Look Back (part one)

This review was fast lane comissioned by @Doby Mick


"Look Back" is a one-shot indie comic, but it's by an already established, published mangaka. The author, Tatsuki Fujimoto, is one that this thread has already come in contact with when I looked at Chainsaw Man. I liked that, so hopefully I'll like this too. Apparently, Fujimoto put this comic up on the two year anniversary of the infamous 2019 Kyoto Animation arson incident that claimed thirty-six lives. I couldn't find any details on this, but the anime industry is small enough that Fujimoto pretty much had to have known people who died in it, or at least had mutual friends. So, I'm expecting this to have a much more serious tone than CM, regardless of whether it measures up in terms of quality.

With that sombre bit of background out of the way, let's take a look. The patron commissioned this comic in two chunks, so this month I'll be going through the first half of it.


It's a sunny morning at a cheery-looking elementary school. The latest issue of the school newspaper has just been handed out, and fourth grader Fujino is being praised by his classmates for his humorous contributions to the paper. He's an artist, and his whacky four-panel comics constitute the "sunday funnies" analogue part of the school paper.

Along with him being a junior mangaka, his name is also fairly similar to the actual author's (Fujino - Fujimoto), so I wouldn't be surprised if this comic was at least somewhat autobiographical.

Fujino puts on some false modesty while basking in the praise of his peer group, humblebragging about how he didn't have much time this week so he just threw these cartoons together in five minutes, no big deal. When they say he could be a pro mangaka when he grows up, he tells them that he doesn't think sitting around in a studio all day would be the life for him.

Suddenly, Fujino is called into the office. He isn't in trouble, though. Rather, a staff member (whoever is in charge of the school newspaper, I guess. Not sure if the principle or just a teacher) tells Fujino that while the newspaper funnies have been granted to him as his domain, there's another kid named Kyomoto who wants to split the page space with him. Fujino has never met this Kyomoto, despite the two being in the same year. They're in different classes, and Kyomoto almost never actually comes to school, doing almost all of his studies via correspondence. It's suggested to be down to some kind of medical condition.

Fujino says that sure, this nonentity of a student can have part of his art slot. Just be aware that he doesn't think a total newbie will be able to pull his weight. Also, he somehow decides that Kyomoto's condition is some kind of anxiety disorder, and is insensitive about this made-up diagnosis in the way that only a gradeschooler can be.

I sense pride coming before a fall, here.

Sure enough, when the next issue of the school newspaper prints out, Fujino and Kyomoto's artistic contributions are laid out side by side for any and all to compare. Fujino definitely has Kyomoto beat in terms of conveying narrative through the visual medium, but when it comes to art quality on its own, well...

l'm amused that Fujino is already doing his own version of the super-deformed action panels to save time on the bigger scenes. In context though, that just makes him look even worse.

Everyone is blown away by this child art prodigy who they didn't know they shared a school with. Compared to Kyomoto, the merely "good at drawing" Fujino might as well be an average kid with no particular art skills. People are still mostly polite to Fujino about his weekly contribution, but he doesn't get anywhere near as much attention for it as usual, and he overhears how people are unfavourably comparing him to Mr. Correspondence. He takes it about as well as you'd expect from a nine year old, and storms home after school with a furious expression.

As he sulks his way home, Fujino sees a farmer slowly tractoring his crops. Slowly working behind the scenes on a product that, from most people's perspectives, just comes into existence at the grocery store at the end of the growing season. Fujino makes a connection that may or may not actually be correct.

On one hand, Kyomoto is definitely keeping up with his schoolwork if he's being counted as a fourth grader. It's not like his life is just an open-ended creative paradise with no obligations where he can draw all day every day and then use that privelege to outcompete mere peasants like Fujimo.

On the other hand, well...school is a fucking waste of time, and if Kyomoto's parents have the time and aptitude to be good teachers for him then yeah, he'll be able to get the same quality education as his peers while also having more free time. And yeah, that is a privelege; not everyone's parents have the time and aptitude to do this, and it's way easier for a kid with creative talents to properly develop said talents if he lucks into a pair who do.

So, Fujimo might be correct to an extent, but he's way exaggerating it in his imagination. And also being unduly spiteful about it.

Fujino reacts to this attack on his identity as "the kid who's good at drawing" by becoming obsessed with improving. He practices drawing in class while pretending to pay attention. He practices drawing at home when he should be socializing or doing his homework. He buys art instruction book after art instruction book, gradually filling his bedroom shelf with them. Day in and day out, he draws.

