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Part 5 - Characterization I (Obata Takeshi, DEATH NOTE)
Let's hear it for part 8 5 of the ever-more increasingly innaccurately named three-part manga analysis series.
This one, I'm looking at how mangakas Obata Takeshi and Ooba Tsugumi, respectively the artist and the writer for DEATH NOTE, introduce a couple of characters in chapter 59. No spoilers, unless the mere fact of knowing what Obata and Ooba tell you about the personality of these characters in four panels is enough to send you into conniptions. Certainly no plot spoilers. As usual, heavy use of images. Pictures taken from the scanlations done by We, the Fans, and if you're interested in DEATH NOTE after this (and well you should be), go join the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
death_note community and check the memories for an archived post by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sub_divided which lists the various sites you can download it. And then go order the Japanese tankoubons because it's JUST THAT GOOD and you want to tell the company publishing it that YES there is a market for it.
So. The Characterization Post in which we learn that for these pages at least, it's all about the triangles, that a lamp growing out of someone's head really isn't the mistake it ought to be, and that you can learn a lot about a person without ever seeing their face.
DEATH NOTE is a tightly plotted (well, it gives the appearance of being tightly plotted, but the writer admits in an interview that she's making it up as she goes along, which is the nature of serial fiction) suspense manga currently running in (IIRC) the Japanese Shonen Jump. The basic idea is that a young man named Yagami Light has gotten his hands on a shinigami (god of death) notebook, which, if you write someone's name in it, kills that person. Light decides that he's the right person to make this a better world, and embarks on a secret criminal-killing spree. In comes the mysterious detective L, hot on the trail of "Kira," as the media have termed the killer, and the story takes off.
Two new characters bound to play large roles in the second story arc of the manga are introduced at the end of the first arc. Mello and Near (blame the mangaka for the silly romanization of their names) as they appear in chapter 59, are children resident at an orphanage. Apologies for the bad quality, but I'm working from the scanlations, which aren't photographic reproductions of the pages, plus I shrank it down a little bit to prevent you from having to scroll and scroll to see all of it. Read right-to-left, Japanese style. The names are "Mero" and "Nia" here instead of "Mello" and "Near" because it was scanlated before the writer made her preferences for romanization known. I'm going to continue to use the "official" spellings, silly as they are.
So - this page starts with three establishing panels, which start from far away and then zoom in close. You gather an impression of the location before you find out its name. (And nobody quite understands why the mangaka chose the name "Wammy," which occurs in other circumstances, so you'll just have to accept that Ooba has a tin ear for English.)
Obata, the artist, is using a method that comic artist Brian Stelfreeze once tipped me about - each panel has something from the previous panel in it, to provide visual continuity. Note how the tree on the left side of the first panel with the clock tower is butted up against another tree on the right side of the next panel, giving an impression of a full tree, instead of one cut off by the panel edge. The shape of the clock tower is also echoed by the cupola-thinger (I don't remember the term for it) on the building in the second panel. Continuity into the third panel is provided by the gate, most especially by the name plate, which you can see but not read in panel 2, and which is focused on in panel 3. The sound effects (the characters that look like 7s) also move the eye along into the third panel. I am not sure what those sound effects are, but as soon as someone puts it into the comments I'll edit the post to add a sentence more about them. :)
[ edit ]coffee_and_ink and rachelmanija suggest that the characters are "wa" in katakana and that they represent the sound of a bell ringing, which ties the three top panels together again, because the bell in the clock tower is in the first one, while the sound of the bell is in the second and third.
[ edit 2]chitatopops informs me here that the "7" sound effects represent the sound of people cheering, and therefore are the voices of the kids playing, which then connects the second and third panels to the fourth.
There isn't a good, strong line moving from panel 3 to panel 4, and the artist puts in a bigger panel break to mark what would be a cut in a movie. Panel 4 introduces Mello, or at least the back of Mello's head. I think the strong arc from the close-up of the name plate and the strong arches over the windows are the elements of continuity between 3 and 4. The general movement of the panel whooshes you down the building and the steps, through the kids, and up Mello's body to his head. The arc of Mello's body points directly up to the arc of Near's body in panel 5, and there are kids present in this panel, too, to provide that continuity. The speech balloons in panel 5 circle you around and down through Near's body to the final panel, where his fingers and the light area in the puzzle push you out of the panel and on to the next page.
