"If you just follow me, everything will go smoothly."
Absolutely heart-wrenching film about two aspiring female mangaka that is accomplished through a lot of visual creativity and excellent editing. It may be less than an hour long but it's all killer and no filler. The theme of friendship is also fuelled by competition, jealousy, and guilt on Fujino's side. The first time we see Fujino, we see her back, and her foot impatiently tapping away while also being quite tired after drawing the 4-panel manga strip for the school's newspaper. We only see her face in the reflection of a mirror on a table, and her clothing is gender ambiguous, which caused me to mistake her for a boy until her voice comes out. You only notice she's a girl when there's a zoom out to her clothes at school much later. She gets bigged up hard at school where everyone praises her First Kiss sci-fi romance strip, and it's clear she cares a lot about external validation. This comes crashing down when a rival to her comic strip also shows up in the newspaper, from truant student Kyomoto who stays at home because she's scared of people (hence why her art is of backgrounds such as buildings). There is a scene where Fujino is walking across a field, cross-cut with comments from others praising Kyomoto's strip and now Fujino's art is seen as "average" in comparison. Fujino is asked by a teacher to take this younger girl under her wing. Fujino develops an obsession over a whole year to be better, incurring social and education costs. She then quits, and only until she finally visits Kyomoto to deliver a graduation certificate and gets fangirl'ed, also seeing they both stacks of drawing notebooks piled up, does her interest in being a mangaka get reignited. They both improve each other in ways, such as encouraging Kyomoto to get out of the house and meet people, become less shy, and travel together. From here a strong and bittersweet friendship grows.
Kiyotaka Oshiyama's character designs, screenplay, and direction along with the rest of the team deliver a phenomenal audiovisual adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga, that has to be seen at a cinema. The animation is amazing throughout, with some variety in art styles, and one section of the First Kiss manga strip reminding of Masaaki Yuasa's simpler and wacky style. Fujino's character arc from overly confident and arrogant to more social and collaborative with Kyomoto is beautiful to see, which is why when Kyo doesn't decide to stick with her to become a manga series artist and wants to go to art university instead regresses Fujino back to a more guilt-tripping and mean side. The form of manga itself is playful and magically realist towards the final stretch. I was drawn to tears towards the last 20 minutes, especially when there is a montage of stills as they draw and hang out together. The ending is one of the saddest for any film this year. Not only the best animated film of the year but in general, one of the best films of 2024.
