Saiyuki commentary: art (volumes 1-3)

[kate_nepveu]

I was going to have an "art" section in the whopping big Saiyuki post, but decided to break that out into multiple posts so that I could inline the images without killing people's connections. No deep thoughts here, just stuff I noticed in re-reading volumes 1-3, from an incredibly newbie perspective. Spoilers, naturally, particularly for volume 3. Also, I'm trying not to repeat things said by coffee_and_ink's three posts on Saiyuki, or telophase's Manga Analysis series post, or snowyheart's grid structure post, because they said it better and more helpfully.

Finally, I haven't read Reload or Gaiden yet. Do not spoil me for those volumes, or I will kill you with my brain.

Page numbering convention (which I, umm, made up): volume.chapter.page. All images are from the scanlations.

Characters:

Someone, possibly coffee_and_ink, remarked that Minekura's art style improves over time. I hadn't realized it, but going back to volume 1 really makes it clear how this is true. I mostly noticed it in the faces, which are somewhat weirdly pointy around the jaws. Consider Gojyo and Hakkai in the prologue (1.0.28):

By the end of volume 3, there is still some pointiness, but it's getting better (3.17.184-185):

 

The other character thing I want to remark on in these volumes is on 2.6.17, where we see little baby Gokus scampering about the text balloons, I believe to indicate who's talking (as if it weren't obvious). This is the only time we see this technique in these first three volumes, at least. I find it a little cute for my tastes.

Page layout:

You've already read the links above the cut, right? Right.

Panel flow:

When I first starting reading Saiyuki, I paid a lot of attention to panel flow and direction. Mostly I had no problems with this, which is why 1.1.54 gave me such trouble, and continued to do so on re-read (original size):

As far as I can tell, the most natural path for your eye on this page is . . . a circle, which was disorienting for me when I was trying so hard to remember to read right-to-left. I've marked it up below to show what I mean:

*shrug* A minor point, but one that caught my eye.

Here's something that's so basic that I'm almost embarassed to mention it, but everyone knows I'm a manga newbie. I found myself surprised at how easily that I picked up the right-to-left—but more than that, at how easily I didn't keep going right-to-left when I was supposed to drop down a line, even though the drop came before the edge of the page. I realized that Minekura (and probably everyone else) makes this easy by using the panel edges as cues and barriers. Here's a better example edited shortly after posting (2.6.39) (original size):

Instead of going across the top to "She's not thinking, right?", my eye follows the path drawn in red, because the panel edges (highlighted in blue) automatically redirect my eye. Like this:

Also note how the speech ballons draw the eye in the right direction. Like I said, so very basic that I almost didn't mention it.

Other panel flow things:

One of my favorite layouts in volume two is this double-page spread (2.9.114-115) (original size):

I first noticed the way that Hakkai and Kougaiji's eyes meet, and the way that the connection pops off the page, even with all the other things going on. Then I noticed how the sword to the right of Hakkai sets up a line that's followed through in Hakkai's eyes and the mountains in the background; and how Kougaiji's leap sets up the other two sides of a triangle, with his legs and Hakkai's head, like so:

I dunno, I just think it's neat.

Oh, speaking of panel layouts—we all know that Minekura loves the two-panels-across, one-person-per-panel thing, yes? For parallelism, emotional emphasis, or other punctuation? Okay. There are so many examples of these that I'm afraid to start on that for fear I'd never finish.

Foregrounds and backgrounds:

telophase pointed out the use of "tones", and thanks to her post, I noticed that Minekura really makes a lot of use of tones of a wide variety. Here are four examples from within just six pages of one chapter (3.12.24, 3.12.26, 3.12.29, and 3.12.30):

     

This is a slightly different use of tones: the people in the foreground aren't interesting, so they're faded out (2.8.78):

Finally, and again this is so basic I hate to mention it, but I liked the occasional use of backgrounds that had different events than the foregrounded panels. Sometimes this is to show other locations in the present (2.6.9) (original size):

But more (and more interestingly), it seems, it's used to indicate events that the foregrounded character is thinking of, like when Goku flashes back to Gaiden (presumably; remember, I haven't read it yet) and then goes beserk (3.12.13) (original size):

Or the last scene between Sanzo and Rikudo (3.14.91) (original size):

It takes a little more parsing for me as a reader, because I have to notice that we're not progressing linearly between panels any more, but it's worth it.

And . . . that's it. Hope I haven't embarrassed myself too much.

[ more Saiyuki art commentary ]

9:58: okay, I'm done having better ideas about the images and formatting and such. Sorry if anyone was reading during the edits.

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I think you're both right--that is, I read it the way you do, desdenova, but I see why Kate's confused, and I think it's why we don't see Minekura use the same kind of layout later on: it's an experiment, and the experiment fails. It's not a layout with a clear enough flow of action.

I was frustrated by how little McCloud dealt with manga when I went back to Understanding Comics after reading manga for a few months (I'd read him years before when I was into Sandman), but it's possible to figure out some things by the way he describes what Western comics do that manga -- especially shoujo -- doesn't. So I second the rec, but in a more qualified way.

I liked the occasional use of backgrounds that had different events than the foregrounded panels.

