eye for humor and (presumably based on the apparent acclaim for Shark Kick) story. Kyomoto idolized Fujino's combination writing and drawing ability while Fujino was envious of Kyomoto's technically impressive artwork.
- Title Drop: The strip that the alternate Kyomoto drew about Fujino saving her from her killer is titled "Look Back".
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The classmate that said that Fujino's art was amateurish compared to Kyomoto's, inciting a series of events that leads Fujino to an unfulfilling life as a mangaka and Kyomoto indirectly to her death.
- Wingding Eyes: Kyomoto's eyes noticeably sparkle when she's excited about Fujino's manga.
- Yonkoma: The elementary school's newspaper strips takes the form of four panel comics; Fujino's are all gag comics, while Kyomoto's are all collections of scenery.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
- Fujino was driven to improve her art out of jealousy for Kyomoto's own skills, only to discover to her internalized delight that Kyomoto was essentially her biggest fan just as she had decided to quit drawing. This pushes her to seriously pursue a career in manga.
- This sentiment is repeated in the ending, where in her grief over Kyomoto's death, Fujino enters her room and finds copies of Shark Kick, showing that for the remainder of her life, Kyomoto stayed Fujino's biggest fan and continued to idolize her. This inspires Fujino to accept that while she might have become disillusioned with manga, it means something to someone like Kyomoto out there and they deserve to see what happens next.
"Then why do you draw, Fujino?"
