Fujino draws a celebrated manga for her high school paper. Then one day another strip appears alongside hers by a shut-in classmate who doesn’t attend school: Kyomoto - and the new girl’s artistic abilities shows Fujino’s to be amateurish. A rivalry - and later a friendship - is born as the two head down the path of future mangaka. Until tragedy strikes leading to the question: can one small cartoon strip literally save lives?
Chainsaw Man may be Tatsuki Fujimoto’s cash cow but I much prefer his low-key slice-of-life comics like Goodbye, Eri and Look Back, both of which, while flawed, aren’t bad either.
After realising this was about precocious high schoolers discovering the joy of creating manga together, I was expecting a Bakuman-style comic - and if that was all we got, I wouldn’t have minded because that first volume of Bakuman at least is amazing. But I appreciated that Fujimoto took his story in a wildly different direction in the second half, even if he did so in a very clunky way.
The biggest gripe I have is the character designs. Fujino and Kyomoto look slightly different as kids because they have different hair-dos but otherwise are identical. Then there’s the time jump and it’s not immediately clear who we’re following, particularly as they now look like the other character but aren’t. Fujimoto is a gifted artist but he really needs to make his characters more distinct than simply giving one slightly longer hair than the other, particularly if you’re then going to give a different character the exact same cut as the other character later on down the line! It’s so unnecessarily confusing.
If you follow contemporary Japanese pop culture like me, you’ll know the stories that hit big with that audience are stories that are magical realist and heavily sentimental, so it’s no surprise that Look Back was a success in Japan because it contains hefty dollops of both in the second half.
Not that that’s a bad thing - I’m ok with both, so long as it’s balanced, which it is for the most part - but Fujimoto is a very hands-off storyteller, writing the bare minimum and relying heavily on the imagery to tell his stories for him. It’s laudable - I think that’s the way comics storytelling should be done to some degree - but in the case of the second half of the story, it’s unclear what’s going on or why. It took me a few re-reads to figure out what Fujimoto was doing but I got it, though whether you believe it happened or not is up to the reader. Yes, it’s one of those “impressionistic” endings where you have to figure out for yourself what happened - I don’t dislike those but I know some readers detest them so be warned.
It’s also not clear what Fujimoto is trying to say about manga creation, as a successful manga creator himself (it’s worth noting his name is found in both characters’ names: Fuji in Fujino and Moto in Kyomoto, perhaps indicating that their story is his). You could read the story in a positive light, about how manga created a friendship, how their shared love of something made them both happy and led to them discovering their passions and future careers. The major role a single cartoon strip plays could be read as manga literally changing people’s lives for the better - in one case, if you believe it was real, actually saving a life.
On the other hand, manga leads to months of despondency, a working life that, while successful, leaves the creator isolated, alone, overworked, and depressed. And, of course, that moment that shows that manga can change people’s lives for the worse, as well as for the better, and end lives rather than save them. The story also ends with the question “Then why do you draw?” which is never answered and the final image is a sombre one, perhaps suggesting that Fujimoto himself regrets becoming a mangaka. Or maybe the silent answer is “destiny” and that’s the answer as to whether the previous scenes were real or not - we can’t change our paths in life even if we want to.
Ultimately, Look Back left me with too many questions and zero answers to impress me. I don’t really know what happened in the story or understand what I was meant to take away from it. It’s not a dull read but it’s not the best told story either. The art generally is strong but the character designs didn’t need to be so similar, and the writing could’ve been clearer.
It’s not a bad comic though, and all the more admirable given that Fujimoto is still under 30 and has already created such a significant body of work. Look Back is thoughtful, original and unpredictable - I wasn’t bored reading it. Even if key aspects of the art and storytelling were too lacking for my taste, I’d still say it’s worth a look if you’re into slice-of-life manga. If you’re interested in reading more comics about manga creators getting their start in comics, I highly recommend checking out the Bakuman series.
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