Look Back (2024)
★★★★★ — Look Back (2024)
There are short films, and then there are short films that make you question why anyone ever thought two hours was the minimum requirement for a story to matter. Look Back, released in 2024 and running at a brisk 58 minutes, is an adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's one-shot manga of the same name, originally published in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2021. Fujimoto is best known internationally as the creator of Chainsaw Man, though Look Back sits in an entirely different emotional register: quieter, more personal, and rooted in the specific loneliness and obsession that comes with making art. The manga was widely read online within hours of publication, earning considerable word-of-mouth across manga communities for its emotional weight and its understated but precise storytelling. It felt, to many readers, less like a chapter from a comics anthology and more like a short story by someone working something out for themselves.
The film was directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, making his feature directorial debut here, and produced through Studio Durian in association with avex pictures and Shueisha. Oshiyama comes from an animation background with credits as an animator and director of animated sequences on other productions, and that hands-on craft knowledge shows in every frame of this film. The visual approach is considered and restrained in the best possible way: nothing here feels like it is showing off for its own sake. The principal voice cast includes Yuumi Kawai and Mizuki Yoshida as the two central figures, Fujino and Kyomoto, a pair of girls whose relationship begins in rivalry and settles into something far more affecting. Kawai and Yoshida carry the emotional register of the film entirely on their performances, supported by Yoichiro Saito, Kota Oka, and Kureha Maki in smaller but well-drawn roles. For those who have enjoyed other recent animation from outside the mainstream studio pipeline, it is worth noting that the blog has previously covered No Dogs or Italians Allowed and Josep, both animated films that similarly prioritised intimate storytelling over spectacle. Look Back sits comfortably in that tradition. It is also, for what it is worth, a film that arrives with Japanese cinema's long history of animation as serious dramatic art firmly behind it, a lineage that stretches back decades and that the blog has touched on elsewhere in its coverage of a 1993 Japanese film and other work from Japan.
The story, at its core, follows Fujino, a confident and popular primary school pupil whose comic strips run in the class newsletter, and the disruption caused when her teacher introduces work by Kyomoto, a classmate who never comes to school but draws with a precision and beauty that Fujino finds threatening. What grows from that initial jealousy is a friendship built entirely around drawing, around shared obsession, and around the particular kind of closeness that comes when two people want the same thing and find they can only properly get there together. It is a film about creativity, about friendship, and about the way both of those things can define a life. The source material is tender and precise, and by all accounts the adaptation keeps faith with it.
The nod to Butterly Effect is so perfect. Best animated movie I've ever seen. I'm giving it 5*. Up there for best films I've EVER watched. It's just over an hour long. Amazon prime. The soundtrack is absolutely fucking unreal. The artwork is nothing short of stunning. There's also a poster in the background for "Butterfly Effect" which I think is a criminally underrated movie and that's a definite deliberate nod based on how the story plays out. I'm telling you... it's the best anime I've ever seen.
For me, that point about the Butterfly Effect nod speaks to something I think separates genuinely considered filmmaking from the polished but unremarkable fare that fills out most streaming queues. When a film earns a reference like that through the architecture of its own story rather than just dropping it in as a wink to the audience, it tells you the people who made it were thinking carefully about every single element. At 58 minutes, Look Back does not outstay its welcome by a single frame, and the fact that it is sitting on Amazon Prime means there is genuinely no excuse not to watch it tonight. Some films you finish and immediately want to recommend to someone. This is one of those. Go in without knowing too much. That's all you need.
Rating: ★★★★★ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2025-04-26
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Look Back (2024) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
