Your Stories and Art Matter Even When the World Turns Bad

Note: I hope this essay helps writers and artists who are struggling with the current state of politics and the world. My regular Genre Grapevine column covering November news will be out in a couple of days. Also, this essay contains spoilers for the anime Look Back directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, which was adapted from the manga of the same title by Tatsuki Fujimoto. The anime is currently streaming online.

Stories saved my life.

Growing up in rural Alabama, I didn’t understand what it meant to be neurodiverse or how being on the spectrum related to me not fitting in with other kids. I also couldn’t comprehend why the things I noticed in life were ignored or discounted by others, or why I had so much trouble expressing myself to others. Why what seemed like common sense to me was passing strange to many people.

I hated how my dreams never matched the dreams that were deemed worthy by my teachers. How people frequently said one thing but acted in ways totally opposed to their words. How I witnessed so many people hurt each other with glee.

I was fortunate that my family loved and supported me, but they couldn’t help me understand how to deal with my life. I skipped so many days of school – often pretending to be sick – that multiple teachers were certain I suffered from some horrible, unknown disease.

And I fought. Not because I wanted to, but because I had no choice. Sucker punched in the bushes in junior high school by someone I wrongly believed to be a friend. Attacked in the bathroom by five other boys on my second day at a new grade school. Hit over and over because I was different. I lost most of those fights, but also learned that not fighting back wasn’t an option for me.

What ultimately saved my life – and helped me to understand the world and people around me – were science fiction and fantasy stories. I grew to understand myself through novels and short stories, comics and manga, different genre films and TV shows and anime. I learned how to interact with others. I discovered that while my dreams may have been discounted by many people, those dreams could still live and thrive.

Stories also inspired me to keep going no matter how depressed I grew over my life. When I didn’t want to carry on, I connected with the stories I read and watched. And what those stories meant to me turned into a desire to write my own. To create tales that would reach out to others the way the stories I loved had reached out to me.

I’ve been thinking about my path to becoming a writer since watching the new anime film Look Back, directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama and adapted from the manga of the same title by Tatsuki Fujimoto. When the manga came out three years ago, I was so inspired by it that I wrote an essay exploring not only creativity itself but how the things we create connect people with each other.

Now, though, the beautiful anime adaptation of Look Back has me contemplating how the connections created by art and stories also change who we are as individuals along with the larger world we live in. And that’s extremely important to remember when the world around us goes bad, or when life reaches down and hurts us.

Look Back focuses on two young artists, Fujino and Kyomoto, who publish their art side-by-side in their grade school newsletter. Fujino draws 4-panel manga cartoons while Kyomoto draws detailed sketches of buildings and landscapes. When Fujino first sees Kyomoto’s beautiful sketches, she’s inspired to improve her own artwork. But Fujino grows discouraged as the years pass. Despite working hard at her drawings, she feels she’ll never catch up to the level of Kyomoto’s art.

During all this time, Kyomoto has never come to school because she’s extremely introverted and fears leaving her home. When Fujino is asked to drop off Kyomoto’s grade-school diploma at her house, the two girls meet and discover that just as Fujino was inspired by Kyomoto’s art, so was Kyomoto inspired by Fujino’s manga. They strike up a friendship and begin creating their own manga together, with Fujino helping Kyomoto emerge from her self-imposed isolation.

Time passes and, as they near college age, the two friends drift apart, each taking their own path to creating the art they care so deeply about. But then tragedy strikes, causing Fujino to question if the path she’s taken for her art was worth it.

Spoiler: It always is.

The anime’s story is essentially the same as the manga, but director Kiyotaka Oshiyama took inspired liberties with the pacing and artwork, creating a pastel-colored dream about creativity, art and stories. There are multiple ways to interpret Look Back, which is why seeing the anime adaptation hits me differently today than when I read the manga three years ago.

Back then I saw the story as revealing how creativity connects us with each other. But the anime shows me an equally valid additional understanding of Look Back, focused on how the connections created by stories and art can change both individuals and the greater world.

Watching Kyomoto emerge from her isolation during the film resonated with me, and reminded me of growing up as a neurodiverse child in Alabama. Back then stories taught me to embrace life and to understand other people. One reason Kyomoto’s character connected with me is because, like myself, she’s neurodiverse. When I was young, I also deeply yearned for connections with others, just as Kyomoto does. For friendships. For a helping hand to reach out for mine.

Art and stories build connections between Kyomoto and others, and those connections change her life. Art and stories do the same for Fujino. And the connections they both build through their art then spread to the larger world through their creations.

We see this process play out in our own world. Stories created by writers have been shown to increase empathy and help people understand the lives of others. A similar increase in empathy takes place with art. With art, this process is sometimes called “mirrored” empathy, meaning someone relates to and recognizes the emotions of others through the viewing of a work of art. In fiction and stories, the process is slightly different, being more of an “imaginative” empathy where the reader or viewer puts themself into the mind and life of a character or person different from their own.

Experiencing art and stories in either of these ways changes who we are as individuals. And this change then filters out into our larger world. It is not wrong to say that art and stories are one of the most subtle yet powerful ways to change both individuals and the greater world.

Unfortunately, though, there can be a terrible price to pay for this ability. Sometimes people react with hate or even violence when art and stories threaten their worldview, a topic covered by Look Back in the film’s painful last act.

We sadly see this is today’s world, where book bannings and burnings have become normalized along with hatred, hostility and threats of violence against artists and authors. Stories and art are also devalued, as evidenced by the many technology companies training their machine learning models on artwork and writings without the permission of the original creators. When the tech bros running these companies considered essentially stealing the work of countless artists and writers, it’s like they shrugged their shoulders and said, “Eh, who cares? It’s only stories and art.”

This attitude echoes in how so many people denigrate art and stories, implying that they are merely playful divisions or for children. Or that studying art or writing in college is a waste of time, as opposed to studying useful degrees like business administration or engineering. That if your art or stories don’t make you rich or land you on the bestseller list, you’re obviously a failure.

We see a variation of these views expressed several times in Look Back, such as when Fujino is asked “Aren’t you getting too old to keep drawing?”

I suspect that many people internalize this hostility to stories and art because, deep down, they fear how these of-so-very human creations subtly change our world. It unnerves people that the stories and art they dismiss can be used to fight back against those with money and power. That stories and art are, in the long run, more valuable than so many other things that our world equates with a far higher monetary value.

In the Studio Ghibli anime film The Cat Returns, one of the main characters states that "Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul." These words have always clicked with me because when we imbue our art or stories with this soul, that creation has a strong chance of connecting with others. And ultimately, that’s how we change not only ourselves but the world.

Many of the writers and artists I’m friends with have been depressed this year because of how the world has gone lately. I even had one friend tell me she couldn’t keep writing because her stories didn’t matter alongside all the pain and hatred and violence she sees in the news every day. She worried that continuing to create her stories was selfish. A way for her to avoid dealing with the serious problems facing today’s world.

My answer to her was to never stop writing. Create your art and stories. Share your dreams and visions with others. What you create matters.

Even if you think your stories or art aren’t up to pushing back against the many problems the world is facing, perhaps what you create will give someone an escape they need from their pain or circumstances. I still remember the stories that gave me such an escape when I was young. I wouldn’t be here without them.

What you create and share can reshape how so many others see their lives and this world. And ultimately, that may do more good than any other path an artist or writer may take in life.

As film critic David Ehrlich said in his glowing review of Look Back, "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."

I totally agree.