In 2021, Tatsuki Fujimoto made a one-shot manga called Look Back, which is itself about two girls who create a series of one-shot manga. These girls’ dream is for one of their manga to receive an anime adaptation, and Look Back itself received an anime adaptation in 2024. But now Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda has adapted Look Back into a full-length live-action feature – something perhaps the characters would never have dreamed of.
With each level of adaptation, the project has gotten a little further from its own subject matter – but this is an opportunity for Kore-eda rather than a disadvantage. He borrows liberally from the styles of manga and anime to create this new feature, with characters using exaggerated gestures and expressions in a way that is more comical than naturalistic. But Kore-eda applies these techniques skillfully to a live-action context, creating a film that practically sparkles with humor and creativity. While he takes a unique approach given the source material he is adapting, he preserves his typical emphasis on relationship dynamics and emotional depth.
Look Back is about two girls named Fujino (Natsuki Deguchi) and Kyomoto (Aju Makita), who write manga for their school’s daily paper. Fujino is outgoing and well-liked, while Kyomoto is a shut-in who has never been to class and writes her manga remotely. The girls, having never met, form a bit of a rivalry that inspires them to improve their technique, but when they finally meet, they quickly become best friends and begin creating manga together. But as they grow up and their manga starts generating interest from publishers, they must navigate their creative relationship and friendship at the same time.
A coming-of-age story is perfect for Kore-eda, who has always been good at getting excellent performances from children (two of his best-known films, Shoplifters and Nobody Knows, are told primarily through the viewpoint of children). As the girls age, Deguchi and Makita are able to bring real dimensionality to their characters, making them distinct individuals but still believable as best friends. The conflict that is generated in their relationship feels believable as the type of thing that happens to people as they grow up and want different things for their lives. And for a film that starts out as very light and (delightfully) low-stakes, it ends up in a deeply moving and profound place.
Look Back has some real visual pop and flair, particularly in its use of color and a very fun level of detail on the process of creating manga. We see the girls start out drawing as many of us did as children, putting pencil to paper to bring their little jokes and ideas to life. But the girls progress much farther, teaching themselves the technical side of manga creation and learning from their successes and failures.
Throughout the film, Kore-eda lingers on the process of creation, showing the process of drawing backgrounds, characters, and the full creation of one-shots in precise detail. Towards the end of the film, we see technology-assisted manga creation as well, which is still shown to be hand-crafted with a great deal of skill but does certainly seem to be a time-saver. But whether technology-assisted or hand-drawn, the film revels in the joy of creation and the artistic process, doing its subject matter and its source material proud.
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