Anime Film About Incredibly Popular Manga In Japan Gets North American Release

Though Look Back is still in theaters, and hasn’t yet been released in North America, the film is doing well. On My Anime List, the average score is 8.69. In Japan, the film is incredibly popular, with it making over 1.7 billion yen (over $11 million).

The movie reached a million ticket sales as well, after just 52 days of being in the theater. Look Back did much better than expected, and over 100 more theaters started to film the movie than originally planned to make up for the rising popularity of this movie.

Look Back follows a fourth-grader named Ayumu Fujino (Yuumi Kawai). She has a talent for drawing manga, and regularly publishes them in the school paper. However, Fujino finds her skills challenged by another student, Kyomoto (Mizuki Yoshia), who also publishes her work in the school paper.

Unfortunately, Kyomoto is the more skilled of the two, despite both of their works being published. This realization infuriates Fujino, who starts to spend all of her free time improving herself, to the point she ignores her friends, family, and life outside of art. However, she’s never able to beat her fellow student and ends up quitting manga.

It isn’t until the two meet up again later in Look Back that Fujino decides to give manga another try. This sends both on a path neither could predict, and that will change their lives forever.

Tatsuki Fujimoto was the original manga artist for Look Back. If this name sounds familiar to you, it’s because he was also the author of the popular anime Chainsaw Man. Though the two stories are pretty different, they both manage to convey a powerful story that draws audience members in.

Studio Durian (Gift) was in charge of producing Look Back, with Kiyotka Oshiyama (My Dress-Up Darling) as the director and Toshiyuki Inoue (Wolf Children) in charge of key animation. Oshiyama had a huge part in the success of the film, as not only was he the director, but in charge of the screenplay, and character design, and stood as the animation director.

While Look Back will likely take a while yet to come to a streaming service, if it even does, you can still get a taste of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s works by watching Chainsaw Man, which is available to stream on Crunchyroll.

This series is focused on people making deals with devils and using their powers to fight against evil. Though only one series at the moment, it is incredibly popular, winning the 2024 Anime Awards and earning an average score of 8.49 on My Anime List.