telophase | Index to Telophase's Manga Analysis Series

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manga_analysis

Index to Telophase's Manga Analysis Series

Hello! If you've come here looking for essays on manga layout and art and links to other sites that talk about it, you're in the right place. I've written some articles for Tokyopop, and these are the essays that started me out in this strange business of being a Web pundit.

Feel free to add me to your friendslist without asking - I don't get offended by that. :D Please excuse me if I don't add you back - it's not because of you, it's because I've got too many journals on my friendslist to keep up with right now and adding more would completely overwhelm me (I do try to at least go and look at your LJ occasionally). You're perfectly welcome to come in, hang out, read, and comment as you choose.

One request: if you comment and you're not a Livejournal member and don't have an OpenID to identify yourself with, please leave a name. I get lots of anonymice making comments on these, and some sort of name or nickname separates your anonymous comment from all the other anonymous comments and makes all of us take you a bit more seriously. ETA: Anonymous commenting is now off, thanks to anonymous commenters who never leave any way for someone to reply to them. It's easy enough to create an LJ for commenting purposes, and if you don't want to, my email address is posted on my LJ profile page.

I, and the other people who comment here, do tend to reply to comments because we're interested in talking about manga with other people, and presumably you are also. Leaving a way for us to discuss with you is common courtesy.

The Series:
Part 1 - What Makes For Professional Manga (Akira Toriyama, DRAGONBALL Z)

Part 2 - Order out of Chaos (Kazuya Minekura, SAIYUKI)
   Part 2.1 - Follow-up to Order out of Chaos, on SAIYUKI

Part 3 - Visual Flow I (Natsuki Takaya, FRUITS BASKET)
   Part 3.1 - Visual Flow II (Natsuki Takaya, FRUITS BASKET)

Part 4 - Action Jackson - Controlling Time (Hiroaki Samura, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL)
   Part 4.1 - Quick Followup on BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL
   Part 4.2 - Combat (Masashi Kishimoto, NARUTO)

Part 5 - Characterization (Obata Takeshi, DEATH NOTE)
   Part 5.1 - Characterization II (Obata Takeshi, DEATH NOTE)
   Part 5.2 - Characterization III (Obata Takeshi, DEATH NOTE)

Part 6 - Aging Characters (Hiromu Arakawa, FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, Ashinano Hitoshi, YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKOU) added 10 July, 2005
   Part 6.1 - Aging Characters (Obata Takeshi, DEATH NOTE and HIKARU NO GO) added 11 July, 2005
   Part 6.2 - Aging Characters (Kishimoto Masashi, NARUTO and Ai Yazawa, PARADISE KISS) added 11 July, 2005
   Part 6.3 - Aging Characters Quick Followup added 11 July, 2005

Added 1/8/2008: I ripped apart chapter 118 of Bleach here to see what each page and panel did, and how they contribute to the work as a whole. The analysis itself is in a Google Docs collaborative document: email me for an invite if you want to contribute to it.

Mangatalk, open threads on various themes in manga.
   Gender issues in manga.
   Plot and story cliches.
   Paneling and repetition in Saiyuki.
American comics in comparison.
Why and how does simple graphic design work? Using Fruits Basket to explore the elements of page composition.
Comparing Fullmetal Alchemist and Saiyuki
Differences in Japanese and OEL shoujo
Covers Comparing the covers of the top and bottom 5 manga in the monthly top 50.
Covers, part 2 Continued.

Manga essays and talk in other journals and websites

I have essays by other Livejournal people on manga analysis saved to my memories here. Many of them are also listed out here, in case Livejournal's memory function isn't working.

Essays on manga by Matt Thorn, a cultural anthropologist who teaches at the School of Cartoon & Comic Art at Kyoto Seika University in Japan.

Livejournal communities:

manga_talk - for discussion and analysis of manga/manwha/manhua/OEL manga, and posting links about same.

homemade_manga - discussion, comments, and criticism of your creative manga work

mangaartists - for anime- and manga-style artists

I'm willing to listen to suggestions for future essay topics, but you'll have a better chance if you ask a question about the process or techniques involved instead of asking for a particular series, since I tend to pick a series that serves as a good example for the subject and not the other way around.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I've slowly be going throught the posts, and am awaiting your book on creating comics.^_^ Anyhow I do want to become a pro artist some day. But are these pros just natural brilliant or do they study making comics? I'm having enough trouble just learning how to draw. I'm beginning to wonder if drawing can be learned actually. I don't really think about my panels and pages, if it looks pretty I just got with it.

It's partially learned and partially innate, I think, but what people have innately varies from person to person. It follows a lot of the basic rules of composition and how to direct a person's eye trhoughout a picture; it's jsut that with most comic pages your picture is formed of a set of smaller pictures and you ahve to make sure that the composition within each of them feeds into teh greater composition of the page as a whole.

