Look Back Review – Bittersweet Yet Hurried
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
The beginning of this one-shot manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto is absolutely joyous – it begins with a happy, confident, energetic 9-year-old Fujino, who always draws a comedic 4-panel manga for the weekly school newspaper. All her classmates love her artwork and think she should be a manga artist when she grows up.
“A manga artist? I don’t know… sitting at a desk and drawing all day sounds boring,” Fujino thinks out loud, after casually letting out that her latest comic strip took her only 5 minutes to draw. I love the cocky confidence displayed by Fujino, the kind only young budding artists can have, before they are tainted by the harsh realities of just how cutthroat the world of manga is. But Fujino’s confidence takes a severe hit when another classmate called Kyomoto, who rarely comes to school, sends in an almost professionally drawn comic strip for the newspaper. For the first time, Fujino thinks her work is not good enough and almost gives up on drawing. But a stroke of fate makes the two girls become friends, and they push each other to make great manga together.
“Look Back” poignantly depicts how two people perceive the same situations in a vastly different away. Tatsuki Fujimoto uses one of the oldest tropes in the friendship playbook – he pits the extroverted, self-assured, happy-go-lucky Fujino with the asocial, shy, nervous wreck Kyomoto, as the latter spends all her time shut in her house, drawing. But Fujino slowly becomes just as reclusive as Kyomoto, spending most of time drawing, to excel in her craft. Except that the two girls grow together, making an entire manga one-shot together, when they are all of thirteen.
“Look Back” is a touching look at how friends can push each other to grow together, even though Kyomoto largely remains under Fujino’s shadow, drawing backgrounds for the manga, while Kyomoto draws the characters and their actions. Their artwork also becomes symbolic of their friendship, Fujino is the lead, Kyomoto is the supporting character. Towards the climax, the friendship and collaboration between the girls ends on a bitter tone and the story takes an unexpected tragic turn.
For a story about manga, and art, the illustrations by Tatsuki Fujimoto aren’t exceptional, and some of the panels look like hurried second drafts. But I haven’t read any of the artist’s other works, including the hugely popular “Chainsaw Man” (which also has a popular anime adaptation), so I don’t know if the art for this one-shot is different from his other works. If it’s the creator’s way of showing what artwork by a young artist should look like, then maybe, that’s an interesting way to look at it. Doesn’t change the fact that the panels aren’t as visually appealing as I expected it to be.
In the second-half, the manga gets confusing for a bit, where a ‘what if…’ kind of an alternative reality is explored and I had to look back at a few panels to understand what was happening. Whether or not this was a deliberate ploy to make readers look back at the story, as a clever play on the title – I am not sure. Regardless, it’s a little annoying. Besides, the tragic turn of events felt unnecessary to me. Sure, it’s the creator’s way of showing how uncertain, pointless, and cataclysmic life can be, but oh well, I just didn’t like the ending! Maybe it needed 50 more pages to sink in, allowing readers to adapt to the fast-changing events in what starts as a slow, sweet world of two budding artists.
Rating: 3 on 5.
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