Chainsaw Man creator’s new manga is a beautiful friendship story


Tatsuki Fujimoto is known for writing hot guys. His most popular work, best-selling manga, and soon-to-be anime Chainsaw man, is a gory action series starring a teenager who is driven by the desire to touch her breasts for the first time.

Fujimoto’s recent one-shot, To look behind, it’s nothing like that. Instead, create a poignant and devastating story about friendship, the divergent paths we take in life, and why we create art. No guts, no blood, just a love story about two friends who want to write manga together. The full story is currently available at Viz website.

To look behind It begins with a young woman named Fujino, a confident student who is good at everything she does, including drawing manga for her student newspaper. Fujino absorbs the praise of everyone around her, until one day, a silent and absent Kyomoto from the class next door, sends out a comic of her own. Kyomoto’s work is beautiful and cinematic – his work, while not as fun as Fujino’s, is a detailed study of empty rooms and buildings lit by the sun. “Fujino’s art looks totally normal next to Kyomoto’s,” Fujino’s classmates say, much to his horror. At first, Kyomoto’s aptitude prompts Fujino to practice her art as much as possible, but eventually, her inability to overcome Kyomoto discourages her and she resigns.

However, after being tasked with handing Kyomoto a graduation certificate, Fujino brings the missing one out of his room with a comic. On the strip, a crowd roars in a stadium: “It’s the world championship finals locked up! Kyomoto is first with a wide lead, ”he jokes.

two girls crossing a busy city street

Image: Tatsuki Fujimoto / Shueisha Inc.

Fujino slips the strip under the door and starts to walk away until Kyomoto is chasing after her. Sweaty, with messy hair all over, Kyomoto tells Fujino that she inspired his own work and asks Fujino why he stopped drawing. Brazenly, Fujino says he only quit because he started working on his first book: a one-shot. On the way home, Fujino romps in the rain and reaches for the sky. When he gets home, he picks up his pencil to begin the first draft of the story he bragged about. Thus begins a long-standing relationship between the two drawing manga together under the nickname Kyo Fujino.

Chainsaw man, What To look behind, it’s heartbreaking in an emotional sense. But To look behind saves the audience guts and blood. It is also more accessible than Chainsaw man and other similar shonen series. Some shonen have hundreds of chapters and have been running for years. I burned through To look behind in a single afternoon.

To look behind It’s a beautiful friendship story, but what makes it essential read for any new or veteran reader is how it prompts readers to think about how art was made in their hands. As the girls draw, Fujimoto conveys the subtle passage of time by having the girls change positions at their desks over the hours and hours. The span of time allows us to delight in the amount of work they put into making their dreams come true. It demonstrates the simple reality that any reader should know: making manga requires time, work, and sacrifice.

Towards the end, Fujino wonders why he does manga. Working has become a hassle for her: “You can draw all day and still not be finished.” She would be better off reading manga, she reasons. It’s a callback to the opening scene, where a classmate asks if she’d like to become a manga writer. Fujino says, “sitting at a desk all day sounds boring,” and says that being a professional athlete would be more her speed.

So what gets the envious artist out of her own unwillingness to create? Her friend. The first person who pushed her to improve.

A set of images of two girls working on a manga.

Image: Tatsuki Fujimoto / Shueisha Inc.

After Fujino expresses his doubt, Fujino cuts out a panel of Kyomoto’s tired eyes, glaring at her and reminding her of her responsibility to her friend’s work. Kyomoto was the reason he drew all the time. After thinking about her, Fujino walks into her room, puts on more comfortable clothes, and she returns to her drawing desk.

Writing manga is a painful and laborious process in good times. In bad times, creating art, writing, doing anything for real, can be difficult as we grapple with the heartaches of life. However, no matter how difficult the act of creation, the manga becomes a way for Fujino to express his love for his friend and also keep his memories of her alive. In the end, Fujimoto shows Fujino, alone, with his back to us again, and the architecture of the city directing our eyes towards her, a reference to Kyomoto’s own work as a background artist.


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