Maybe some poeple do it mostly innately. I don't. SOme visual flow comes naturally to me, but a lot of it doesn't. I'm doing these essays in aprt to foce myself to look for it and find it, so then I can consciously practice it, witht eh hopes that eventually most of it will become natural to me and I won't ahve to think of it any more - the page will just look right to me. :)

I was thinking once I finally learn how to draw, I still have to learn how to make comics... I was serious about the book:D I know I should think more about the page layout, pacing, text placement, camera angles, backgrounds, facial expressions... I think my block is I 'know' what's happening but I have to let the reader know too, but not know too much, but just enough... :I'm going to lay down I've made myself dizzy:

I advise people to pay more attention to the visual storytelling aspects than the drawing part, because the drawing will come with time and practice, but you have to actively learn to do the other stuff.

Not to mention that tons of people know how to draw. Only a very small percentage of them know how to tell a story through pictures, so if you've got that nailed, then you're far ahead of the game.

Nice. I hope you don’t mind, I added your livejournal to my friends list for easy reference, very informative!

~Luke

Hey, no prob, and thanks!

This is wonderful. As a freshman in art college and a hopeful sequential art major, all of this was fantastic to read... very eloquent and enlightening. (I also didn't realize Mello was bullying that kid. x_x; ) It's great to see such appreciation for these fantastic mangaka, and a solid explanation of why they're so good. They really inspire people like me, however they manage it... and you're explanining exactly how. X_x;

(DBZ was my first manga, and BotI and Fruits Basket - which I discovered at once - were the manga that hit me hard enough to change my direction in life and go for art colleges... it's hard telling that to some, but I think you'd understand. XD)

Thank you! I'm glad they're helping you. There's not much in English on these sorts of thing - all the How To Draw books deal with the less-important things, and don't mention how to construct the story visually. They give a few hints here and there, but nothing really useful. There's always McCloud's Understanding Comics, and Eisner's books on sequential art, but nothing specifically for and with manga, which is similar in a lot of ways but different in others.

it's hard telling that to some, but I think you'd understand.

Absolutely. XD

There's not much in English on these sorts of thing - all the How To Draw books deal with the less-important things

It's true. Most of them are only good for tips on character design, or reminders to do "Dynamic Poses." Nothing ever delves into what is where, why... all the things you're talking about are vital to understanding comics, and it's never explained like this! I've wanted something like this for the past three years, damn it all. x_x; Out of curiosity, are you studying this, or teaching it?

Also, I saw mentioned in the comments that you were publishing a book?

I'm doing it primarily because I'm trying to figure out how to do it myself. :) I'm pretty analytical when it comes to things, and I have to tear something apart to see how it works. I got the general idea from the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition and seeing the author Patricia Wrede rip text passages apart down to the core in much the same way - I figured, why not try it for manga? And when

coffee_and_ink asked for some analysis on Furuba and Saiyuki to see how they worked after I posted a big review of Rumble Pak and Sakura Pakk #1, well, History was Made. XD

Also, I saw mentioned in the comments that you were publishing a book?

Thinking about it. There's a group of us who are currently working on a doujinshi and who are considering creating a small manga press. The things I've been talking about in the essays sort of really want to be a book, and that sounds like a good possible thing to publish through that. Unless it turns into something REALLY good and I convince a real publisher that's likely to pay me money to take it on. XD The only problem with the second thing is that I have no pro credits as of yet[1] to convince them that I know what I'm talking about other then just studying it. The other major logistics problem is that I doubt that I'll be able to get permission from all the various companies whose pages I've used here, so if I were doing this through a small publisher, I'd have to prevail upon people I know to draw sample pages of the stuff I was talking about. Which isn't that impossible, actually, just time-consuming.

But that project can't be really looked at seriously until after A-Kon anyway. :)

[1] This may possibly change if one or more various projects that I can't talk about at the moment come to fruition.

Where is this review of Rumble Pak and Sakura Pakk? XD I just recently learned of its existence... and by recently, I mean five seconds ago, visiting an online manga (http://www.aoihayashi.com) that I check occasionally. Whoa.

Anyway, it's great that you're thinking about such a book. If anything, you're doing a fantastic job at ripping them apart this way. XD Half the time I was nodding my head in dawning realization, thinking, "Yeah, I can see that - hell, I knew that already!" and the other half I was doing my best to absorb the new clear-cut explanations of such clever storytelling. XD By the by, I hope to see it turn out.

*shuffles feet* Um. Would you mind if I friended you?

Let's see ... they, in all their badly typed glory, are among my (way too many) entries on March 16th (http://www.livejournal.com/users/telophase/2005/03/16/). (It was a really boring day at work.)

Thansk! And no, I wouldn't mind at all! XD

this is wonderful... will take me a while to read though XD thank you!! btw your username worries me *shivers*

Thank you!

That's one of the more interesting responses I've received about my username, although I think "That's my favorite phase of mitosis" is the most interesting. I got it when I dropped my name into an anagram generator and it popped up with "Telophase Fines." The next time I needed to pick a username on a board, I used 'telophase' and it stuck.

