Look Back Review: Summer 2024's Blockbuster Anime Movie Showcases Tatsuki Fujimoto's Genius

Summary Look Back is a visually stunning anime film that perfectly showcases Tatsuki Fujimoto's style.

The film boasts top-notch animation and exceptional direction from Kiyotaka Oshiyama and Studio Durian.

The overall direction makes an already great story even better and leaves the film as one of the best of 2024.

This review is spoiler-freeLook Back is the film adaptation of the manga of the same name by Tatsuki Fujimoto of Chainsaw Man fame. Unlike Fujimoto’s usual stories, Look Back is a largely down-to-earth story about the friendship between two burgeoning manga artists, the difficulties they face, and how that ties into important philosophies in life, in general.

Look Back has yet to be released theatrically outside of Japan, but Western fans have already had a few opportunities to see it at conventions or film festivals, and anyone who did would have seen that Look Back is a film that excels in terms of writing, animation, and overall direction.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

In many ways, Look Back does an even better job of showing off Tatsuki Fujimoto’s talents than the Chainsaw Man anime did, and it’s already an easy contender for the best anime film of 2024, if not the best-animated film of 2024, overall.

Look Back’s Visuals Are A Sight To Behold From The Very Start

One Of The Best-Looking Animated Films Of 2024

The first thing to immediately stand out about Studio Durian's Look Back is its visual aesthetic. For starters, besides being of consistent quality, Look Back’s visuals are all-around gorgeous to look at and always do a great job of bringing the manga to life, whether it’s in a tense scene, a heartwarming one, or a rare moment of comedy. Tatsuki Fujimoto’s art style has a unique structure that combines genius craft with often simple-looking illustrations, and overall, Look Back does a great job of bringing that to life.

Look Back’s Direction Is Among The Best Of Any Anime In 2024

Kiyotaka Oshiyama & Studio Durian Perfectly Brough Look Back To Life

Close

Further selling the visual aesthetic of Look Back is the incredible animation and direction of the film. Regarding animation, every scene in Look Back has an astonishing degree of fluidity and overall craft put into its animation. The film always takes the time to make everything look good and flesh out even the smallest of movements from the cast. Whether it’s a big, emotional scene or something comparatively more low key, the animation always does a great job of capturing the humanity of the cast and story, making an already great story even better to go through.

The animation, of course, wouldn’t work nearly as well without its stellar direction. Look Back’s direction always works to sell the story through masterful camerawork and gorgeous and creative shots, with scenes like Kyomoto running after Fujino from a first-person perspective and Fujino’s happiness as she danced in the rain both being particularly great standouts. Additionally, the film has a great understanding of musical cues and always knows when it’s best to employ a soundtrack or keep things silent for emotional effect.

Everything great about Look Back’s direction can be attributed to the film’s director, Kiyotaka Oshiyama. Kiyotaka Oshiyama is known for his great character writing and the fluidity of his character designs and animation, all of which can be seen in past projects such as Flip Flappers and Doraemon The Movie: Nobita’s New Dinosaur, and that style is on full display in Look Back to tremendous effect. Overall, Kiyotaka Oshiyama was the perfect director to bring Look Back to life, and seeing all of that come together was great to witness.

Look Back’s New Additions Flesh Out An Already Great Story

Look Back's Film Takes The Story Even Further

Something that plays even further into the excellent direction of Look Back is the various new scenes added to the story. The overarching narrative is never changed, but the film does expand on certain parts of the story like animating Fujino’s manga, making Fujino’s classroom look massive to emphasize her anxiety, and using perspective to emphasize the growing distance between Fujino and Kyomoto near the climax. Every new addition to Look Back serves to emphasize something about the narrative, whether it’s lighthearted or serious, and overall, it’s another hallmark of the film’s incredible direction.

Look Back’s Story Is Still Great In Animation

Studio Durian Perfectly Adapts Tatsuki Fujimoto's Short Story

Naturally, everything great about Look Back has its roots in the stellar writing of the original story by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Unlike Fujimoto’s more bombastic stories, Look Back is meant to be more of a slice-of-life anime grounded in reality, and sure enough, Look Back does a great job of selling a grounded story with a cast as likable as they are human. The only part that ever breaks away from that is purposefully over-the-top for Fujino’s character arc, and even that does wonders to sell the realistic nature of the story and all the good that comes with that.

That realism, of course, feeds directly into the emotional core of the film: Fujino and Kyomoto’s friendship. Not only does the story do a wonderful job of developing their friendship, but the time put into developing Fujino and Kyomoto’s friendship makes the film’s most emotional moments surrounding them hit even harder, and their tragedy becomes the perfect segway into the central theme of overcoming loss. The way the final scene is just a lingering shot of Fujino back at work perfectly encapsulated that idea, and overall, the story evoked just as much emotion in animation as it did in print.

Look Back Is The Greatest Showing Of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Talent

Tatsuki Fujimoto's Genius Is Finally Realized

Like many of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s works, Look Back was a story designed to have a cinematic feel with its writing and scene composition, and the film adaptation does a perfect job of translating that into animation. While Studio MAPPA's Chainsaw Man was often at odds with the intensity of the source material, Look Back’s more grounded storytelling perfectly lent itself to a cinematic direction, with the slow pacing and emotional writing always working to sell the story to great effect. It was a work perfectly suited to be a film, and Kiyotaka Oshiyama did a perfect job of realizing that.

Of course, in the process of translating Look Back to film, Kiyotaka Oshiyama and Studio Durian made an already great story even greater. Between the gorgeous artwork and animation and the creative direction of the film, Look Back’s film adaptation went above and beyond by selling the strengths of the original manga, and it can easily be seen as the ideal way to experience the story.

Look Back more than lived up to its stellar reputation, and once it receives a wider theatrical release, that will become even more apparent, worldwide.