Here that is with my Red Line o'Doom:
The Red Line o'Doom is a bit fragmented in the top three panels, because there's several lines all pointing you to the dead stop that is that name plate. And notice the up-and-down curve line that follows the outlines of the trees and clock tower in panel 1, the sine curve of the gate in panel 2, and the final slant of the bottom edge of the name plate in panel 3. This provides the flow that pushes you along. And remember where I said up top that it was all about the triangles? See the big, solid element of the clock tower dominating panel 1? And the gate with its two main lines - the curved and the straight - leading in to the name plate? There's a triangle there, forming an arrow pointing you to the name plate. The name is significant for Plot Reasons so I won't tell you why it is, just accept that it means something to the story, and that's a good reason for making sure the reader stops and reads it and gets that information. If Obata had just dropped the name plate in without ensuring that he could point to it with every means possible, then there's a fairly large contingent of readers who'd have skimmed over it, even if they think they read and look at every single panel, because the page is so complex and the art is so detailed, that it'd get lost in the fuss.
But you're not here for that today. You're here for the characters.
Here's a closeup of Mello's panel:
Mello dominates the panel. His black clothing forms the foreground, drawing attention, and all the lines point to him. Specifically, they point to his head. The kids are looking at him, and their poses suggest motion - they're running towards him. He's the most important person in this panel, and even though he's being chased by a group of kids, he's still in charge. Without the text, you can still see what's going on - the nameless kid speaking has a hand to his head, has an expression of anger, and he's holding the soccer ball like he's about to sling it full-force into Mello's face. Obviously, Mello's just beaned him good with the soccer ball and the kid is on the attack. Mello's running, but he's laughing at the kid, so he doesn't take him too seriously. Even without the laugh, you could tell the kid isn't a serious threat, because Mello's elbow is out - pulling parts of your body in signifies being afraid, because you're trying to make yourself smaller - his fingers are loose and relaxed instead of tense, and he's unruffled - his hair is smooth and controlled.
You've seen the back of Mello's head for one panel and heard him say one word. So. Do you like him?
Mello also stands out in other ways - his clothes and hair are a bit unusual compared to the other kids', and he's the base of a big triangle in the composition. Witness:
In the top panels, the triangle narrows and points you along, but in this one, the triangle widens and pushes you along, since your attention is drawn by the big black mass in the foreground. The big black mass is a simple shape, while the rest of the panel has a lot of fuss serving as white noise and negative space in it. Here's the graphic representation of that:
See how much that simple shape dominates the panel? This is one important kid. He's also dynamic and active and off-balance, moving. He's also blocking other figures in the scene - I don't think it's an accident that his extended arm is in front of the kid that he's hit with the soccer ball. That kid doesn't have a chance if he's going up against Mello, and you can tell that with one glance.
And because I can't post a picture without the Red Line o'Doom, here it is:
There's a lot of really strong lines in this panel. Keep this in mind because I'm going to go into this a bit more when I get to Near, the other new character. The building is solid with strong verticals, the kids form a wedge running towards Mello, the stairs are straight with strong horizontals, Mello's clothing is striking and strong, even the ground has a strong line at the edge of the grass. All of these lines lead your eye through the picture to one spot: Mello's head. Witness:
The space between his outflung arm and his back is even forming an arrow pointing directly at his head. Mello's head is then framed by the dark shadows of the stairs on one side, a white space in the grass on another, his dark shirt on a third, and the panel border on the fourth. This is a strong kid who's going places. He is grabbing and holding the center of attention, almost by force. He's full of dynamic movement. Also, his back is straight and he's full of sharp angles and straight lines. He's a kid who's going places and damn well wants you to know it.
And this is getting too long, so I shall post it now and save Near's analysis for another post.
Index to the Series
This one, I'm looking at how mangakas Obata Takeshi and Ooba Tsugumi, respectively the artist and the writer for DEATH NOTE, introduce a couple of characters in chapter 59. No spoilers, unless the mere fact of knowing what Obata and Ooba tell you about the personality of these characters in four panels is enough to send you into conniptions. Certainly no plot spoilers. As usual, heavy use of images. Pictures taken from the scanlations done by We, the Fans, and if you're interested in DEATH NOTE after this (and well you should be), go join the
death_note community and check the memories for an archived post by sub_divided which lists the various sites you can download it. And then go order the Japanese tankoubons because it's JUST THAT GOOD and you want to tell the company publishing it that YES there is a market for it.So. The Characterization Post in which we learn that for these pages at least, it's all about the triangles, that a lamp growing out of someone's head really isn't the mistake it ought to be, and that you can learn a lot about a person without ever seeing their face.
DEATH NOTE is a tightly plotted (well, it gives the appearance of being tightly plotted, but the writer admits in an interview that she's making it up as she goes along, which is the nature of serial fiction) suspense manga currently running in (IIRC) the Japanese Shonen Jump. The basic idea is that a young man named Yagami Light has gotten his hands on a shinigami (god of death) notebook, which, if you write someone's name in it, kills that person. Light decides that he's the right person to make this a better world, and embarks on a secret criminal-killing spree. In comes the mysterious detective L, hot on the trail of "Kira," as the media have termed the killer, and the story takes off.
