Fun fact, this is actually my first time ever publishing an article or a review, etc, to the public, by public I mean the Internet. Not really important but I guess I'll just let y'all know. So, any feedback here would be really appreciated.

Anyways, let's get to the main topic of this article, I wouldn't call it a review, in fact it's just a short one, I'm just intrigued to talk about a movie that really peak my interest the for the last couple of months. Unfortunately, I didn't watch it back when it was on cinema, but I got the chance to see it yesterday on digital, and I gotta say, it was a spectacle that I definitely will someday "Look Back" to, pun intended.

"Look Back" is a manga adaptation film which is a witty, enjoyable, fun, and relatable movie to most students who especially has thing for drawing anime figures in their sleepy history classes but yet still show the sorrowfulness of the characters in the most gruesome way. I guess let's start with the elephant in the room here which is of course, the art-style. When it comes to animation, I always love when a studio took a different turn to show the emotion of a character with unique techniques of drawings that I would've never think of. Not that I'm professional artist but just being the watcher alone makes you respect the studio artist more. Most obvious example I could give probably Spider-Verse, which was top notch of course. All I'm saying is that, this movie was Eye-Pleasing. The fluidity of the environment, the color grading, even just how characters walk shows you the traits of the two characters, Fujino & Kyomoto, which I would get through the characters next. When it comes to Japanese Animation, I think people would often compare art like this to Studio Ghibli's for example, but IMO, they're both unique in their own way.

Now, the story, where should I start? The movie took an interesting start by showing our main character "Kyomoto", a 6th grader student who is gifted in drawings and right of the bat, can be seen, her drawings skills from her comic page which then would come to life as can be seen from the following scene, it shows "a couple who almost died because of reckless driving, and somehow got reincarnated?" I guess she just makes weird stuff sometimes (just like the actual artist). She would then often publish comic pages in every newspaper issues and became popular because of that. Long story short, she met a girl name "Fujino" who made her quit drawing for quite a long time (actually not really) then they end up working together and became besties and live happily ever after, or did they? Anyways, I wish they could done a lot better with the story.

Let me just address this, a lot of people online have been complaining about the pacing of the film which was a bit odd, something in the spectrum of "wish they could done a lot better" or "the relationship between two characters was just too quick", but IMO, I think they done a pretty good job. There's a lot of stuff going on in this film that will happen in an instance but as a viewer, I was able to keep up and enjoy it. I think that's what matters.

I do have one complain about the story though and it involves spoilers, let's just say that one of the characters died, it was shocking sure, but it didn't give me the time to process what happened to their relationship, like they were just kinda go to their separate ways without any emotion whatsoever. It's like that one friend that you always talk to in high school but after graduation, you just never contact them ever again, like yeah the friendship was there, but people just mature and move on. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the bond between the two characters needs to be more impactful and memorable, but still, it's actually impressive that they can do this type of bonding in just under an hour. I just wish it was a little longer.

So, after all of that nonsense yapping, I guess I just give a score, 3 out of 5 stars, yeah it's not the most perfect animation film in terms of story, but it gave me the vibe that if I watch this as a kid, It would definitely be placed in special place in my heart. It's just heartwarming.