By Nick Nitkowski 

“Look Back” is a new anime film that I literally only heard of hours before writing this review. I had no idea what it was about or that it even existed until I saw a lot of nearly sold-out showtimes for this afternoon. So, I blindly purchased a ticket, drove to the theater, sat down, and watched it. And as an anime fan, I knew that at the very least it was going to be very well animated, which it definitely was. But how was the movie itself?

The movie, based on a manga of the same title, focuses on a middle school girl who has a knack for drawing her own manga strips for her school’s newsletter and is renowned by her fellow students, but when an unknown student shows a talent greater than hers, jealousy and inadequacy brews inside herself. But when they meet, a close friendship starts to form between them.

As I stated before, the animation of this movie is very well done. I was a little worried at first because the opening shot of the film looked a little choppy to me. However, that was just one shot. The rest of the film was flawlessly animated. They even incorporated subtle techniques and styles to indicate the moods of the characters which I appreciated. 

I mentioned in the title that the movie should have been longer. This is an incredibly short movie. It was shorter than another anime film that I saw earlier this year that I really enjoyed, “The Concierge”, which clocks in at an hour and 10 minutes long. “Look Back” is under an hour long. That is really short. Especially when a feature-length film has a minimum runtime of an hour and a half to be considered as such. 

I believe the runtime hurts the movie in one specific aspect. The movie makes a certain choice towards the end and while it seems to have had an impact on some of the audience members in the theater, it didn’t have the same effect on me. The reason why is because the characters, in my personal opinion, should have been developed more. The movie focuses on these two main characters’ friendship for what felt like a very short while. I would have liked to have seen a lot more interactions with each other. I would have liked to have seen more of a bond. Perhaps even small conflicts that don’t seem like anything at first, but then build up. I feel that this would have made the film a lot more impactful.

I understand that animation, especially hand-drawn animation, especially hand-drawn anime films, takes a very long time to make. This task may be even more daunting for an independent studio, but I feel like these additions that I’ve mentioned would have made the overall story a lot better. Perhaps they were following the source material to the letter, but I’m not sure and I have no plans to seek it out to confirm. There was also one particular story element that didn’t make a lot of sense to me and it was never explained in the film, but it was kind of a small thing in the story, so it wasn’t enough to impact how I felt overall towards the movie, but it was something I noticed.

Overall, “Look Back” is very well animated and is sure to please any anime fan. But most importantly, this movie is about creators, artists, and writers. The one shining light about this film is that it pays tribute to those who seek to create. If you are an artist, writer, craftsperson, or any profession that is considered artistic, then this movie just might be for you. As one myself, it definitely spoke to me at moments. However, I still stand by what I said and I think it would have benefited a lot more for being longer. Whether it be 30 minutes longer or 15, the extra time for character development would have made this a perfect 5 out of 5 rated movie for me. But as it stands, I have to go lower on my rating. Perhaps when I look back on this movie sometime later, that could change.

4/5 stars