is a 2024 Japanese animated coming-of-age drama film based on the one-shot web manga of the same name by Tatsuki Fujimoto. The film is directed by , who also wrote the screenplay and served as a character designer, and produced by Studio Durian. It stars Yuumi Kawai and Mizuki Yoshida as two girls with a passion for drawing—the outgoing Fujino (Kawai) and the truant recluse Kyomoto (Yoshida), the latter of whose artistic ability inspires a competitive fervor in Fujino that soon develops into a partnership.
Look Back premiered at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. It was theatrically released in Japan by Avex Pictures on 28 June 2024.
Plot
Cast Character Japanese voice actor English dubbing actor Ayumu Fujino Yuumi Kawai Valerie Rose Lohman Kyomoto Mizuki Yoshida Grace Lu Homeroom Teacher Yoichiro Saito Classmates Rina EndōShinnosuke TokudomeNanaka ShogakiTaisei MiyagishiHaruto ShimaMinori TakanamiSakura Tsutsumi Editor Koya Yoshihashi Man Kota Oka Ryan Colt Levy Fujino's Sister Kureha Maki Newscaster Takeshi Miyajima Announcer Daisuke Takahashi Teacher Jun Ito Friend's Mother Kaori Takeuchi Grandmother Masuma Taira Shut-in Competition Announcer Seila Ina Man from 4-koma Toshiyuki Morikawa Ryan Colt Levy Woman from 4-koma Maaya Sakamoto
Production In February 2024, an anime film adaptation of the manga Look Back was announced. In March 2024, it was announced that Kawai and Yoshida had joined the voice cast as Fujino and Kyomoto, respectively.
Music The music is composed by Haruka Nakamura; the film's theme song, "Light Song", is composed by Nakamura and performed by Urara.
Release Look Back premiered at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, which took place in Annecy, France, from 9–15 June 2024, in the "Annecy Presents" category, a non-competitive category created to showcase a variety of international animated films to audiences.
Look Back received a theatrical release in Japan by Avex Pictures on 28 June 2024, screening in 119 theaters nationwide. Due to positive critical and commercial response, including positive word of mouth, its release expanded to 11 more theaters on July 5.
In the United States, the Japan Society screened the film on 14 July 2024, in Japanese with English subtitles, as part of the "Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Cinema" event at New York. The film has been licensed in North America by GKIDS and premiered in theaters on 4 October 2024. Singapore-based film distributor Encore Films licensed the film in Southeast Asian countries and released it in theaters. The film was released worldwide on streaming by Amazon MGM Studios through Prime Video on 7 November 7 2024; it includes the original Japanese audio with English subtitles, as well as an English dub.
Reception Box office Look Back grossed million in the United States and million in other territories, for a worldwide total of million. The film grossed over ¥227 million (around million) in its opening weekend at the Japanese box office. By 17 July, after 18 days in theaters, it had made ¥1,017,961,780 (around million).
Critical response Look Back was universally acclaimed by critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Look Back has a 100% critic rating based on 25 reviews and the average rating is 8.7 out of 10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100, based on six critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
IndieWires David Ehrlich gave the film a grade of "B+", praising the character design and the emotional weight of the story; Ehrlich wrote that, "the fleeting nature of Oshiyama's film, which so fluidly renders eons of labor with the lightness of memory and the brilliance of a shooting star, is what ultimately allows it to crystallize a truth that most artists can only hope to accept for themselves...: Making things isn't a waste of time or a way of isolating oneself from the world, but rather the most beautiful way of belonging to it." Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gave the film a score of five out of five stars, praising its visuals as "wildly yet unassumingly beautiful" and its plot as accessible "yet philosophically rich"; he concluded: "There's a haiku-like purity to it: Look Back is as neat and yet also as overflowing as the four-panel strips in which its leads once diligently honed their craft. And if something so beautiful also feels too brief – well, that may be the idea."
Accolades + Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Annie Awards Best Animated Feature – Independent Look Back Blue Ribbon Awards Best Film Crunchyroll Anime Awards Film of the Year Best Score Haruka Nakamura Best Voice Artist Performance (Italian) Ilaria Pellicone (as Kyomoto) Hochi Film Awards Best Animated Picture Look Back Japan Academy Film Prize Best Animated Picture Japan Expo Awards Daruma for Best Anime Daruma for Best Feature Film Daruma for Best Slice of Life Anime Japanese Movie Critics Awards Best Animation of the Year Nikkan Sports Film Awards Best Film Best Actress Yuumi Kawai Seiyu Awards Special Award Look Back Tokyo Anime Award Festival Animation of the Year (Feature Film) Best Director
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