Look Back (finale)

Finishing up the February fast lane commission now, with the last section of "Look Back." Damn, I've really let the backlog of not-yet-public reviews build up. I mostly blame Pale; reformating those quote-heavy livereads is time consuming. Well, anyway!

Where we left off with this story a couple months ago, estranged co-writers Fujino and Kyomoto just had their split made permanent. In an event reminiscent of the infamous arson incident that this comic was released on the anniversary of, a madman went on a rampage through the art college Kyomoto was studying at, and she ended up being one of a dozen people who he decided were guilty of plagiarizing him and killed with an axe.

So. Continuing from there.


We see...is that Kyomoto? No, must just be Fujino with her hair down...getting a call from Kyomoto's phone. Someone in her family, I guess? And then another call from Fujino's own mother. No dialogue is neccessary. The meaning is communicated just by showing the caller ID's, some newspaper headlines, and then this:

That's some top notch visual storytelling.

It comes alongside a reminiscance (or perhaps imagining? this could be a memory, or just an imaginary conversation) of a conversation between herself and Kyomoto back in high school. At some point, before Kyomoto made her decision to disregard manga and acquire degree, she and Fujino discussed how they'd do with a potential serialization. Kyomoto was worried that her meticulous art style would be too time-consuming to keep up with Shonen Jump's methamphetamine-paced publishing demands. Fujino assured her that that's fine, she has plenty of time to learn how to work faster. She's still improving the quality of her own drawing, so surely Kyomoto can working on the quantity of her own. At the time, Kyomoto found this inspirational.

How genuine Fujino was being when (and if? again, don't know if this is a real memory or not) she said that, I can't say. She may have just been clinging onto a dream, for her own sake or for Kyomoto's.

It also isn't clear at all how much this factored into Kyomoto's eventual decision, whether or not the conversation literally happened or is just a shorthand for Fujino's general messaging and vibe during the time period. But, it seems that Fujino feels like she might have planted Kyomoto's commitment to improving her heart at the cost of all else into her, whereas before it was just a hobby that she spent lots of time on. After all, Fujino was the one who had that maniacal urge to git gud no matter what it costs long before this, back in elementary school. I do think Fujino might be giving herself just a little bit too much credit in shaping the course of Kyomoto's post-highschool life, though. She tends to give herself too much credit and other people not enough, for things, in general.

Or maybe she's just feeling regret for having been such a domineering force casting a shadow over so much of Kyomoto's short life. That could also be.

More phone calls. Funeral scenes. Then, at some point, Fujino is visiting Kyomoto's family house, where she once brought her a diploma and drew her an insulting comic. Presumably at Kyomoto's parents' invitation, this time. Or maybe not, she apparently didn't care about being let in last time lol. This time, Fujino's attention is drawn to a published copy of "Metal Parade" laying atop a pile of other projects and papers.

It looks like she actually had multiple copies of it. Meant a lot to her.

Fujino flips through one of the copies, and...okay, weird. Once again, I'm not sure if this is literal, but. In between the pages of what I assume was probably Kyomoto's first store-bought or honorary-awarded copy of Metal Parade, Fujino finds the mean four panel comic she drew about Kyomoto when she was 12.

This could, once again, be read a couple of different ways. Either regret over how she treated her and dominated her during the years of their friendship, or regret at having prompted her to stop being such a shut-in and thus leading to her being in a bad place at a bad time. The former is reasonable. The latter is much less so, but grief tends to push people to unreasonable conclusions. Especially if its grief over someone who they already had some feelings of guilt or regret with regards to.

And yeah, it's the second one. Which is...not the rational or self-aware option, for sure.

Well, no one is all that rational or self-aware at age...what is she now, 20? 21? Somewhere around there. Especially when grieving. Fujino might not have been the most thoughtful or clearheaded person to begin with, but I guess anyone could be making this mistake if you put them in this situation, so I won't judge her too harshly.

Crying, she tears the stupid little insult comic into pieces and throws it into the air. The scraps flutter down, and one of them happens to slide under the bedroom door in the same improbable manner as the full comic page once did when she accidentally dropped it long ago. The scrap lands on the floor just inside the room, and...travels back in time.

I think?

Rereading this, yeah, that seems to be what happened. College-aged Fujino tears up the paper, a scrap of it slips under the door, and then fresh elementary school graduate Kyomoto looks up with a start from her drawing desk and sees it.

...

I still feel like Kyomoto hearing a tiny piece of paper sliding under her door is harder to explain than the time travel, but whatever.

...

