We delve into Chainsaw Man author Tatsuki Fujimoto's coming of age one shot. A story that explores budding rivalry and companionship, as well as the artist's calling in a cruel and random world. Skip synopsis @ 9:52
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102: Look Back
By Tatsuki Fujimoto
Translation by Amanda Haley
Lettering by Snir Aharon
Edited for English by Alexis Kirsch
Fujino is the manga artist of the school newspaper until it becomes apparent that a girl by the name of Kyomoto, whom she hardly knows, is beginning to turn heads by having manga skills that out do even the talented Fujino.
Fujino is fired up and begins to make manga that rivals Kyomoto's work. But the competition sooner or later takes its toll on Fujino, and she decides to quit manga in order to spend time with her friends and pursue different hobbies, such as martial arts for example. Months go by, Fujino is a graduate and is asked to do one last task from her teacher. Deliver Kyomoto's diploma.
Kyomoto is a recluse, a shut-in, or as the Japanese say, a Hikikomori. When Fujino enters her home, she is compelled to make a manga on the spot, it drops underneath the door, across the threshold of Kyomoto's room. And soon enough this goads Kyomoto from out of her room. She meets Fujino and praises her manga abilities, saying how much she was inspired by her, asks for Fujino to sign the back of her and asks her why she stopped making manga. Fujino tells her that she decided to focus on getting professionally published. Afterwards, Fujino does not walk home in the rain, instead she dances in the rain, once again inspired to take up a pencil.
Soon the two girls decide to work together to make a manga. On the day that their work is published, Fujino gets Kyomoto out of her house and the two brave the winter weather to their nearest 7/11 and proudly read their own manga from off the rack, a manga they both got paid for. But later, tensions rise when Kyomoto decides to become more independent, choosing to study at art college. Something that Fujino does not agree on, as it means that she will not have the person who fuels her artistry as she goes pro.
On January 2016, Kyomoto is killed when an art student terrorises the college. After the funeral Fujino goes back to her room, guilty for having made that manga that passed the threshold, she finds the manga, then tears it up, a piece of it falls and a gentle breeze sweeps it under the door. This time Kyomoto is on the other side of the door, a Kyomoto from an alternate time, she reads the manga and believes it was sent to her by a ghost. On the other side of the door, we see Fujimoto, still mourning the death of her friend, but she notices a strip of manga pass from inside the room back to her. The manga depicts Fujino, using martial arts to save the life of her friend. When Fujino opens the door, she sees no one is inside but the window is left open, sending a breeze in. It is important to know that Fujino does not actually enjoy making manga but when she looks back, she realises what her calling is.
Topics:
· We cannot talk about the author without mentioning the success of Chainsaw Man. The appeal of Denji (the main character of Chainsaw Man) is that his life goals are simple to the point of being pathetic (he just wants to touch boobs, lose his virginity, and have his toast buttered), but what makes Denji a good hero is not the reason why he does something but instead the fact that he needs a reason, any reason in order to survive, it's this desperation and pathos that makes him a perfect fit for shonen manga. However, there is a double-edged sword to such characters, and that is the tendency to romanticise pathetic traits. Being a horny and dumb shonen hero is like the male equivalent to Dahme aesthetic. Think Moe girls with toast in their mouth and incidentally exposing their panties all the time, that's Dahme. Fujimoto is great at writing characters like this.
· Look Back was published in July 19, 2021. This was between the two series of Chainsaw Man, with Chainsaw Man starting its school arc after the release of Look Back. During this time Fujimoto would allegedly be between the age of 27 and 30 years old. By this time Fujimoto would be a successful manga artist, having made and released Look Back during a pandemic and before he moved home. Fujimoto has stated that making a serialised work in comparison to a short story demands a different mode of thinking. Like a different brain almost.
· Look Back is not based on any specific life experience or personal account of the artist. Although the two characters have names based on Fujimoto, the decision to give these characters such names were from Yuji Kaku, a fellow manga artist, assistant, and friend of Fujimoto. Kaku felt that the author did have something in common with these characters. One of the characters would have been called Nonose.
· Kyomoto is a hikikomori, the Japanese term for a shut-in/recluse. Often the word is interchangeable with the word NEET, an acronym for someone who is not in education, employment, or training. Kyomoto is someone who suffers from a sort of agoraphobia/social anxiety, a common trait shared between hikikomori.
· Terrorism, or at least the threat of domestic terrorism at this point is a common theme in Fujimoto's works. But there is an argument to me made if school massacres are the same as terrorist attacks and if the two can be treated in the same manner.
· Will Storr in his book, 'the status game' makes compelling statements of the correlation between our social status and school/workplace massacres. His book is currently available in all good book stores, and there is an audiobook version available on audible/amazon and itunes.
· In the original publication of the story, the killer was schizophrenic, in the English viz media first edition the killer's motive is that they were plagiarized. There maybe version where the killer's motive is never known. That is because the first change came about to avoid stigma and discrimination of the mentally ill, while the second change (at least for the Japanese readers) would have been done to avoid allusions to the Kyoto anime studio arson of 2019.
Other references:
Here is the list of books that we see on Fujino's shelf, just follow the links if you want to buy them from Amazon:
· J Sheppard, fundamentals of figure drawing
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· Jack Hamm, Drawing the head and figure
· David Chelsea, the manga guide to perspective
James' recommendations of books that will go well with the above:
· Scott Mcloud's Understanding comics: The Invisible Art
· Andrew Loomis figure drawing for all it's worth
· Andrew Loomis drawing the head and hands
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