I just watched Look Back. The film adapted from a one shot manga which released released this year. I hadn't read the one shot but I knew going in to it that it'd touch on a lot of personal pain spots for me. I don't think I was prepared for exactly how deep it'd press in to me. A lot of my own thoughts about drawing, how I viewed it growing up, how that shifted over time, and how I regret the connections I've lost with others.
This isn't so much a review as it is a lot of my personal thoughts right after having watched Look Back. That said, there will be spoilers contained in this blog post. So if you want to watch this movie with completely fresh eyes you might want to come back to this later.
Opening with the weekly school paper being handed out to a class of elementary students, the protagonist Fujino having drawn the weekly comic strip and receiving compliments from all of her classmates on her drawings, I already start feeling like I'm punched in the gut.
While I wasn't published in any sort of school periodical (I'm not even sure if the schools I attended ever even had a school run paper), I started drawing comics in the same year as the protagonist. The 3rd grade. I was going to a friend's birthday party and my mom asked if I wanted to buy him a card. I said no, as I thought it'd be more fun to draw him one. I didn't have a plan, so I improvised. Drawing a shitty one page comic on a piece of large construction paper (it was the biggest paper we had) about me and him and our friends getting up to absurd shenanigans. It went over really well. From then on during my spare time in class I'd start to draw comics. At first on loose pieces of paper stapled together, then in dedicated spiral notebooks, then eventually in a properly bound book with a spine full of blank paper that was more suited for drawing. I'd pass around the comics to my friends during class, or in passing periods, or during lunch. My friends and also readers who I didn't know well wanted to be included in the comics as well. So I let them draw in their own characters and I'd find a way to incorporate them in to the next issue. Kids thought they were hilarious and I was complimented for my drawing skills.
Fujino starts thinking about quitting drawing. A truant classmate who stays home wants to contribute to the weekly comic. Fujino's classmates think that these drawing are much better. I'm sure none of the classmates meant it, but these words start to fester in Fujino. She keeps thinking about how much work she's put in to drawing but now that someone else appears to be better, someone who's spent more time practicing form and has more hours spent illustrating, Fujino struggles to decouple drawing from how much better she could be at it. The initial joy of drawing seems to be sucked away. I ran in to this around the same time. Fujino encounters her classmates drawings as she's heading in to 6th grade, and gets feedback from classmates that she's a little old to still be drawing all the time.
When I got in to middle school I felt like I was a great illustrator for my age but being with a different mix of kids I started to encounter people that could easily eclipse me. My comics were still well received, I didn't quit them quite yet, but in the back of my head I kept thinking that I need to push myself. I need to get better at art. To do that I just need to draw more. I didn't seem interested in process or references or guides (I wish I had acknowledged those things back then), I just thought I could stubbornly brute force my way in to being “good at art”.
Upon dropping off the diploma of her shut-in classmate, Kyomoto, Fujimo finds out that her classmate is a huge fan of her work and wants to know why she stooped drawing. The person that Fujimo was directing her anger and discomfort at for her newfound internal self loathing about an expression that was once fun and carefree looks up to her. Fujimo is the reason that Kyomoto became so interested and enthralled in drawing. They start working collaboratively on a one-shot to submit to a contest. It goes over well. And they continue writing and submitting comics up through high school. But they grow apart. Fujimo wants to move directly in to writing a serialized published work, while Kyomoto wants to go to art school to improve her craft, to grow as a person, to rely less on Fujimo. Fujimo takes this poorly and they fight. They fall out. They stop speaking.
This didn't happen to me in a literal sense, but after my first year of high school I pretty much stopped drawing comics. They'd gotten much larger. Over 40 characters, over 40 page issues, but they still had roots in that dumb stick figure comic I drew in 3rd grade. Still absurdest humor and rejection of traditional narrative. I enjoy humor. But you could argue I was also hiding behind it. Telling jokes and being silly is a core part of who I am, but there's a lot more to me. A lot more I want to express. I was using humor to hide behind confronting that because I didn't know how to confront my own emotions, let alone express them. And while my drawing were getting more elaborate and detailed and expressive, with fully detailed backgrounds and a heavier focus on characters and creatures and machines that were more detailed than my stick figure characters, they were still rooted in those stick figures. I was spending all my time cartooning. Not following process or learning proper shading or anatomy or perspective. I still picked some of those things up, but I was at a severe skill deficit compared to others that were focusing on traditional drawing techniques and materials. After 9th grade I went to a charter school. A high school focused on an arts curriculum. I wanted to do music and drawing, but especially drawing. I turned in a portfolio of my work, handed over my transcripts, attended an interview and an ice-breaker. I was approved. I got in and I didn't have to pay a dime. The comics my friends loved and I wrote for my own joy were put away, I closed the book and stopped filling out the pages. I felt that it was childish, it was behind me, it was time for me to head out in the unknown. To abandon the things I knew, to go to school and get “good” at art.