Kyomoto comes over to the door, and sees the scrap that slid into the bedroom. It has only most of one panel on it, and it ends up coming across like a dire warning.

And...I guess the paper went back in time to the moment before young!Fujino rang the front doorbell.

Well, just as in the original timeline, Fujino lets herself in and finds her way to Kyomoto's room without Kyomoto doing anything to reveal her presence. And...this time I guess the empty comic page isn't there where Fujino can grab it, for whatever reason, because she doesn't draw the comic and leave Kyomoto with one complete copy and one torn fragment of the same thing. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey, I guess. Fujino stands at the door of Kyomoto's room for a few minutes, waiting. Then, she gets frustrated and announces that she's leaving the diploma on the floor by the door before walking out. It's not until several minutes after *that* that Kyomoto dares to peek outside into the hall.

If she recognizes the one single panel as her idol Fujino's art style, she doesn't show that she recognizes it. Maybe she infers that the ubiquitous spirit of Fujino saved her from a scary home invader, which...is kind of true tbh.

So. Kyomoto never meets Fujino. She spends middle school much as she did elementary school, but - despite Fujino's self-recriminations to the contrary - she does manage to come out of her shell a little bit in high school, without needing Fujino. She also, once again in defiance of Fujino's self-centred conclusions, ends up applying to the same art college in the same year, and getting accepted. No clue at all what this timeline's version of Fujino ends up doing instead of becoming a shonen mangaka; I doubt she'd be able to get there as quickly and by the same route, at least, without the boost her first comic got from Kyomoto's background art.

Come that fateful day when the axe-murderer is due to rampage through the art college. Kyomoto is in a different room this time, but inside the same building. This time, the maniac encounters her first when he enters, before any other students, which means he hasn't yet lost himself completely in the violent rage and is still willing to talk for at least a minute or two before attacking.

Not that what he says makes all that much sense, but still, it buys Kyomoto a few extra moments after encountering him than she had in the original timeline.

This guy seems less accountable for his actions than I initially inferred. Full-on paranoid delusions, I doubt a court would find him sane enough for a conviction.

Eventually, he gets tired of babbling at the confused Kyomoto and starts swinging his...looks more like an icepick than an axe, but close enough. Kyomoto is about to get Trotskied, when suddenly a third party introduces themselves to the scene by planting a flying lunge-kick right in the attacker's shoulderblade.

Icepick man tries to get back up, but the newcomer doesn't give him the chance. Fist after fist impacts his head and torso until he stays down and they can get the weapon away from him.

It's Fujino.

The newscast in this timeline reports that an armed intruder at the art college was intercepted by a heroic bystander who saw him bringing an icepick into the building and got suspicious. Fujino gets a TV interview, and she's as much of a gloryhound as ever (though in this case I think she's more than earned the right to gloryhound, to be fair).

She still does the humblebrag thing really naturally too, hah. Anyway, I guess this version of her ended up taking her older sister up on the offer to join her karate classes, and kept it up into young adulthood. Hehe, nice callback, I totally would have forgotten about that detail. Whatever else Fujino is now, she's an accomplished martial artist.

No one knows how many people the man WOULD have killed if Fujino hadn't subdued him, in this timeline. The only person who was confirmed to be in his line of fire was Kyomoto. So, out of the student body of the art school, it's just Kyomoto who comes to visit Fujino in the hospital and thank her. It shapes up to be a brief, cordial meeting, until Kyomoto sees Fujino's name written down and puts it together with her elementary school inspiration.

When asked if she used to draw comics for her elementary school's student newspaper, Fujino - as bemused as you'd expect - replies in the affirmative. The two marvel at the crazy coincidence that they're from the same small town and were elementary school classmates, even though they never met. Of course, Fujino doesn't put Kyomoto's name together with that of the mysterious girl who she felt she could never compete with, and Kyomoto has no reason to assume that Fujino was the mystery intruder who dropped off her diploma.

...

That definitely is a crazy coincidence, alright. It makes me lean more heavily on this timeline just being a fantasy of Fujino's where she can feel like she saved Kyomoto instead of dooming her. Though in that case, I'm proud of Fujino for shaking free of her headass "she only went to art school because of me" assumption. Anyway, I'm assuming this is Fujino's daydream after attending Kyomoto's funeral until proven otherwise.

...

Before visiting hours are up, Kyomoto asks Fujino why she stopped drawing, or at least why she stopped publishing anywhere. Fujino looks put on the spot for a moment. Paralyzed as she tries to think about how to say this. Does she realize who Kyomoto is, after all? The hesitation makes me wonder if perhaps she does, or maybe is just now realizing.

