I’m reading Torishima’s guide on Ultimate Manga Techniques. If you don't know, Kazuhiko Torishima is the editor that scouted and hired Akira Toriyama. Toriyama created Dragon Ball back in 1984. This was the same year the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic premiered. All roads lead back to the turtles.
In it, Torishima makes some pretty absolute statements about what makes a successful Manga. It has lots of great points but some leave me thinking.
First, I think it's important for Westerners to know how cut throat and frantic the manga market is in Japan. Maybe it's different now in an age of digital art, but back in the 70s and 80s when Toriyama started his career, one must put out 10 hand drawn pages in a week on top of the writing and story planning. Torishima glosses over this by framing it as an art form that requires improvisational story writing and ‘collaboration’ with the trend-chasing editor. But it's clear he's justifying a inhumane industry.
For example, on page 78 you find Torishima explaining that chapter 3 of dragon ball was starting to fall off in popularity. Toriyama and Torishima realized that Goku was too passive a character. They reestablished that Goku’s new motive was to ‘get stronger’ as to make him more active and still lead the story.
On one hand, having that feedback is super helpful. On the other hand, the process of making manga is so fast and perilous, you don't have the time to plan a long term story or get feedback from peers before it is published. Its a market driven by the consumer (good) but bottle-necked by the editors’ and publishers’ data analysis (bad) at the cost of the story integrity and the artist’s vision (also bad).
Anyway…
On Panels and Speech Balloons, Torishima says “Since a story manga tells a narrative, specific and detailed information about the story is provided by the text more so than the art.” After thinking about it, it seems too narrow.
On page 30 he breaks down the components of Manga using a two page spread from Dragon Ball when Goku faces King Piccolo. On these two pages are 11 panels. In sequence, only panels 1 and 4 have any background detail. Torishima chose to use this example because it demonstrates what he says makes a great manga. That being said, the spread is basically a shot-reverse-shot of a conversation between Goku and King Piccolo.
Torishima also points out that Toriyama was tired of drawing the arena during the tournament fights so he had something happen where the area was destroyed. That way fights could take place somewhere easier to draw. Toriyama is being punished for drawing too much so he has to write in a plot development to make the manga easier to produce.
It's hard to explain, but by Torishima’s account, there seems to be an emphasis on the artist writing dialogue and story instead of drawing. It is a contradiction.
Maybe this issue comes from a reduced page space in manga compared to American comics. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud points out the importance of connection between text and image. They should need each other to complete each other. Having only one of the two lacks context.
This also points to a personal issue I have with Manga and Anime. There is too much talking and narration of what is already happening. Consider Gone with the Wind. Even in the famous scene when Clark Gable says he frankly doesn’t give a damn, Vivien Leigh states out loud what she is thinking so the audience knows it. It's such an archaic hold over from the days of stage plays and doesn’t give the audience anything to think about as they watch it. The play/movie/story holds the audience’s hand along the way.
McCloud explains this principle of writing in a great example using this painting at the MoMA. Just looking at the painting makes you think it's incomplete until you see the title. (I won’t tell you the title. Follow the link to experience it on the MoMA site.) If you only have one of the things; either the image or the title, it's not remarkable. But when you have both, it connects in your mind.
McCloud also points out how dialogue shouldn’t be redundant. It should not restate what the image communicates. If Goku jumps over Krillin’s head, it would be redundant and unnatural for Krillin to say “Whoa, he jumped over my head!”. The art would show that. The dialogue, if any, should complement the scene; garnish it like olive oil over a dolma.
Rock and I are students of Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of shows like Samurai Jack and Primal. There is minimal dialogue in these shows; the audience has to interpret the visual story telling, nonverbal communication and expressions to follow along. We epitomize stories that function without dialogue.
On the topic of dialogue…
Torishima also provides tips on how to make a character successful in a manga. Again, I agree with most things but one comes off as too childish: using catchphrases. Torishima says to give characters a speech quirk that matches their personality. You can see this used effectively in the comic Saga by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples. The pink ghost speaks in pink text. The merfolk characters have a green watery font style. The robots have a more digital font. It sets a voice for the character.
However, the examples Torishima provides are of Goku saying “Heya!” and Arale saying “N’cha!”. Maybe it has to do with the symbolic Japanese language Dragon Ball was written in, but these catchphrases don’t come across the same in English. I think a speech quirk is a good idea, but Goku and Arale are too narrow of an example of that technique.
Now, yes I also acknowledge that Shonen Manga is targeted to middle school aged boys (since that is the definition of Shonen), but as an adult reading it for the first time it’s annoying. For this reason I’m conflicted on how to think about Dragon Ball.
Do I read it and consider it like Dogman because of the demographic it's targeted at? Or do I read it and analyze the story telling Toriyama demonstrates? Neither one feels quite right.
Recent and Recommended Reading
Ultimate Manga Techniques by Kazuhiko Torishima
I’m reading through it so as I come across more weird points, they will become future blog posts. It's a good read but it's clunky. The book is written in the left-to-right Western style, but every example is the Eastern right-to-left comic paneling. There are also some clunky translation issues that make some parts redundant and others tricky. It gets disorienting.
The Frank Book by Jim Woodring
This is a book with no dialogue that still tells short stories in a dreamlike world with bizarre logic that you come to understand as you read more. Woodring said early drafts of Frank had speech bubbles but ultimately realized that it is far more compelling without them.
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
I recommended it before and I can’t recommend it enough.
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Its among the best comics out there. It will go down in history as one of the greats. If you aren't reading it now, you should be. It captures what it means to be a parent, how to navigate love, conflict and trauma. Imagine Romeo and Juliet but one is from the moon and the other from Earth and a civil war is going on between them. And other planets are starting to take sides.