Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Look Back Just Became a Live-Action Movie — And It’s More Serious Than You’d Expect

A manga about two girls who spend their lives drawing comics has just arrived at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals.

And somehow, that might be the most appropriate place for it.

Tatsuki Fujimoto's Look Back has now received its live-action adaptation from acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, with the film premiering in competition at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. It is also the first live-action adaptation of one of Fujimoto's works.

That combination alone makes this a pretty unusual anime and manga story.

But the interesting part is what Kore-eda has done with it.

This Isn't Really a Superhero Story

Look Back follows Fujino and Kyomoto, two girls brought together by their shared obsession with drawing manga.

Fujino is confident in her artistic ability. Kyomoto is much more withdrawn, but her drawing talent is extraordinary.

What begins as an artistic rivalry eventually becomes a friendship, with the two girls growing together through manga, creativity, and the complicated process of figuring out what they actually want from their lives.

The story then follows them across roughly 13 years.

That might sound simple. It isn't.

Fujimoto's original 2021 one-shot became known for turning something as ordinary as drawing manga into a story about ambition, friendship, grief, and the reasons people create things in the first place.

And that is apparently what attracted Kore-eda to it.

Kore-eda Didn't Just Want to Adapt the Manga

Kore-eda discovered Look Back during the COVID pandemic and said the manga gave him comfort during a difficult period.

When he eventually met Fujimoto, his first instinct was reportedly to thank him for creating it.

Then came the more unusual part: Kore-eda decided that making a film was the best way he could express that appreciation.

That matters because Kore-eda isn't coming to Look Back as an action filmmaker trying to turn a manga into a bigger spectacle.

He is the director behind films such as Shoplifters, Like Father, Like Son, and Nobody Knows, and his filmmaking has traditionally focused heavily on family, relationships, memory, and ordinary human moments.

That makes Look Back a surprisingly natural match.

Instead of asking how to make this manga look bigger, Kore-eda seems to have asked how to make people feel what these characters are feeling.

The Actors Actually Learned to Draw Manga

One of the best details from the production is that the cast didn't simply pretend to draw.

Natsuki Deguchi, Aju Makita, Furi Nanase, and Rokka Okada spent months learning how to draw manga before filming. Some of their actual artwork appears in the finished movie.

That may sound like a small production detail, but it fits perfectly with what Kore-eda wanted from the film.

The creative process itself becomes part of the story.

Kore-eda has talked about the changing sound of the pen as the characters grow — tentative scratches becoming more confident strokes before eventually turning into the soft tapping of a digital pen.

It is a small detail, but it says a lot about the adaptation. The film isn't merely showing people who happen to draw manga. It is trying to show what it feels like to become an artist.

And Venice Seems to Like It

The live-action Look Back is competing for the Golden Lion at Venice alongside 20 other films.

Early reviews have also been encouraging.

GamesRadar reported a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score from 11 reviews following the Venice premiere, while critics including Vulture and other publications praised the film's emotional approach and Kore-eda's humanist direction.

That doesn't mean the film is universally loved. Some criticism has focused on the ending and the film's more abstract choices. But the important point is that Look Back isn't being treated as just another manga adaptation arriving on a streaming service. It is being discussed as a serious piece of cinema.

And that may be the most interesting development here.

Manga Doesn't Need to Become Something Else to Be Taken Seriously

There was a time when manga adaptations were frequently judged by how successfully they could imitate Hollywood.

Look Back is doing something different.

Its source material is already about the value of making manga. Its director is one of Japan's most respected filmmakers. Its actors learned the craft depicted in the story. And now the finished film is sitting in competition at Venice.

Kore-eda himself has talked about how dramatically attitudes toward manga have changed, arguing that people now engage with manga much like they engage with classical literature.

That feels particularly fitting for Look Back. The story isn't really about whether manga deserves to be taken seriously. It is about what happens when someone takes creating something seriously.

The Timing Couldn't Be Better

The live-action film arrives after the acclaimed 2024 animated Look Back, which introduced Fujimoto's story to an even wider audience.

That means the new film has an unusual challenge. People aren't coming to it without expectations. They already know what Look Back looks like. They already know what its emotional beats feel like. And some have already seen the story animated.

So Kore-eda isn't trying to convince audiences that the story works. He is trying to convince them that it can work again in a completely different medium.

The Japanese theatrical release is scheduled for September 11, 2026, with international releases following later.

And if the early response is any indication, this isn't going to be remembered simply as the live-action version of that Fujimoto manga. It may end up being one of the more interesting examples of what happens when manga and cinema genuinely meet halfway.

The ZealPlane Take

Look Back is interesting precisely because it isn't trying to outdo manga. It is trying to understand it.

That's a very different approach to adaptation — and perhaps the reason a small story about two young artists has ended up competing for the Golden Lion in Venice.

---

— ZealPlane Editorial · Published September 2026