Two new characters bound to play large roles in the second story arc of the manga are introduced at the end of the first arc. Mello and Near (blame the mangaka for the silly romanization of their names) as they appear in chapter 59, are children resident at an orphanage. Apologies for the bad quality, but I'm working from the scanlations, which aren't photographic reproductions of the pages, plus I shrank it down a little bit to prevent you from having to scroll and scroll to see all of it. Read right-to-left, Japanese style. The names are "Mero" and "Nia" here instead of "Mello" and "Near" because it was scanlated before the writer made her preferences for romanization known. I'm going to continue to use the "official" spellings, silly as they are.
So - this page starts with three establishing panels, which start from far away and then zoom in close. You gather an impression of the location before you find out its name. (And nobody quite understands why the mangaka chose the name "Wammy," which occurs in other circumstances, so you'll just have to accept that Ooba has a tin ear for English.)
Obata, the artist, is using a method that comic artist Brian Stelfreeze once tipped me about - each panel has something from the previous panel in it, to provide visual continuity. Note how the tree on the left side of the first panel with the clock tower is butted up against another tree on the right side of the next panel, giving an impression of a full tree, instead of one cut off by the panel edge. The shape of the clock tower is also echoed by the cupola-thinger (I don't remember the term for it) on the building in the second panel. Continuity into the third panel is provided by the gate, most especially by the name plate, which you can see but not read in panel 2, and which is focused on in panel 3. The sound effects (the characters that look like 7s) also move the eye along into the third panel. I am not sure what those sound effects are, but as soon as someone puts it into the comments I'll edit the post to add a sentence more about them. :)
[ edit ]
coffee_and_ink and rachelmanija suggest that the characters are "wa" in katakana and that they represent the sound of a bell ringing, which ties the three top panels together again, because the bell in the clock tower is in the first one, while the sound of the bell is in the second and third.[ edit 2]
chitatopops informs me here that the "7" sound effects represent the sound of people cheering, and therefore are the voices of the kids playing, which then connects the second and third panels to the fourth.There isn't a good, strong line moving from panel 3 to panel 4, and the artist puts in a bigger panel break to mark what would be a cut in a movie. Panel 4 introduces Mello, or at least the back of Mello's head. I think the strong arc from the close-up of the name plate and the strong arches over the windows are the elements of continuity between 3 and 4. The general movement of the panel whooshes you down the building and the steps, through the kids, and up Mello's body to his head. The arc of Mello's body points directly up to the arc of Near's body in panel 5, and there are kids present in this panel, too, to provide that continuity. The speech balloons in panel 5 circle you around and down through Near's body to the final panel, where his fingers and the light area in the puzzle push you out of the panel and on to the next page.
Here that is with my Red Line o'Doom:
The Red Line o'Doom is a bit fragmented in the top three panels, because there's several lines all pointing you to the dead stop that is that name plate. And notice the up-and-down curve line that follows the outlines of the trees and clock tower in panel 1, the sine curve of the gate in panel 2, and the final slant of the bottom edge of the name plate in panel 3. This provides the flow that pushes you along. And remember where I said up top that it was all about the triangles? See the big, solid element of the clock tower dominating panel 1? And the gate with its two main lines - the curved and the straight - leading in to the name plate? There's a triangle there, forming an arrow pointing you to the name plate. The name is significant for Plot Reasons so I won't tell you why it is, just accept that it means something to the story, and that's a good reason for making sure the reader stops and reads it and gets that information. If Obata had just dropped the name plate in without ensuring that he could point to it with every means possible, then there's a fairly large contingent of readers who'd have skimmed over it, even if they think they read and look at every single panel, because the page is so complex and the art is so detailed, that it'd get lost in the fuss.
But you're not here for that today. You're here for the characters.
Here's a closeup of Mello's panel:
Mello dominates the panel. His black clothing forms the foreground, drawing attention, and all the lines point to him. Specifically, they point to his head. The kids are looking at him, and their poses suggest motion - they're running towards him. He's the most important person in this panel, and even though he's being chased by a group of kids, he's still in charge. Without the text, you can still see what's going on - the nameless kid speaking has a hand to his head, has an expression of anger, and he's holding the soccer ball like he's about to sling it full-force into Mello's face. Obviously, Mello's just beaned him good with the soccer ball and the kid is on the attack. Mello's running, but he's laughing at the kid, so he doesn't take him too seriously. Even without the laugh, you could tell the kid isn't a serious threat, because Mello's elbow is out - pulling parts of your body in signifies being afraid, because you're trying to make yourself smaller - his fingers are loose and relaxed instead of tense, and he's unruffled - his hair is smooth and controlled.
