Look Back by Tatsuki Fujimoto - OPTIONAL

Look Back by Tatsuki Fujimoto, 144 pages. GRAPHIC NOVEL. VIZ Media, 2022. $13.

Language: PG (1 swear, 0 “f”); Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG

BUYING ADVISORY: EL, MS - OPTIONAL

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

In fourth grade, Fujino is the best manga artist in the school with a consistent column in the school paper. But then Kyomoto, a student no one has seen, wants to do it too. The two students compete with their art side-by-side for years until one of them can’t take it anymore.

Fujimoto’s art is beautiful throughout the entire book, and a lot of the story is told through visual cues in consecutive wordless panels. While the story is good, there are also several confusing leaps made without letting the reader know. I read the book twice and enjoyed the majority of it, but I’m still not sure I know what happened in the end.

The characters are Japanese, and any diversity in skin tone is unknown as the book is black and white. The mature content rating is for a couple depictions of nude art, and the violence rating is for an attack at a school resulting in multiple deaths – the attack is not shown, just talked about as an event.

Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen