The new manga from the Chainsaw Man creator is a beautiful story of friendship

Tatsuki Fujimoto is known for writing horny guys. His most popular work, the best-selling manga and soon to be anime Chainsaw man, is a bloody action series starring a teenager who is driven by a desire to touch breasts for the first time.

Fujimoto’s latest one-shot, Look back, is nothing like that. Instead, he creates a moving and dev astating story about friendship, the different paths we take in life and why we create art. No courage, no blood, just a loving story about two friends who want to write manga together. The full story is currently available on Viz website

Look back starts with a young girl named Fujino, a confident student who is good at everything she does, including drawing manga for her school newspaper. Fujino picks up the praise of everyone around her until one day the silent truant Kyomoto from the class next door submits his own comic. Kyomoto’s work is beautiful and cinematic – her work, while not as fun as Fujino’s, is a detailed study of empty rooms and sunlit buildings. “Fujino’s art looks totally average next to Kyomoto’s,” say Fujino’s classmates to their horror. Initially, Kyomoto’s talent spurs Fujino to practice her art as much as possible, but eventually her inability to surpass Kyomoto discourages her and she resigns.

However, after Fujino was asked to give Kyomoto a diploma, Fujino lured the truant out of her bedroom with a comic. On the strip, a crowd yells in a stadium: “It’s the closed World Cup final! Kyomoto is in first place by a large margin, ”he jokes.

Image: Tatsuki Fujimoto / Shueisha Inc.

Fujino slides the strip under the door and wants to leave until Kyomoto follows her. Sweaty, with messy hair all over, Kyomoto tells Fujino that she inspired her own work and asks Fujino why she stopped drawing. Fujino insolently says that she only stopped because she started working on her first book: a one-shot. On the way home, Fujino rages around in the rain and reaches for the sky. When she gets home, she picks up her pencil to begin the first draft of the story she was bragging about. This marks the beginning of a longstanding relationship between the two, who pull manga together under the nickname Kyo Fujino.

Chainsaw man, like Look back, is heartbreaking in an emotional sense. but Look back

Look back is a beautiful story about friendship, but what makes it a must-read for any new reader or veteran is how it gets readers thinking about how the art was made in their hands. As the girls draw, Fujimoto conveys the subtle passage of time by letting the girls change their desks over the course of hours and hours. The time lapse allows us to enjoy the amount of work they put into making their dreams come true. It demonstrates the simple reality every reader should know: making manga takes time, labor, and sacrifice.

Towards the end, Fujino asks why she does manga in the first place. The work has become a difficult affair for her: “You can aa draw all day and you are far from finished.” She would be better off just reading the manga, she argues. It’s a call back to the opening scene in which a colleague asks if she would like to become a manga writer. Fujino says: “Sitting at your desk all day sounds boring” and says that it would be faster for her to be a professional athlete.

So what does the reluctant artist bring out of her own unwillingness to create? Her girlfriend. The first person to push them to improve.

Image: Tatsuki Fujimoto / Shueisha Inc.

After Fujino expresses her doubts, Fujino cuts Kyomoto’s tired eyes, looks up at her, and reminds her of her responsibility for her friend’s job. Kyomoto was the reason she was drawing all the time. After thinking about them, Fujino goes to her room and changes into more comfortable clothes, and she returns to her drawing table.

Writing manga is a painful, arduous process in good times. In bad times it can be difficult to create art, to write, to really do anything, when we face the agony of life. But no matter how difficult the act of creation is, manga becomes a way for Fujino to express her love for her friend and also to keep her memories alive. In the end, Fujimoto shows Fujino alone, with his back turned back to us, and the urban architecture that leads our gaze to it – a reference to Kyomoto’s own work as a background artist.