With more than 280,000 visitors, the anime “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” also became a cinema phenomenon in Germany last year. The titular devil hunter with his chainsaw limbs is the most popular creation of manga artist Tatsuki Fujimoto, who also achieved massive success with both critics and readers in 2021 with the immensely personal one-shot manga “Look Back”. As a result, two film projects developed in parallel: First, the anime “Look Back” was released in 2024, on which the director and illustrator Kiyotaka Oshiyama – like his young protagonists – worked to the point of physical exhaustion in order to do justice to the raw, sketch-like style of the original.
The reward: Despite a small budget and a running time of just 58 minutes, overwhelming word of mouth ensured that the film stayed at the top of the Japanese box office charts for weeks. Two years later, the live-action film follows, with a much more generous budget – and that too is sure to hit like a bomb again. The Japanese master director and Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Koreeda (“Shoplifters”) has never filmed a manga before, but is famous for regularly eliciting stronger performances from his child actors than anyone else. This is no different in “Look Back” – and so it is pure happiness to accompany two young girls in their unwavering drawing careers. Until fate strikes in a merciless, heartbreaking way.
The confident Fujino (Furi Nanase) and the shy Kyomoto (Rokka Okada) become best friends through their shared passion for drawing manga.
Fourth grader Fujino (Furi Nanase) is proud to draw two short manga strips for the school newspaper per issue. However, she doesn’t see any reason to try harder, after all, she’s already guaranteed everyone’s admiration. But that changes when one day her teacher asks her if she could, as an exception, give up one of the places to another student who is officially part of the school but doesn’t leave her own house because of her phobias. Fujino confidently agrees, but also asks: “If she doesn’t even dare to go to school, how can she draw manga?”
But then the surprise: Kyomoto’s (Rokka Okada) Drawings are much more ambitious and detailed than those of Fujino, who doesn’t just accept the “defeat” but spends the entire summer hunched over her desk with drawing textbooks to work on her technique. But even that isn’t enough to get to Kyomoto. At some point, completely frustrated, Fujino even wants to give up her passion when the two girls finally meet in person for the first time. It is the beginning of a wonderful friendship and an artistic partnership that lasts for years…
Sooooooooo beautiful…
Luckily, movies don’t have calories, because the first two thirds of “Look Back” are as sweet as a story can be – and that’s not meant negatively, on the contrary: Furi Nanase and Rokka Okada, who are also classmates in real life, have fantastic chemistry together – and their almost unconditional passion for drawing is highly contagious. When her friends or her big sister try to convince Fujino to finally get up from her desk to go to the ice cream parlor or go to karate training, you almost want to chase her out of the room. There is nothing more fulfilling for elementary school students than finishing the next manga panel, and at some point the audience will feel the same way.
Nothing changes when Fujino and Kyomoto get older and are now played by Natsuki Deguchi (“Drawing Closer”) and Aju Makita (“House Of Ninjas”). As preparation, the two actresses completed a four-month crash course in manga drawing in order to be able to carry out the movements of their passionate activity as accurately as possible. The live-action “Look Back” film lasts 40 minutes longer than the anime – and a lot of that is made up of the scenes in which the camera looks over the girls’ shoulders as they work. Over the years they get better and better – and with them the methods become more and more sophisticated. Great importance was also placed on the correct sound of the rustling pencils and scratching fountain pens.
… and sooooooooo sad!
About two thirds of the way there is a twist that pulls the rug out from under not only the characters, but also the audience. If you don’t know the background of the manga, the sudden catastrophe probably seems a bit arbitrary (perhaps even undeserved). But Tatsuki Fujimoto also wrote “Look Back” as a direct response to the tragic arson attack on the legendary anime studio KyoAni in 2019. He simply had to write it to cope with the grief – and that’s probably why the characters’ desire to also HAVE to create art is so incredibly authentic.
Hirokazu Koreeda is also aware of this responsibility. “Look Back” was shot with a huge amount of extra effort over a year and a half to be able to film in all seasons without having to resort to special effects. The shots of the small lake in front of the town where Fujino and Kyomoto go to school are particularly reminiscent of the old European masters – and “Look Back” is simply beautiful in other respects, both as a manga and now also as a live-action film.
Conclusion: Sooo beautiful and sooo sad – a congenial film adaptation of the manga by “Chainsaw Man” mastermind Tatsuki Fujimoto, in which “Nobody Knows” director Hirokazu Koreeda once again proves, among other things, that no one can work better with child actors than him.
We saw Look Back at the Venice Film Festival, where it had its world premiere as part of the official competition.