She tells the exact same lie that she did last time. Only it's a much taller tale this time, considering how long it's been.

Or...maybe not? Maybe she actually had been planning to get back into manga, all on her own, without needing Kyomoto to motivate her. Just like Kyomoto, as it turns out, didn't need Fujino to send her to art school and end up in Icepick-san's crosshairs. It isn't clear.

Anyway, I don't know if Metal Parade or whatever Fujino is throwing together in her mind right now is going to be anywhere near as successful, this time. We don't know if Fujino has been improving her own skills at all in the intervening decade, or leaving them entirely fallow. And, of course, both of them have actual lives now, so finding the time for collaboration on a new major art project out of nowhere would be much harder for them; Fujino might not be serious at all when she raises the subject, this time. Still, at least they might end up becoming friends again, and it might be a healthier friendship.

After being released from the hospital with a brace on the leg she broke subduing the maniac, Fujino returns home. She seems to still be living with her parents, in this version of the timeline. It's not clear at all what she's been doing professionally, or if she's attending college; all we know about her is that she never became a mangaka, and that she got really into martial arts after accepting her sister's invitation back in elementary school. Meanwhile, Kyomoto does the same thing, going back home (in the same town, still). Both of them look back (hehe) at their respective collections of Fujino's old elementary school newspaper comics. And, on inspiration, Kyomoto - who has only drawn more traditional art pieces until now - tries a little four-panel comic of her own.

She faithfully imitates (and slightly improves on) Fujino's old art style, and tries to even do her old gradeschool comics' style of fourth panel gag (albeit with somewhat less success). The subject matter, appropriately, being how her childhood inspiration Fujino came back and saved her life as a young adult.

Then, a wind suddenly rushes in from the window as it repeatedly does in this story, and blows Kyomoto's comic off her desk and under her door. It comes out the other side in the prime timeline, where Fujino is sobbing to herself after tearing up the other comic and letting a piece of it slip back the other way. She sent a message, and is now getting a reply. The crack under Kyomoto's bedroom door is pretty much an interdimensional, intertemporal mail slot.

Huh. So, was Fujino NOT just fantasizing that alternate timeline? Is there actually something supernatural going on here?

Also, speaking of fantasizing, it occurs to me that - as much as that cartoony style can communicate it - Kyomoto's depiction of Hero Fujino there feels sort of...not quite sexualized, but romanticized in the intimate sense. Hmm. Kyomoto has a crush on Fujino? Which means that the prime version of her might have also been the same way? I wonder...Fujino's reluctance to let Kyomoto leave her after high school, was that really just not wanting to lose her background art, or was there something mutually unacknowledged going on there? Hmm.

Anyway, Fujino Prime is alarmed, as you might expect. There's not supposed to be anyone in Kyomoto's room right now, after all. Still, she picks up the comic, reads it, and then hurriedly stands up and pushes open the door. For the first time since their falling out at the end of high school, she sees Kyomoto's bedroom. Turns out Kyomoto wasn't actually living in a dorm like I thought; that was her own room that she was working and collecting Fujino's work in all this time. Fujino had no idea she was still such a fan of hers after all this time. She wouldn't have ever expected it, after how they ended their friendship.

She has multiple copies of each volume of Shark Kick. Plus, she's been filling out reader surveys, presumably to keep encouraging its publication and/or adaptation. She's been spending considerable amounts of money to prop up Shark Kick's sales numbers in her own small way. I can't think of why else she'd buy so many of each volume, since she clearly isn't giving them away or anything.

That crosses from obsession to sort of...monomania. I guess she still didn't have much else in her life, even after multiple years at art school. That's actually really sad.

Examining the room further, Fujino finds other merchandise. Including a shirt with Fujino's name on it.

...

This would probably be both sadder and creepier if it wasn't for these two girls being pretty clearly two halves of the same person, at this point.

...

A voiceover begins. Fujino is being interviewed for some magazine or website, about why she draws, what motivates her as an artist and author. In her own words, she doesn't actually enjoy drawing manga at all. It's hard. It's unglamorous. She doesn't experience any fun or pleasure from the process of creating it. In that case, the interviewer asks her, why does she do it?

There's a silent flashback montage. Fujino and Kyomoto handing in the original, sloppy stack of papers that they drew the original "Metal Parade" on to the Shonen Jump contest. Kyomoto's exultation when they won. Kyomoto's joy as they worked and improved their skills together over the following years. Her frustration at their minor setbacks, her child-like bliss at their successes. Then, it's back to the present, with Fujino looking down at the last page of Shark Kick's eleventh volume.

