All PostsSomething I’ve noted before and was reminded of as I read Inio Asano’s Solanin (Viz, 2008) this week. A lot of manga seems to use a certain layout of panels as seen in this randomly selected spread (142-143). The panels in the lower right and upper left are laid out using a similar structure.
In the case of the lower right of this spread, a group of panels, which I’ll call block-1 is divided into a vertical panel next to two horizontals. In this case the vertical comes first (remember we are reading right to left here), then the two horizontals, but the opposite is also found frequently.
The upper left shows a similar layout, but this time with four panels, which I’ll call block-2. We get the same vertical panel that leads off the block. The section next to it, block-3 is then further subdivided in a similar way to block-1, but turned on its side: two verticals and one horizontal.
This layout structure is found in numerous variations throughout this manga and many others. It’s kind of like subdividing a rectangle using the golden ratio.
[...] [Craft] A block of panels from Solanin Link: Derik Badman [...]
Very interesting; it reminds me of a canon in classical music, in which a structure is carefully laid out, and played in both forwards and reverse orders. Very Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid-y. I might try it…!
I think more interesting here is not the symmetry of the two pages but the way the wordballoon in Block 2 (as you called it) breaks the standard flow of the panels. It suspends the two top right panels. It reads, for me at least, as though we are getting the simultaneous reaction of the two characters to the wordballoon, capturing the same moment in time from two angles.
I’ve rarely seen this in western comics other than in Mignola’s Hellboy, were its used to great effect.
That’s an interesting reading, Sebastien, except the female character is also the one speaking. I read it as a brief pause as the characters look, then smile at each other before the female speaks.
Asano’s word balloon placement seems more a misstep than a purposeful tactic. It does make the upper left panels a bit isolated and easy to miss (you follow from the tall panel through the word balloons to the wide panel, passing by the other two panels in the corner).