I can remember when I was in seventh or eighth grade, and I realized that I wasn't the only kid who was good at writing and had authorial aspirations. I remember the sense of crushing despair, how it felt like something was being stolen from me and there was nothing I could do about it. Then I developed a teensy bit of emotional maturity, and realized that every middle school has multiple wannabe bestselling fiction authors in it, and all of them are convinced that they're the special one who is destined to become a household name.

So, on one hand, I can empathize with Fujino. On the other...he seems to have a lot more difficulty getting over it than I did. Jump two years ahead, and sixth grade Fujino still hasn't pulled himself back out of this. His friends, those of them that remain with his social life diminished as it is, try to stage an intervention.

Fujino shrugs them off, but looks a little haunted as he...she? I thought Fujino looked more masculine before, but it's hard to tell with kids that age, and now she looks more feminine to me, so I'm not sure...considers their words when no one is looking. Granted, the stigma against artists as they get older is pretty stupid, but the fact that he's sacrificing the rest of his life for it...I don't think "otaku" is right, as that suggests a subculture rather than just an obsession, but I can't entirely blame them for making the association.

At home, Fujino has a similar confrontation, this time with their older sister. It starts with her reminding them that they still need to shower this evening, and them just sort of grunting in affirmation without getting up from their drawing desk. The sister feels the need to be candid, because this has really gone on long enough and seems to be getting worse instead of better.

Their sister tries to invite them to her karate group, just so they'll have something in their life outside of manga drawing, but they just angrily tell her to get out again.

She leaves. Fujino keeps drawing, but looks more miserable about it than ever.

Flash ahead to the next issue of the school newspaper going out. As with every issue for the last two schoolyears, Fujino's comics are printed side by side with Kyomoto's. Fujino's constant practice has definitely paid off. But, Fujino is not the only one who's been improving.

You know, from the samples we've seen so far, I think Fujino is approaching this entirely the wrong way.

Kyomoto isn't really competing with Fujino, because their art is doing fundamentally different things. Kyomoto captures beauty in ink, using their drawing hand like a photographer's camera. Fujino is a storyteller, using their drawings to communicate a narrative and elicit a (usually humorous) emotional response. Looking at the sloppier details of Fujino's latest work, it seems like they either don't have time to avoid taking shortcuts (that second panel in particular), or they just don't intuitively see those details as particularly important because they're not key to telling the story or executing the gag.

In other words, Kyomoto is a traditional sketch artist, and Fujino is a mangaka. Fujino should recognize and lean into that. Try more complex stories. Play around with their visual storytelling techniques. Trying to become a technically better visual artist than art prodigy Kyomoto isn't just quixotic, it's going against Fujino's own real passion and interests.

Unfortunately, that's not what Fujino gets out of this.

To be fair to Fujino they're what, twelve now? Eleven? I think what they really need is a sympathetic grown-up artist to help them figure this stuff out. I don't think many kids that age could realize what they're doing wrong here on their own, and Fujino doesn't have an artistic mentor as far as we've seen. They could definitely use one.

For now though, Fujino's reaction is at least much healthier than what they've been doing so far. They put down the newspaper issue, turn toward one of the friends that they're barely still friends with, and ask them if they want to go hang out this afternoon.

Like I said, it's definitely better than what they were doing before. They're about to go from elementary to high school, and that's when grades start to actually matter at least a little, not to mention teenaged hormones making social isolation much harder to deal with. It's not as good as continuing their art for its own sake as a balanced part of their life, but it's much less bad than miserable, fruitless obsession.

Fastforward to the end of the schoolyear. Fujino is better dressed these days, which is a good sign. Also, part of her current outfit is a skirt, so I guess she's probably a she after all. Anyway, the school newspaper faculty teacher guy has a special favor to ask of Fujino on graduation day, and it's one she isn't thrilled about.

She's not thrilled about it, but she's also not quite petty enough to refuse. So, it's off to meet this invisible specter that's been haunting her for the last two years of her life and hand it its elementary school diploma.


I think that's a decently dramatic breaking point.

So far, I'm impressed by Tatsuki Fujimoto's range if nothing else. There's *some* visual resemblance to his style from "Chainsaw Man," but really not that much. The tone and subject matter are also night and day, of course, but at least in my personal experience it's easier to shift authorial voices than visual styles, especially if most of your prose is just dialogue. So, that's pretty cool. I'm interested to see what comes next, and what it has to do with either Fujimoto's real life biography or the Kyoto Animation arson.

...hmm. Come to think of it, "Kyomoto" does suggest "Kyoto" just a little bit. Not as closely as "Fujino" and "Fujimoto," but enough to make me wonder if there will be a connection there. Well, we'll see!