I hated it. Not the school. It was an interesting and explorative environment. I had a lot of freedom and I learned a lot of new things. Not my classmates. If anything, I felt more than ever that these were my people. Fellow artists. There was a lot to bond over and share and I found many friends quickly and I was able to discuss art and technique and life and make jokes. Not my teachers. The majority of my teachers were supportive, informative, helpful. They saw my potential and wanted to see more from me. Many of them even found ways to encourage me to pursue things outside of their particular disciplines. I remember my songwriting teacher giving me a magazine about game development. The colleges to go to for a career in the games industry. My Civics and Humanities and Math and Science teachers were also encouraging of my creativity. What I hated was drawing. I was no longer doing it for myself. I wanted to “get good” at art. I felt horribly behind all of my peers. Even now I can't achieve what some of them could achieve then. I struggled to handle the take home work while juggling the other art classes, my normal coursework, my life, my health. I fell behind, assignments went unfinished, I started to dread every assignment. Presenting to my fellow students felt mortifying. I didn't lose a friend at that time but I lost my way. I lost my perspective. Like Fujimo, I had gotten what I wanted in a way, but it rang hollow without that sense of purpose. It became a chore. Nothing I could do was ever good enough. I hated myself, I hated my work, I felt empty and purposeless. I didn't have the perspective to see what I really wanted anymore or how to proceed. Fujimo kept working and got published and made serialized work. She got her work an anime adaption. But she felt empty without Kyomoto at her side. I personally ended up quitting illustration but did lots of other art forms, and eventually animation. I know animation is just drawing but more, trying to animate when I hated drawing is foolish, I know. But a lot of what drove me to draw was animation. I drew comics because I wanted to animate. Moreover, animation was not a valid major at the school, so nobody had made an animation senior project. I and another classmate became the first. We finished it. They still play those animations to this day 11 years later. But I nearly killed myself with the work I put in to finish that project. I was already dying that year. Animation is very labor intensive. Even though it was finished it rang hollow. I continued to do animation work in college, but eventually had to quit because of my health, and because those insecurities were still eating me up inside. Showing my work to people at venues didn't ever reinforce me, it just made me feel worse. That everyone was being nice and my work didn't deserve to be seen.
After having not spoken to Kyomoto for what seems like years, Fujimo overhears a news broadcast. Someone went in to the art school Kyomoto attends. They killed several students, left others injured. Fujimo can't get ahold of Kyomoto. Fujimo's mom calls. Kyomoto was killed.
This. This really hurt me. The last words they spoke were conflict. Kyomoto was going to school to improve, she felt she wasn't good enough for Fujimo. They lost touch, and all Fujimo can think of is the good memories they shared, the fight they had, she blames everything on her self. I've thought about this a lot when friends have died. If only I had reached out like I had meant to. I could have had more memories with them. Maybe I could have saved them. Especially if they took their own lives. I blame so much on myself that often I take death as a personal failing, for not doing the things I could have done. That I should have done. For not spending that time or offering that support or knowing the signs. It also makes Fujimo reflect, throughout the painful memories, she realizes she only started drawing again because of Kyomoto. She realizes this is the purpose of her work going forwards, especially after seeing how Kyomoto kept up with all of Fujimo's published work. For me I haven't quite found that purpose again yet. I'm still hurting over those that I've lost, what I've lost in myself.
Out of all the illustrators at my art high school, there was one student I looked up to more than any other. I thought they were incredibly cool. Each piece of work they created was astonishing. I felt I could never measure up. I always wanted to get closer to them, but I never felt good enough to become more than acquaintances. To me, they were a master of their craft, I was a dumb kid who drew stick figures. I compared my work to their internally, telling myself how much my output was awful. I never blamed them. I never told them this. I always quietly hoped one day I'd get closer, but also that it wasn't my place.
After I quit animation, I started working on an autobiographical comic about anxiety. Discomfort. Being trans, being pushed around, being used. I put up a preview with an example of what I wanted to make. They messaged me. They were interested in my work, and wanted to sign up to be my illustrator. For free. I didn't know how to handle this. I had looked up to them for years, but it was my work they were impressed by and wanted to contribute to? We talked online, met in person and hung out and grabbed food to discuss project goals and the philosophy behind what I wanted this to be, out personal lives. We traded drawings back and forth before publishing a few pages. No schedule, just whenever we could get around to it. One day they messaged me, apologizing that they couldn't work on the project anymore. They had so much going on, I wasn't paying them, they were in college, it's to be expected. They were helping me for free and there was no income source, that's okay. But I stopped working on it. I didn't feel like I could continue or that my drawing could carry the serious topics I wanted to discuss. Maybe I'd find another artist. Maybe they'd get back to me someday. I kept reaching out, not so that they could work for me again, but to make sure they were okay. Just to talk. To try and maintain that connection.
I hope one day I find that connection.
I hope if they're still out there, that everything is okay.
I hope we get to speak again.