Faithfully adapted from a popular one-shot web manga by “Chainsaw Man” creator Tatsuki Fujimoto, “Look Back” is a 53-minute anime film about the endless toil of artistic creation. In that sense, its running time seems like something of a cruel joke, as every scene of writer/director Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s ultra-compact stunner returns our attention to the painstaking nature of its own making — untold years and lifetimes poured into a project that speeds by in a little bit less than an hour.

And yet, this lilting tale’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it brevity proves inseparable from the lasting power of its punch-to-the-gut impact. Life is short, “Look Back” reminds us in both form and content, and so much of it is often spent in service to work that might seem to betray the mortal urgency of being alive. But 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, and that many anime fans — already endeared to the self-inflicted misery that someone like Hayao Miyazaki has managed to forge into a magic kingdom of his own suffering — have come to appreciate second-hand: 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.

When Ayumu Fujino (voiced by Yumi Kawai) first discovers her love of drawing, it grants her a special purpose that refuses to be shared. Ayumu is the star manga artist at her suburban Japanese grade school, and she delights in the dopamine hit of small-time celebrity that she receives when her weekly comics are published in the school paper. Needless to say, Ayamu is none too pleased by the editor’s decision to reserve some print space for a girl named Kyomoto (Mizuki Yoshida), who remains enrolled as a student despite the fact that she’s a shut-in who’s never shown up for school.

Kyomoto’s stuff is good. Maybe too good. Her writing is whatever, but her pencil-work is divine. Already obsessed with manga at the expense of her friendships, Ayamu is pushed to get even better… until her rival’s comics become so advanced that decides to quit drawing altogether. And perhaps that would have stuck if not for the fateful day that Ayamu is assigned to hand-deliver Kyomoto’s diploma; no one else could’ve inspired the hyper-anxious hermit to open her bedroom door, but Kyomoto is such a devoted fan of Ayamu’s work that she can’t help but ask for an autograph. And so, a beautiful friendship is born — one that brings Kyomoto out of her shell, and restores Ayamu’s ego as her town’s alpha manga auteur.

~this review continues on IndieWire~