Faithfully adapted from a popular one-shot web manga by “Chainsaw Man” creator Tatsuki Fujimoto, “Look Back” is a 53-minute anime film about the endless toil of artistic creation. In that sense, its running time seems like something of a cruel joke, as every scene of writer/director Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s ultra-compact stunner returns our attention to the painstaking nature of its own making — untold years and lifetimes poured into a project that speeds by in a little bit less than an hour.

And yet, this lilting tale’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it brevity proves inseparable from the lasting power of its punch-to-the-gut impact. Life is short, “Look Back” reminds us in both form and content, and so much of it is often spent in service to work that might seem to betray the mortal urgency of being alive. But the fleeting nature of Oshiyama’s film, which so fluidly renders eons of...