Last Year's Most Acclaimed Anime With Perfect Tomatometer Is Available on Prime Video
This is one of the most visually stunning movies of recent years you can't afford to miss.
You may have missed the anime based on Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga of the same name, which debuted on Prime Video on November 7. The author of the acclaimed Chainsaw Man trades in fantasy and bloody battles for a poignant tale of friendship and creativity.
Look Back is a must-see not only for anime fans, but also for those who have never seen anime before. The movie has received extremely positive reviews from critics and viewers alike – on Rotten Tomatoes, Look Back has a score of 100% and 99% respectively.
What Is Look Back About?
Two classmates, Fujino, who is passionate about drawing, and Kyomoto, who studies at home, compete in their creativity on the pages of the school newspaper. Fujino draws manga about funny gym class incidents and bloody car accidents, and Kyomoto creates a series of static but impressive interiors.
The girls envy each other's talent, and their rivalry leads to artistic growth and, later, acquaintance and friendship.
Already in high school they make comics together – Kyomoto is responsible for backgrounds, Fujino for everything else, they win competitions, but this creative partnership is not meant to last forever.
Look Back Is One of the Most Striking Anime Created by Acclaimed Masters
Look Back is a laconic work with a running time of only 58 minutes, mostly without dialog, which looks simply breathtakingly beautiful.
Watching it, you get the feeling that entire departments of storyboard artists were responsible for the dynamic animation of blinking eyes, blushing faces and smiling lips.
The director of this animated wonder is Kiyotaka Oshiyama, making his debut in a feature-length film, a top animator-director who has worked with Hayao Miyazaki, Hideaki Anno, Masaaki Yuasa and Makoto Shinkai – all the great anime directors of our time.
Just Like in Chainsaw Man, the Creator Breaks Stereotypes and Expectations
Tatsuki Fujimoto breaks expectations and mocks stereotypes. Even in Chainsaw Man he breaks the most important rule of the genre: the main character is not a highly moral person with admirable exploits, but an ordinary teenager – he only dreams of eating until he is full and becoming famous.
Look Back also plays with expectations. The main character is envious, boastful, and hypocritical. It is hard to empathize with her, but there seems to be no need. The focus of the story is not the girls, but the process.
Fujimoto hides a poetic parable about the sacrifice of an artist under the story of two mangakas. Expecting a dramatic but sweet story about the path to success, we get a plot about a tragic commitment to a dream.
The creators of the anime ask us to pay attention not to self-realization, but to the path to it. To the complexity of the vocation, to the importance of the support of loved ones, to the moments of the first successes, sometimes more important than the final goal.