I wanted to read 'Look Back' after I watched the anime short film adaptation on Amazon Prime, and I was looking for something different to my usual manga tastes. Something different, critically acclaimed, and short.
Indeed, 'Look Back' is unlike most manga I have ever read before, and it is a good thing.It is one of the most beautiful, moving, heartwrenching drama/slice-of-life manga I have come across in my near two decades of reading manga. It is as brilliant and unforgettable as the anime adaptation. It is a sweet, simple and terse one-shot manga that can be devoured in under half an hour, but wow does it expertly manage well at packing in a lot of details, emotions, and themes in such a small amount of space and time.
The art is spectacular and fantastic, as are the leads, two budding female manga artists from childhood, Ayumu Fujino and Kyomoto (I don't think we ever find out her first name). They are opposites in personality and skill sets, and they complement one another and draw popular manga together. The English translation is handled great, as well.
I don't want to spoil much about this masterfully laconic piece of art, but just know before reading or watching that it is a beautiful story about art and life, and tragedy.
'Look Back' - what would you do if you could go back, and change things, make other choices, prioritise other goals, and thus go about your whole life differently? Would anything really change for you, and other people you know? What about your drives and passions? What about your creative outlets? What about the people you'll get to meet and know if you follow those creative outlets?
How about just one person? A single person who will end up mattering more to you than anyone else, due to your connection to your life's goal and passion?
For sometimes, one person, one friend, is enough.
Except, of course, you can't go back. You can look back, but you can't change what's already past. You can't change anything. You can't eradicate anything from existence, or save anything. Life is not like an artist's drawing board and blank slate, or an empty comic panel you can erase or throw away easily if you make mistakes. What's done is done, set in stone, for the rest of your life. There is no time travel available, no comforting alternate timelines to fall back on.
You can only move forward from mistakes, and life's random, unfair, catastrophic tragedies.
You can only live.
Keep moving forward, always. Keep whatever - and whoever - you loved and lost in your past in your heart. Do whatever motivates you - drives you - to keep on living. Even if your reason for living is "useless" art.
Art isn't useless or worthless. It isn't silly, stupid, meaningless, and a waste of time, not when it evokes emotional responses from people, including the creator. Art isn't like real life, but it can reflect it, make it better and more bearable, and heal it.
Heal yourself from life and the real world.
The emotional, life-affirming, and trusting connection between a piece of art's audience and its creator goes both ways.
Creating art is its own way of belonging and bonding to people and the world; it shouldn't be about isolating and shutting yourself out from it all.
Do what you want. Do what makes you feel alive. Concentrate. Focus. Be motivated and determined. Be in the moment right now. Don't let it all be a waste.
Live, love, create, connect.
'Look Back' - as brief and fleeting as life itself.
Whoops. Sorry, I'm rambling now. And this was meant to be a short, concise review of a short manga! But it is that good
I will keep on writing more and more now.
Thank you, 'Look Back' by Tatsuki Fujimoto.
No doubt this is a deeply personal story, about art and artists, on top of everything else.
Take care, everyone. Move on. Keep believing. Keep living. Keep creating and loving. Have a happy, fulfilling life, doing what you want to do, for the people you are lucky to know and have relationships with, and for yourself.
Final Score: 4.5/5
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