| Fujimoto is definitly pretty fun when he combines rule of cool with sh*tpposting humour. This is just sterile and theres barely chemistry among characters. I thought the animation was gonna improve the experience but meh. |
| :v |
Ishitateso said: @someguy Then maybe you just have to be in a certain mood for it, or get it not in some mechanical sense interpreting some symbols and such but having some previous life experience that makes you able to connect to the heart of the story, feel and appreciate some of its aspects that could be hidden to someone who is younger. For me the essence of it was not about that somebody died in it and you have to be "sad" because of it, I have seen so many japanese and korean wannabe tearjerkers that I have become completely desentized to that kind of thing if the story doesn't offer much more than just that. What actually made me connected to their story was how they became the purpose and motivation for each others life, how they chased each other (at first without realising it), competed with each other, admired each other, completed each other, struggled to keep up with the pace of the other and didn't want to be left behind (the visual language of the anime showed it so beautifully) and in the process they relationship became something alike to "soul friends", the red threads of their fates became so entagled that even in an other life they couldn't become separated. Kyoumoto became not only in the artistic sense but a more profound way somebody who gave the "background" to Fujino's life, gave direction to her talent and made her realise it while in the same way Fujino gave purpose to Kyomoto's previously inert gift in drawing and made her come out of her shell. They had something so special beyond their shared interest, something that came from the time they spent together, from the inner motivation and meaning they gave to each other even if they were far away from the other, even after the death of one of them. It is one thing to understand those things I have described and an other one to become so deeply engrossed in feeling them that you completely forget about time, you just go with the flow of it and don't feel it slow or fast - it is just right... This movie was in a sense extremely similar to the chinese movie Soul Mate from 2016 which got readapted by the koreans in the 2023 movie Soulmate. I recommend you to watch those movies. I see, that might be it. I would recommend you watch this one J Drama called “Life’s Punchline”, one of the only shows that got me very emotional. |
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| I can see why some wouldn't like the pacing here. despite the short runtime it sure does take its time closer to the end. I think I only really liked it because I know people who draw. |
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| Nah I agree with you, I enjoyed the manga more. It’s funny how op asks if he's the problem cuz anime fans would lash out when someone’s opinion doesn’t fit in their little echo chamber. |
DrizNov 11, 11:06 PM
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| Nah, you're not. Sounds like you're just young, when you talk about it beeing too slow or too dragged out. It's a mellow, wholesome Story, which is clearly not meant to get you on the edge of your seat, by it's pace or whatever. You don't like down to earth Drama. And that's okay. That beeing said 7/10 is a pretty high rating if you felt bored watching it. |
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| Disliking popular stuff or just something that most people enjoyed doesn't mean someone's stupid or something like that. You shouldn't pay attention to the people who say otherwise. |
| meh, completely fine. not everything is for everyone. this is exactly how I felt about frieren |
can't yuck my yum  |
| I didn't even finish watcing it.. U r not alone.. For me.. The animation is bad.. The manga got an animated too, n we have to watch it too.. What a trash.. (Atleast for me).. |
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| I think Look Back is heavily reliant on its plot twist/drastic thematic change for the audience experience. So while it’s not a fault of the film, having read the one-shot three times probably didn’t do me any favors. Regarding difference in mediums: I love how ordinary and natural the passage of time is in the one-shot. The one criticism I haven’t seen expressed anywhere that mattered a lot to me was the music. When you flip through the pages in silence, the passage of time unfolds as raw as in the real world. Tick…tick. Flip…flip. In the film, almost every scene with music was overbearing to me. The overly sappy music begins as soon as the screen moves, in a way that is overbearingly priming the audience for the sadness and profound emotion to come. This is in direct contrast with the dramatic shift, which is supposed to hit the audience when they least expect it. I teared up at the voices—Fujino’s harshest words and loneliest cries—never to the piano. At worst, it actively distracted me from what was on screen, especially from those oh-so important time-passing scenes. I wouldn’t say the film is “slow” overall, but one difference I felt in pacing from the one-shot were all the scenes following *spoilers* Kyomoto’s death. Each time I read the one-shot, separated by a year each read, I reached the end thinking I understood the ending a little better, or a little worse depending on your perspective. Everything is presented so quickly and fragmented that I ask myself: which reality is real? By our reliance on storytelling conventions, everything we’ve seen up to Kyomoto’s death was the one and only true plot. But that gets questioned when an alternate set of events is introduced, and then thrown out the window when Fujino in the future seems to communicate with Kyomoto in the past, and not even across time but across different realities via the manga strips. This is why I love revisiting the one-shot even when knowing “what happens.” Maybe future Fujino passed out in Kyomoto’s house and is dreaming the alternative world where she saved her friend. Dreaming the manga strips from under the door. Or maybe everything we’ve seen is past Fujino imagining all the different ways their lives could go depending on whether she decides stay or leave when she delivers Kyomoto’s diploma. All of this rambling to say that the narrative’s execution in the one-shot leaves quite a wide range for interpretation, whereas the film slows down and emphasizes certain scenes more with music, animation, “camera” framing, etc. It more or less cements that what we were shown, outside of the “what could have been” saving Kyomoto fantasy, is what really happened. In comparison it leaves me with less possibilities to ponder and appreciate than the one-shot does. My final point—if you’ve stuck through all the above rambling—is that Look Back AS A MANGA being about creating manga makes it both a compelling meta-fiction (or maybe it would be meta-manga here?) and an enlightening look at the author’s process of and relationship with creation. Therefore, it feels like the most effective version of its story, in the same way I believe a Goodbye Eri film adaptation could be the most effective version of its story. |
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