welcome to camp telophase

Since I keep forgetting to post about this at a time when I know lots of people are reading LJ! Manga chapter analysis here. Comments, observations, challenges, complaints that I got it wrong, etc. welcome. Especially as the only one who's said anything about it is octopedingenue and I know it's been read more times than that by my stats. :)

If you zoomed past my previous LJ entry analyzing a chapter of Bleach while the link was down, it's back up now.

If you don't read the manga blogs, right now you're missing a go-round on story structure and books vs. serials sparked by a post by Johanna Draper Carlson at Comics Worth Reading and Christopher Butcher's review of tentopet's Fool's Gold.

Chronologically:

1. Johanna Draper Carlson's essay about reviewing serialized chapters, in response to someone challenging her reading of Mail Order Ninja.
2. Christopher Butcher's review of Fool's Gold.
3. Queenie Chan is asked by Newsarama to write a bit on the state of OEL/global manga, and responds to the above two by detailing the story structure she followed in The Dreaming.
4. Butcher responds, challenging Chan's perception of the three-act structure she used.
5. Heidi Macdonald at The Beat jumps in also.

So I started to think about working out how a chapter of Saiyuki was constructed, and got so far as dropping a layer on top of each page in one chapter and scribbling the figures and backgrounds as stick figures and notes.

Then (a) I got that OH GOD YOU'RE NOT DOING YOUR REAL WORK feeling and (b) I sort of forgot where I was going to go from there, so here I am offering up the scribbles to anyone whyo wants to look at them and see if they can come up with anything useful.

I think I wanted to mostly see where Minekura used closeups and far-away scenes, how many backgrounds and what sort and when she used them, when she left the backgrounds off, etc. She almost never uses almost-full-figure people - they're sort of from the thighs up unless the camera is set far away. And she excels at managing to get a background in with giving you a really clear picture of the whole surroundings.

Anyway, the file is here. It's chapter 44, from near the beginning of the Kami-sama arc in book 8, only 15 pages long, no action, and no plot spoilers in the stick figures.

If you have any grand ideas, or not-so-grand ideas, post 'em. And no making fun of my stick figures!

Here's a montage of 49 of the top 50 manga (plus one novel - Vampire Hunter D) covers (I couldn't find #29 on Amazon.com, so there's a white space marking its place). I have no OMG WOW insights, but a couple of observations.

List from Love Manga, where David loves crunching numbers. :D This is from the direct-sales market - comic book stores - and not bookstores. (which is interesting in reference to the number of shoujo series in the top 50, I think, since the market at comic stores tends to be more male and bookstores more female. We'll see how it looks when David posts the bookstore list. :D)

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