I guess there's hope, most people like my paneling but then point out the roughness of the art. I want to try to integrate the text better, like in Clamp's Clover series. I used to want to do film briefly and I read all these cinematography books. So I'm always thinking of a panel as a still frame in the story arc. We also talk about camera angles in animation a lot. Anyhow ever since my bf pointed out I don't draw backgrounds(after I was on like page 150 of my book)I've been trying to establish the environment more. I'm glad you break it down as to why some pages work and some don't. I knew when a manga was good, though I could never figure out why.

If you look at my webcomic (http://www.cant-sleep.net) and then look at the stuff I've been posting here under friendslock, it's totally not the same thing. And that's only about 3-4 years difference there, 3-4 years when I wasn't drawing every day or trying really hard to improve. Regular life drawing classes were a big part of that improvement, because it forced me to draw from a live model for reference, and it forced me to sit there for three solid hours and do it, when I usually get bored if something's not working and go do something else. Another thing that helped was going through DeviantArt and leaving good, solid, detailed crit on hundreds of pieces, especially the amateur ones, because it forced me to analyze why things were working and why they weren't on all those pictures, which helped me develop my eye. Going to cons and having professionals critique my work was seriously useful, and finally these manga analyses, which are making me rip panels apart farther than I would just reading them on my own.

Hm. There was something else I was going to say but after all that I have now forgotten what it is. :/

Nice. I think the first comparison was a little harsh though. The combat Naruto one was probably my favourite.

I think a bit on One Piece would be cool too. I'm not sure what the topic might be... Maybe style or personal iconography?

Harsh? In what way? I;m willing to explain my reasoning behind not cutting anyone any slack, but I'd like to hear your reasons first, so I'm not putting words in your mouth.

I'll think about One Piece. :) I'm snowed under at the moment and probably won't get to any more essays soon, but if a topic occurs to me, then hey. :)

You might be interested in this manga analysis (http://www.livejournal.com/users/harlockhero/104523.html) I once happened to find.

I've been planning since a while ago to post a bunch of manga sequences in my journal, not really as an analysis but rather to gush about how beautiful and powerful the timing and visual flowing are. xD Maybe I should do that soon.

Will there be more on the subject of characterisation?
Are you familiar with Naoki Urasawa's works? He did Monster, 20th Century Boys - highly acclaimed and multiple award winning authour and imo draws the best facial expressions in manga ever. And he's one of the best at visual storytelling.

Oh, nice, thanks. And yes, you should. XD (And do it very very soon, and tell

rachelmanija because she's on vacation in Japan at the moment but sick and stuck inside for the most part, and requesting manga analyses amng other things to entertain herself.

Will there be more on the subject of characterisation?

There could be. XD Provided I find the time somewhere. I've heard of Monster at 20th Century Boys, but haven't read them.

Let's see what I can do. ^^ I already put a bunch of things together (tho more because of my obsession with lovely sequences) But I don't think I'd have the patience to make a real step-by-step analysis.

There could be. XD Provided I find the time somewhere.

Would be namely interesting to see other ways how characters get introduced.

I know someone who claims to have trouble reading other manga after reading Monster, because the visual storytelling just is simple yet so gripping. C: If you are interested, you can get all volumes here (http://64.62.145.165:6969/).

Well, no matter what you see, other people will see stuff you missed.

coffee_and_ink and I would get different readings from the same page.

rachelmanija said in the comments on one of the character essays that she'd like to see an examination of Raito/Light's introduction, especially to see how it compared with that of L, who gets the Tartuffe intro where everyone talks about the character for a while before you see him, so he needs a big intro. And a preliminary look at chapter 1 shows that not only do you only get one full-face shot of Light to start with, you don't even get a full-body shot of him for ages and ages and ages - it's all partial shots, and in most of them his face is turned away from you. I'd have to think about it to figure out the function of that.

and my ISP has blocked P2P filesharing so no more BT for me, waaaaaaah

Oh yes, the way of just showing parts of the character, like only the feet and hands and so, building up to the dramatic point of unveiling the face, is a brilliant way of introduction, as I find. Urasawa (who happens to be my favorite mangaka) does that very often, even with characters that are soon to be killed off (like, in the next chapter). :/ You can also do that technique when you are re-entering old characters, that have changed (visibly aged or switched sides or whatnot). Pity about the BT :C

As for Light's debut... I say the first three coloured pages are enough to get the idea, that this is the main character. On the first page he stands out from his class, the splashpage confirms his importance. There is no need to build up a huge mystery around his character, as he is the protagonist and we follow his sight of things. I suppose on the pages that follow after, when you get to see the back of his head often, it's like for us to see things from his viewpoint. And it's all not too dramatic, he does need to appear rather normal at the beginning. That's how I see it anyway. :x

would probably be useful reading for you, both his essays and his comic works. He covers a lot of the same ground, in a more general sense.

Oh, yes, he's excellent. :) And McCloud - between them they pretty much cover everything I've talked about. Other than them, there's just not a whole lot out there that specifically focuses on manga or even non-superhero layout, which is part of the reason I'm doing these. (the other part being that every time I do one, I get a little bit better at it. XD)

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Index to Telophase's Manga Analysis Series

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Will Eisner

Re: Will Eisner