Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Looking Back
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5150 |
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This makes me want to watch the film so badly!
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Bonham
 Posts: 424 Location: NYC |
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Article is well timed. Finally got to see Look Back tonight with my girlfriend, and I absolutely loved it. It's such a beautiful film on multiple levels.
The point about imperfections within the drawings makes me wish Amazon posted the video with Oshiyama. (Also appreciate reading how the film's ethos is antithetical to generative AI.) I'm hopeful it'll be included with GKIDS Blu-ray (4K?) release. |
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Shay Guy
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I read the manga when Viz published it, but only just watched the movie. It’s… an awkward experience, reading the reactions of it from people who get paid to write, as someone who’s long aspired to creative work myself, but never made any connections like Fujino does (partly because I’ve never been good at making friends), failed to execute on one idea after another, and mainly experienced “encouragement” as the world impersonally telling me that I’m not supposed to be discouraged. (I might even get some of that in response to this post, who knows.) The notion of a healthy rivalry, so ubiquitous in manga, has always felt like a fantasy to me. It’s a good plot development that Fujino burns out after two years of struggling to best Kyomoto, before actually meeting her changes things… but the fact that she gets those two years of having a fire lit under her is still something I can’t relate to.
Yukiko Nozawa once said in an interview that thinking about rivals discourages her. I appreciate that, and the notion that her path to motivation and success was different. Nevertheless, I still can’t help but come at all this as the guy who never found that path at all. These kinds of stories, fictional or nonfictional, are almost universally about the people who, despite everything, don’t break — and I’m still broken. At least Fujino’s ability to weather the climactic crisis and return to her art doesn’t come down to “a weak person would’ve fallen, but as this test proves, she’s one of the strong people”. Fujimoto’s too good for that. (And somehow we haven't mentioned yet how the two leads have Fujimoto's surname split into two between them…) I think the most weirdly personal moment I had was watching the “breakup” scene, where Fujino doesn’t want Kyomoto to leave her, but can’t just say that, so she expresses it by insisting Kyomoto doesn’t have what it takes to function independently, without her. It wasn’t a scene I remembered from the manga, and I just thought, “…Oh. It’s like what my therapist and I have been talking about, the way my mom can’t say she needs help with chores, so she frames it as something that’s for my own good, building my ~independent living skills~, and thereby reinforces the notion that I’m still not ready to move out.” On another note, I love that opening shot zooming into Fujino’s house from above. The sensible way to do it, drawing on standard practice for basically the entire history of animation, would be to zoom into a series of background paintings. The fancy modern way to do it would be with 3D models. There is no reason to sink all that effort into a full-animated, hand-drawn zoom except as an ode to the art of drawing. It’s almost like that ridiculously elaborate zoom at the start of The Thief and the Cobbler. And I’m glad I wasn’t the only one delighted to realize the girls were watching Goodbye, Eri. Given the conceit, animating that would definitely be a very different task from Look Back, but I’d watch it. By the way, anyone reading Monochrome Days on Manga Plus? It focuses on working adults making manga, and it’s more standard Jump+ fare compared to the finely crafted narrative of Look Back, but it shares some of the same ideas about artistic discouragement and revival through personal connection with someone inspired by your own work, who values it in a way you don’t. (Even a trace of Fujino’s envy for the person she motivated.) |
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