The Look Back Essay

I’ve become a lot more freewheeling about art lately and I’m trying to impart that as much as I can to others. It sometimes feels like I'm being a little brutish in doing so but I know from experience artists are the kind of people you have to be pretty firm with or they won't get it. I’ve never been a deadline guy. Much as I may have tried, I just can’t do it man. Even as a kid, I think I’ve told this story before but there was an English paper I had to turn in on a Friday and I didn't turn it in because I didn't think it was finished. I told the teacher this and she told me there's a penalty for handing it in late (as if I didn’t know). I told her that would be fine and I kept the book for the weekend to finish the paper. I got an 85 on that report. I remember this for a very crucial reason. The penalty of handing it in late entirely offset the benefit of taking more time to make it better. Understanding that calculus changed something fundamental in me. And if I had a nickel for every life-altering, canon event that happened to me in an English class I’d have about three nickels, which isn't a lot but blah blah blah we all know the bit. We all watched that episode of Phineas and Ferb. Isn't it funny I said I’ve become more freewheeling? 

So yeah, after a brief stint as an amateur actor, writer and director on some small local plays I was at a crossroads that nobody ever wants to be in. Do I all in on this fucking art shit or do I stay on the straight and narrow. I’ve lived my entire life being as risk averse as possible because in my mind I was an extremely unlucky person. This ended up being a delusion on my part because if I’m being honest it's a series of small and large miracles that I’m still alive. I’ve been hit by two cars and neither left significant permanent damage. If you ever hear me say that I’m unlucky again you have free reign to bully me about it. Also I work a lot, maybe too much so lowkey getting hit by that car was kinda clutch. I might have never beaten Xenoblade 3 if not for all that additional free time and thankfully as an RPG the game could be played with my one non-casted hand. I like that game a lot. Fuck this was a gnarly tangent. Anyway do I take the risk or stay with the safe bet? Well the riskier option would not have ever led to me writing this no matter if it worked out or not, so allow me to take out the guesswork. Sorry if you wanted to try and guess.

I will say some aggravating circumstances coloured my decision- it wasnt made in a void, but every decision has context behind it. That doesn't justify what happened, it just explains why it did. Things went awry and I had to support the family and also come up on some money for myself. Nasty loan stuff that sometimes jolts me out of my regular day when it creeps back into the forefront of my mind. So yeah I got a job at a bank because what else are you supposed to do? I sowed and now I’m reaping.

I don’t hate the job but uhhh I sure don’t love it. I’m very indifferent and it's an office job so it’s very easy for the days to blend into a gray mash of malaise and middle management. I liked the job more when I was a bottom of the ladder guy because nobody really expected much of me and on particularly slow days I could bust out my laptop and watch some of the shows I torrented the days prior so that was fun. I read a ton of manga during that time as well. Any romance anime that has come out in the past two years and that will come out for the next few years I’ve read the manga for already. I was deep in the tank on that.

Anyway, so I’m at the job just doing what I gotta do to survive when I catch wind that Look Back, which is one of my favorite manga, is getting a film adaptation. And it's being done by Kiyotaka Oshiyama who is one of my favorite anime directors? Fuck man, that was laser scope targeted at me. I say “done by” because Kiyotaka Oshiyama directed, written and key animated by Oshiyama which is kind of staggering. Studio Durian, which is his studio, isn't exactly huge but they definitely had the staff necessary to spread out those roles. But Oshiyama is insanely goated and so he spearheaded most of the project. What a legend. Apart from having Key Animation credits on countless banger shows ranging from Gurren Lagann to Space Dandy to even The Boy and the Heron, he’s also the creator and director of Flip Flappers which was a fucking brain chemistry changer show for me. The day this fucking movie got announced I was over the moon. I was so excited I re-read the manga which I have on my shelf right next to my desk. It’s so good dude. I’m not really gonna talk about the plot in detail because you legitimately just have to watch it. Please watch it. I’ve been on record saying the Fujimoto glazing is a little out of hand, but I’ll be damned, he really did it this time.

The movie is gorgeous, man. The color work is stunning and the animation is so lively and expressive. The music is unreal man. I can only describe it as sharp, when the main theme kicks in it fills up entirely and drowns you in it. The mixing on it is so incredible it feels like the piano is being played right next to you. Throughout the movie there are little blemishes. The line work isn’t always super clean and perfect. There are errant lines that in a regular production would be erased before the thing went out to broadcast and parts where the characters lose detail or go slightly off model for the sake of conveying an emotion or an idea. All of this is done very intentionally to maintain a constant human presence, you can tell that not every frame is perfect. You can feel that this thing was drawn frame by frame by a person. That person had good days, they had bad days but through it all they kept drawing. They kept going and they could have made all that effort invisible, like is desirable in most productions, but they didn't. They kept it in as a love letter to artists. As reassurance that's it’s okay that not every piece is your new best work, but that you find pleasure in the act of creating. As reassurance that in an age where the future of artists feels so muddied and unsure, that there will always be a place for human touch, that we crave that and appreciate that more than we may even realize. This isn’t conjecture on my part by the way this is straight from the directors mouth. I told you Oshiyama is fucking sick, didn’t I? Of course since it’s a movie about young kids drawing and finding a passion for art the sketchy style not only fits thematically but also harkens back to Fujimoto’s sketchy style which he’s become kind of famous for. It doesn't necessarily look like a copy of the manga but it captures the feeling and essence of it in such a good way.

So many anime adaptations shy away from the art style of the manga, sometimes for good reasons to be fair, but to see this one go all in on capturing the right feel of the art, it’s incredible to see. A dream adaptation on all fronts. 

As an artist himself for a long time Fujimoto is so intimately aware of the way an artist thinks and he portrays the good, the bad and the ugly of that with such stark honesty I can’t imagine it even being enjoyable to read for the guy. The way Fujino experiences highs and lows as a direct result of how people interact with her art is so fucking tactile. The joy of seeing that people actually like it is there. The fact that your family thinks it's a waste of time that you could be using to buff out your extracurriculars is there. The point in your life where you decide that it’s not worth it anymore, the whole range of experiences is there. And of course the thesis of the movie, why do we do it? 

That’s something that was always hard for me to answer. Even now that I have an answer it hardly feels like the “right” answer, but it’s my answer. And I I got are my answers. I create because it’s the easiest way I have to express the way I feel about things. I write these fictional scenarios to try and route out the answer to real ones. There's things about me that I don’t like to talk about, but if I write about it happening from the perspective of someone else then it becomes more manageable. And it’s usually pretty obvious what's going on but there's always a little more under the hood that's probably impossible for anybody but me to breach and that's great. It’s for the best that things are that way. Art has to be a little indulgent or it won't get made.

This movie really supercharged me. It makes me want to create. It makes me want to go for it. So here’s hoping that goes well. And I guess, if it doesn't, that's fine. At least I went for it.