You've seen the back of Mello's head for one panel and heard him say one word. So. Do you like him?
Mello also stands out in other ways - his clothes and hair are a bit unusual compared to the other kids', and he's the base of a big triangle in the composition. Witness:
In the top panels, the triangle narrows and points you along, but in this one, the triangle widens and pushes you along, since your attention is drawn by the big black mass in the foreground. The big black mass is a simple shape, while the rest of the panel has a lot of fuss serving as white noise and negative space in it. Here's the graphic representation of that:
See how much that simple shape dominates the panel? This is one important kid. He's also dynamic and active and off-balance, moving. He's also blocking other figures in the scene - I don't think it's an accident that his extended arm is in front of the kid that he's hit with the soccer ball. That kid doesn't have a chance if he's going up against Mello, and you can tell that with one glance.
And because I can't post a picture without the Red Line o'Doom, here it is:
There's a lot of really strong lines in this panel. Keep this in mind because I'm going to go into this a bit more when I get to Near, the other new character. The building is solid with strong verticals, the kids form a wedge running towards Mello, the stairs are straight with strong horizontals, Mello's clothing is striking and strong, even the ground has a strong line at the edge of the grass. All of these lines lead your eye through the picture to one spot: Mello's head. Witness:
The space between his outflung arm and his back is even forming an arrow pointing directly at his head. Mello's head is then framed by the dark shadows of the stairs on one side, a white space in the grass on another, his dark shirt on a third, and the panel border on the fourth. This is a strong kid who's going places. He is grabbing and holding the center of attention, almost by force. He's full of dynamic movement. Also, his back is straight and he's full of sharp angles and straight lines. He's a kid who's going places and damn well wants you to know it.
And this is getting too long, so I shall post it now and save Near's analysis for another post.
Index to the Series
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http://www.rfsd.k12.wi.us/high/hsfl/katakana.html
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the 7s
I just happened to know your journal and have read your Characterization essay.
I'm really impressed by your analysis on Death Note. Especially, that "lamp growing out of Near's head" part is hilarious.
As for the 7s, they are sound effects which are used to represent that some people cheering. So in this case, they are the voices of the kids playing soccer, and the elements of continuity between the fourth panel and the previous two panels.
I like this kind of analytic reading. I hope you keep on doing it.
Thank you!
Re: the 7s
And thanks for your nice words. XD Glad you enjoy these.
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But that means the story could vere off into Crazyland at any time ... oh, wait, what I am saying? XD
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I think it's giving the appearance of being tightly plotted because she set up rules beforehand and is sticking closely to them, even when it takes the characters to palces she doesn't want to go. (She admitted in an interview that she cried when she realized that she would have to write chapter 58/59 the way she did, that there was no other way to do it and still keep the story going; I'm remaining coy so as not to spoil anyone who doesn't want to be when reading these. :)
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I wondered if she was avoiding something when the story slowed down during all the iocaine-powder introspection ("But if he knows that I know that he knows that I know he knows...") that preceded those chapters.
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That might have been the problem. It might also have been the company pushing her to try to slow down - she says that every time she comes up with an idea she wants to throw it in immediately and her editors are all "Slow down, slow down!"
I'm pretty sure those are "wa~"
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sehr informativ *nod* (ich gehe davon auf das du deutsch verstehst aufgrund der deutschsprachugen icons, huh?)
greetz, emü
(werd es bei zeiten nochmal studieren)
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Per Nadine Yuki's friend who is a German exchange student. Emukin's reply in Enlish is, "I just went over it very briefly - it is very informative. Wow, I am impressed. (I think you understand German - because of your use of German language icons) Next time I will study it more in detail.
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...
to the manga ana-whatever-> thank you! i took twenty minutes to re-find you site and name (know only that it was lj, - and had a red line of doom picture).
mr. google help me :D ,.. after twnty minutes. *drop*
whatever,thx that you write that, it will be helpfull(?) for me in the next time - when i "grow up" i just wanna become drawer like this, well,.. cimic/manga,.. or storyboard.
i`m so happy when you write the blame sites a like a storyboard - whee~i`m not the only one XD
sorry *grien*
*go on and read mooooreee*
thank you really really much!
emu.
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But thank you! XD
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DN: The Half-Invisible Mr Jeevas (http://www.mangabullet.com/MRS-Jeevas/journal/e16209) <--- My attempt at analysing the manga. :D