All PostsThe principle technique of storytelling is “analytical montage” (Groensteen L’Univers des Mangas (1991)) in which the sequencing of plates [panels] is very resourceful in comparison with a rather constrained Euro-American montage and page layout. In manga, there is no textual interference. Analytical montage entails the “scattering” of a story event over different frames. A scene that would “normally” (at least, from a western point of view) be captured in a single pane – with the necessary (or if you will redundant) descriptive information – is now cut up over different frames. The isolated frames, with alternating “camera-angles”, are put together in a visual continuum. Especially fighting scenes provide excellent illustrative material to this technique. For instance, the narrative in Crying Freeman (Koike & Ikegami 1994) proceeds through a rapid succession of images in the visual chain. Manga artists are real masters in creating such sweeping visual arrangements. Story tension and atmosphere are effected through variation of the number of plates [panels] per page – while applying cinematographical techniques such as fade-out, fade-in and superimposition – ultimately resulting in flexible page layouts. The ‘mise-en-page’ shows endless variation and is baroque compared to prototypical Euro-American page layouts.
Aarnoud Rommens. “Manga story-telling/showing” in Image & Narrative 1 (2000).