Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Look Back (2024) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Yuumi Kawai, Mizuki Yoshida, Yoichiro Saito, Kota Oka, Kureha Maki, Koya Yoshihashi DIRECTOR: Kiyotaka Oshiyama CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kazuto Izumita MUSIC: haruka nakamura PRODUCTION: Studio Durian, avex pictures, Shueisha

Box Office Performance

Look Back earned $2,002,270 domestically and $10,646,394 internationally, for a worldwide total of $12,648,664. International markets drove the majority of revenue (84%), indicating strong global appeal.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Production

In February 2024, an anime film adaptation of the manga Look Back was announced. In March 2024, it was announced that Kawai and Yoshida had joined the voice cast as Fujino and Kyomoto, respectively.

▸ Music & Score

The music is composed by Haruka Nakamura; the film's theme song, "Light Song", is composed by Nakamura and performed by Urara.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: 4 wins & 6 nominations total

! scope="row" | Annie Awards

! scope="row" | Blue Ribbon Awards

! rowspan="3" scope="rowgroup" | Crunchyroll Anime Awards

! scope="row" | Hochi Film Awards

! scope="row" | Japan Academy Film Prize

! rowspan="3" scope="rowgroup" | Japan Expo Awards

! scope="row" | Japanese Movie Critics Awards

! rowspan="2" scope="rowgroup" | Nikkan Sports Film Awards

! scope="row" | Seiyu Awards

! rowspan="2" scope="rowgroup" | Tokyo Anime Award Festival

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Look Back was universally acclaimed by critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Look Back has a 100% critic rating based on 25 reviews and the average rating is 8.7 out of 10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100, based on six critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

IndieWires David Ehrlich gave the film a grade of "B+", praising the character design and the emotional weight of the story; Ehrlich wrote that, "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 [...]: 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." Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gave the film a score of five out of five stars, praising its visuals as "wildly yet unassumingly beautiful" and its plot as accessible "yet philosophically rich"; he concluded: "There's a haiku-like purity to it: Look Back is as neat and yet also as overflowing as the four-panel strips in which its leads once diligently honed their craft. And if something so beautiful also feels too brief – well, that may be the idea."