So, Chainsaw Man + Street Sharks + Morbius? Eh, I could see myself writing three thousand baffled words about the first issue/episode of this if someone paid me, sure.​

We don't hear her answer to the interviewer's question. Instead, we jump ahead to her studio. I guess this was Fujino's studio before, not Kyomoto's dorm room or school library or whatever, it's hard to tell whose who when their backs are to the reader. She tapes up the comic that Alternate Dimension Kyomoto drew about Fujino saving her from the maniac up on her window, and then sits down to start working on Shark Kick volume 12.

Why does she keep drawing manga, if she doesn't enjoy it? Because, no matter how old they are, no matter what the circumstances of their meeting, Kyomoto would always ask her why she stopped, and Fujino would always reply by saying she's about to get back into it and inviting her to collaborate.

Even if Kyomoto is dead.

Even if Kyomoto never existed in the first place at all.

When I first looked into this comic, I heard that there was some controversy associated with Fujimoto choosing to publish it on the anniversary of the Kyoto arson and his handling of it (or, as it turned out, an analogous incident) in the work. Having now read the story as a whole, I'm not sure which way I lean on this. Frankly, there's so much personal stuff going on here that I don't know if anyone outside of the author's immediate social circle can understand what the connection means to him.

On one hand, this is pretty obviously the author looking at and talking about himself, and in that light I can see why writing himself into a tragedy that he wasn't actually involved in for a self-absorbed story like this might rub people the wrong way. On the other hand, like I said at the beginning, it's unlikely that Fujimoto didn't at least know a couple of people who died in that fire. Or, at least, if he didn't consider one or more of them to be artistic role models of his own, whether or not they knew it.

So, whose death, if anyone's in particular, inspired this? Like I said, I doubt anyone besides the author and maybe a few people close to him have any idea. Maybe it's just a matter of seeing so many other people in the same industry as him suddenly dying making him wonder if he wants to potentially have spent his entire life doing this. In that case, I'd be forced to agree that this wasn't in the best taste. If it's also to commemorate someone who actually was involved in the incident, though, then I think it's fine. But, back to the comic itself now.

There's one side that wants to create, for its own sake, as a nigh-spiritual necessity. One side wants to live, and only sees its own artistic ability as one of several possible means to the end of wealth and popularity. They spur each other onward, but they also both hold each other back. Kyomoto is stuck doing shlocky shonen mangas when she wants to draw pictures worthy of galleries and museums, bound as she is by Fujino's more worldly and pragmatic agenda. Fujino doesn't derive any pleasure from the act of drawing, and wishes she could be doing a million other things that could give her a comfortable lifestyle and social recognition without so many hours couped up alone in a studio...but she can't say no to Kyomoto. Ever. Even if Kyomoto, on the other hand, has no trouble saying no to her when the chips are down.

But then, on the other hand, Kyomoto is the one with the obsessive following of Fujino. Whereas Fujino's reaction to Kyomoto, outside of their friendship and work relationship, was always just...envy. They show it differently, but there's something about one another that they each desperately desire for themselves, and yet somehow they can never quite be at peace when joined together and sharing those traits.

Duality of man. But like, unironically. Not just meme.

This is one of those works that you absolutely cannot and should not try to view through the Death of the Author lens.

Well. Part of Tatsuki Fujimoto might feel like he's selling out by spending his career on "low" art like Fire Punch or Chainsaw Man. Part of him might also feel like he hates the mangaka life AND the artist life in general, and he'd rather just be an extraverted normie working an extraverted normie job. Maybe I'm misinterpreting what "Look Back" is supposed to be saying on this front altogether and that's not what the author was feeling at all, but I don't think so. Assuming I'm interpreting it correctly: personally, I'm glad that someone wrote Chainsaw Man. I haven't read Fire Punch, but so far I've been loving Chainsaw Man. And, however crass and lowbrow it might be at times, I feel like CM is a work that has something to say. It's not just better-than-average escapist shlock. I don't know what the author thinks he SHOULD be creating, but what he's doing at present isn't lacking in artistic merit. Heck, "Look Back" itself is an example of the comic medium doing a more typically "high art" sort of concept. It works. If you really did turn his inner Kyomoto into its own person, I suspect it wouldn't be nearly as frustrated with him as he feared it be might when he wrote this.

As a final thought, I wonder why he made his author avatars female? It's not enough to make me start spamming egg emojis just on its own, but it's definitely curious. We'll see if I eventually review anything else by Fujimoto that tips the scales into justifying egg emoji spam.

Anyway, that's "Look Back."