Summary
- Look Back wins Best Animated Picture award at Crunchyroll Anime Awards & other prestigious ceremonies.
- The film was praised for its celebration of creation, camaraderie, and the will to live.
- Look Back was nominated for Best Film alongside major anime movies from 2024 at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, and won against stiff competition.
The anime film adaptation of CHAINSAW MAN author Tatsuki Fujimoto's Look Back manga was among the winners at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards hosted in Tokyo this past Sunday. While A-1 Pictures' major anime adaptation of the Solo Leveling manhwa swept a whopping six different awards at the event, Look Back solidified its place as one of the great anime films of the 2020s by beating out very strong contenders for the award.
The film's victory at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards follows a very successful run in which Look Back has earned itself Best Animated Picture award at the Hochi Film Awards, Tokyo Anime Award Festival and even the Japan Movie Critics' Award, to name a few.
Look Back Speaks to the Artist in All of Us
This adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's one-shot is a short but powerful celebration of creation, camaraderie, and the will to live.
Filmmakers pour their heart and soul into every frame, taking creative risks that stretch the boundaries of storytelling. It's about vision, about capturing fleeting moments of emotion and memory. These films take us deep into the worlds of heroes, spies, ghosts, artists and friends; each one driven by something vivid and something deeply human.
– Rina Sawayama, introducing the Best Film category at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards
The Nominees For Best Film at the 9th Crunchyroll Anime Awards
Look Back Beats Several Strong Contenders
Look Back was nominated for the Best Film category at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards and found itself among very strong competition, with several major anime movies from 2024 that also stood a very strong chance of clinching the award, including Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle, produced by legacy Ghost in the Shell studio, Production I.G; Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain by studio EOTA; My Hero Academia: You're Next by Studio BONES; Spy x Family Code: White, which was produced as a collaboration between WIT Studio and CloverWorks, and The Colors Within by DANDADAN and upcoming Ghost in the Shell studio, Science SARU. Look Back also had an individual award as Italian voice actor Ilaria Pellicone won Best Italian Voice Artist Performance for her performance as Kyomoto. Look Back's Best Film Award was accepted by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, the director of the film at Studio Durian.
Look Back was supported by many people in the anime industry, and we worked as hard as we could. So many people in this room that work in anime – people that really supported me and my journey. I want to express my gratitude to them; to you as well. Last year, we received many awards, but I don't think there were many awards that are specifically for anime, so for Crunchyroll to give awards to anime from Japan really means a lot. Thank you very much.
– Kiyotaka Oshiyama, director, Look Back
The 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards were co-hosted by English/Japanese voice actress Sally Amaki, who voiced Carol in both the English and Japanese versions of Tomo-chan is a Girl!, alongside Japanese presenter Jon Kabira. The event was dazzled by electrifying musical performances from Creepy Nuts, the Japanese rap duo behind "Bling-Bang-Bang-Born", the smash-hit opening song to Mashle: Magic and Muscle, and this year's winner in the category of Best Opening Sequence, "Otonoke", the DANDADAN opening. Legendary Japanese band FLOW made an appearance to perform the song "Days", which was the first opening to Studio Bones' Eureka Seven, in celebration of the series' 20th anniversary.
Look Back is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: press release