Look Back (2024)

Look Back runs 60 minutes, and the only fair complaint is that it ends before you’re ready to let these two girls go. Ayumu Fujino rules the comics corner of her elementary school paper, cranking out four-panel strips and soaking up the praise. Then a teacher gives half her space to Kyomoto, a classmate who never comes to school, and Kyomoto’s detailed scenery makes Fujino’s strips look like doodles. So Fujino draws all year, drifts away from her friends, still falls short and quits. When they finally meet face to face on graduation day, her rival turns out to be her biggest fan, and Fujino’s walk home is giddy joy. Kiyotaka Oshiyama adapts Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga with animation that’s quietly gorgeous, and it understands the hard, lonely work of making art better than movies three times its length. Critics gave it 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 90 on Metacritic. A 9.2 because it packs a lifetime of friendship into an hour. $4,857 says you catch yourself doodling four-panel comics in the margins of something important this week.

What works: The animation is quietly beautiful, and the film captures both the grind of making art and the joy of finding the one person who gets your work.

What doesn’t: At just an hour, some stretches of the friendship feel rushed, and the jump into the girls’ adult lives comes almost too quickly.

Who it’s for: Anyone who has ever drawn in the margins of a notebook, and anyone who had a friend change the direction of their life.