I've been calling these "borderless panels" instead of backgrounds to avoid confusion with the backgrounds of individual panels. But this is one of my favorite manga effects -- it makes for this richer psychological experience, incorporating memory and emotion into sequences of actions. desdenova is right that this is a shoujo technique, but I don't think the shoujo/shounen combination is unique to Minekura -- I think a lot of shoujo techniques have filtered over to shounen, even if they're not used as heavily. You can see some of the same combinations at work in Bleach, for example, which is about as shounen as you can get.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

My brain tends to not make a clear distinction between "comics" and "manga" (when I started getting into the medium a few years back, it was through both Western and Asian comics), so I didn't read Understanding Comics with an eye towards manga-specific bits. Much of what he writes about in there is generally applicable. There is one bit in there where he talks about various types of panel-to-panel transitions (with graphs!) which I think Kate would find particularly interesting.

Re: shojo/shonen, it is true that there is a trend towards shojo techniques in shonen manga; I remember reading an article about it a few years back. (I wish I'd saved a copy, now. Ah, the ephemeral Internet.). I do think that the melding is more extensive in Saiyuki than it is in Bleach, although I am not about to go through all the books and draw up McCloud-esque graphs. CLAMP is also big on the style-mixing; most of their work I can't even tell whether a particular title of theirs is supposed to be shojo or shonen, or what. (Tsubasa is technically shonen, yes? What about xxxHolic?)

[kate_nepveu]

Graphs! Hah. I'm sold. Thanks.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Tsubasa is technically shounen. Maybe more than "technically." There's the whole CLAMP issue--but it's got what I think of as the stereotypical marker of shounen, which is that about 75% of the plot is fighting.

Nobody seeems to know what XXXholic is; I remember reading an interview with one of the CLAMP members where she called it "uncategorizable." Odd little horror fantasy story with shounen-ai hints, I guess, but hardly enough for those hints to be the hook for people who look for that. Like a lot of the manga I have a hard time categorizing as shoujo or shounen, it makes more sense when I think of it in terms of Western genres, oddly enough. I mean, the medium's manga (plus some Beardsley), but the content is pure Saki or M.R. James.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Straight-out horror Saki, or is there some humor?

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

There's lots of humor, actually. As of volume 5, it seems like one of their happier works.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

One of my campfuckudie friends has gotten me curious about it, but I've been hesitant because CLAMP is so up-and-down.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Well, I think the art's among their best, wasn't won over by the story at first, and have been more persuaded by recent volumes. I like it, but I seem to like CLAMP better than a lot of people do and/or to be more forgiving of uncompleted stories.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

The people-who-all-look-alike get to me after a while. But I'll hve to check it out.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I don't think the main characters of XXXholic look much like each other or even any other CLAMP characters. Huh.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I meant CLAMP in general. I haven't seen anything of XXXholic other than my friend's icons in Camp Fuck You Die, which are hardly representative. XD

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

it's got what I think of as the stereotypical marker of shounen, which is that about 75% of the plot is fighting.

Hah! Not a bad metric.

I generally use the terms in reference to whom the comics are marketed towards in Japan, i.e. what sort of magazine they're published in. It's an artificial classification system, to be sure, and sometimes you've got to wonder how a particular manga ended up in a magazine full of an entirely different type of story, but it provides a baseline for discussing artistic decisions and such.

What xxxHolic reminds me most of, manga-wise, is Petshop of Horrors, which is squarely in the shoujo camp. But, xxxHolic is just enough less girly, and just enough more action-oriented, to pull it into genre-busting land.

I'm pretty sure I had a point, somewhere, but I seem to have lost it. Oh well.

[kate_nepveu]

You're right, "borderless panels" is more accurate than "backgrounds" or "page backgrounds"; while I'd still like a term that indicates their relation to the other panels, "bottom-layered borderless panels" (or whatever) is probably too much of a mouthful.

WRT techniques, I think this is another reason why _Saiyuki_ was easier for me to start with than _Fruits Basket_, say--less techniques that immediately tried my "arrgh, need insulin" reaction, but enough differences from Western comics to perhaps be a gateway drug into more shoujo things later.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

You should post a link to this to manga_talk, by the way. I think you're much too modest about the visual stuff you're picking out, or at least I can't find people talking about it and want to see more.

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks, I will. I wasn't intending to be modest, truly--I don't feel like I'm noticing anything particularly subtle--but I'm having fun doing it, regardless.

[kate_nepveu]

a "bleed", because the image bleeds beyond the restrictions of a panel

Huh. That makes sense, thanks.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I thought "bleed" was reserved for pictures that went past the margins of the page?

[kate_nepveu]

We're talking about the last three images posted on the main post, what to call the images that are sort of in the background to the panels with borders: the footstep; the person with long hair in the bottom half; and the non-gun panels.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

In something like 3.14.91, Kate was calling the flashback/memory images of Rikudo and young Sanzo and young Sanzo's smile "backgrounds" and I suggested "borderless panels" instead, to distinguish between picture backgrounds and different kinds of panels. It sounded like you were saying "bleed" was the technical term for them, even though they're restricted to one page and don't run into the margins.