The Phenomenology of Contemporary Mainstream Manga
Valérie Cools, Concordia University
Abstract: Although manga constitute a massive transcultural flow, they are extremely
diverse as far as genre and content are concerned. This article attempts to bridge these differences by highlighting phenomenological patterns within popular manga: by bracketing content, the author focuses on the experience of reading manga, thereby considering the medial aspect of these works. By examining a diverse corpus of
contemporary popular series (Bleach, Death Note, Fruits Basket, and Kitchen Princess), the article pays attention to elements such as reading rhythm, contrast, fragmentation, and page tabularity, in order to pave the way for future study of manga’s place in the
contemporary medial ethos.
Keywords: manga / reading rhythm / phenomenology / fragmentation
There is a comforting, often productive but sometimes problematic vastness regarding the field of manga studies. When perusing general or introductory writings on manga, one is almost invariably informed, or reminded, that the term “manga” does not merely designate any one genre, but can in fact be applied to any comic hailing from Japan, from romantic comedy to historical drama to science-fiction (Ferrand and Langevin 2006, 6; Schodt 1996, 26-28). The variety of manga is inevitably highlighted and hailed as a reason for its popularity, both in Japan and overseas (Schodt 1983, 12-16), and is often mentioned as a response against pre-conceived notions of what manga are (Gravett 2004, 8).
However, this very diversity, even as it is used to validate scholarly writings on manga by establishing Japanese comics as a rich, complex object of study, can also pose methodological problems for some perspectives, such as those aiming to examine manga as a massive global phenomenon. Indeed, while the diversity of manga is indeed partly responsible for its success (as catering to a wide array of tastes ensures that most readers
will find something that appeals to them), it remains relevant to ask the question: is there a common feature which can be said to characterize manga as a cohesive flow? Do shōnen, shōjo, and seinen, along with their plethora of sub-genres (culinary, professional, rom-com, sports, slice-of-life, jōsei, science-fiction, thriller, shōnen ai, etc.), not to mention alternative manga and gekiga, possess something in common, other than the fact that they are comics that hail from Japan? Indeed, to characterize the Western infatuation for manga as solely a new form of Japonisme exposes us to a risk of essentialism,
although an interest in Japan does play a part in the process (see Napier 2007). One could certainly mention the printed format (180-200 black and white pages, read from right-to-left), or an arguable similarity in graphic style (where big eyes are invariably mentioned), but this would not necessarily get us very far. Of course, the very large and extremely diversified flow of manga which has been streaming into Western bookstores for the past decade or so could simply be explained as a result of successful marketing on behalf of Western publishers, who succeeded in creating a solid market for manga outside of Japan by diversifying their license purchases and appealing to a broad readership. While this certainly makes sense on a practical level, the explanation remains unsatisfying: again, why manga, specifically? Diversification of genres and topics cannot be solely
responsible.
Another possible reason for manga’s transnational appeal which has been put forward is what Iwabuchi Koichi refers to as its mukokuseki character, or cultural odourlessness: Iwabuchi points out that characters in manga, as well as in anime, are designed in such a way that their appearance does not evoke Japanese ethnicity (Iwabuchi 2002, 28; 2008, 41), and he argues that this absence of national traits is a factor in
Japanese popular culture’s appeal overseas (Ibid. 2002, 33, 94). It has, however, also been argued that there exist other forms of cultural odour in manga and anime, which include direct references to Japanese culture (such as traditions or dietary habits), but also include “not only different approaches to design, action, or narrative, but also different forms of representing gender relations and even different value systems as well” (Napier 2007,
133). While this apparently returns us to the thorny question of culture, it also leads to the possibility of identifying and studying elements which transcend genres.
Examining the phenomenology of manga could lead us to finding an answer (most likely one amongst several others) to the question of manga’s transnational appeal, while temporarily putting aside the question of culture. This paper offers to delve into the more formal aspects of manga, so as to hopefully isolate certain constants which
influence the experience of reading manga. This would require going beyond genre and sub-genre, by focusing on the more formal mechanisms of these works, in other words by zeroing in on properties which are related to the medium as opposed to the content – medial properties, as Hans Belting calls them (Belting 2004, 7). However, this does not mean that one has to put the image entirely aside: when it comes to the visual, form and content are never entirely separable, but rather are intertwined in a relationship of reciprocal influence. Image and medium combine to yield a specific phenomenology. Focusing on form simply means that, when content is taken into account, it will always be in relation to the comics apparatus.
With this goal in mind, I will examine and give examples from a voluntarily diverse corpus, described below. I have, however, chosen to limit my scope to mainstream manga, as opposed to auteur or alternative manga. The reason for this restriction is that, while alternative manga can and do retain characteristics pertaining to the mainstream, they also by definition stray from its standards: as Paul Ricœur points out, only a regulated imagination can be reflected upon, as deviation and transgression are only feasible against a background of norms (Ricœur 1980, 19). My aim here will be precisely to outline some of those norms.
I have chosen to focus on four series, selected because they represent strong generic currents within the manga flow. They are either ongoing or recently ended, and have all sold well in Japan and abroad. A full description would take up too much space here, but a quick overview of the series’ respective contents will clearly highlight how
dissimilar they are. Bleach (2001- ongoing1), by Kubo Tite, is a nekketsu shōnen2, with
strong fantasy elements: it follows the story of a 15-year-old Japanese boy with the ability to see spirits, who evolves to become a sword-wielding shinigami (soul reaper). The manga tracks his progress as he and his allies combat ever-stronger enemies, true to the nekketsu tradition. Fruits Basket (1999-2006), on the other hand, appears to exist at the other end of the narrative and generic spectrum: penned by Takaya Natsuki, it is a shōjo, a slice-of-life romantic comedy with overtones of fantasy. The series revolves around a 16-year-old Japanese orphan girl, who comes to live with a secretly cursed family, whose members transform into animals of the Chinese zodiac when hugged by someone from the opposite sex. The main focus of Fruits Basket, however, is not so much the magical aspects as the tensions between tradition and progress, between honouring the past and moving forward: it is a sentimental coming-of-age story, more than anything else. Ando Natsumi and Kobayashi Miyuki’s Kitchen Princess (2005-2008) is also a shōjo, but it differs from Fruits Basket in that it is set in a realistic (albeit
hopelessly romantic) context, and that its main theme, apart from pre-destined love, is food: the heroine, a fifteen-year-old Japanese orphan, has a gift for all things culinary and attends a school for the gifted, where she seeks out her long-lost childhood love, all the while overcoming obstacles with her cooking. This latter trait puts Kitchen Princess in the category of what you could call “contest manga,” which revolve around a character whose dream it is to become “the best in Japan” (or even “the best in the world”) within a specific discipline. The latter can range from sports to games to, in the case of Kitchen
Princess, making exquisite food (Schodt 1983, 106-109). The final series I have selected
is Death Note (2003-2006), by Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi. Despite being labelled as shōnen, and being pre-published in the same weekly magazine as Bleach, and despite featuring the same type of mythological figure (the soul reaper), this manga operates on a darker, graver level. Set in modern-day Japan, it starts off with a seventeen-year old boy stumbling upon a notebook with tremendous power: if a person’s name is written into it,
1 Publication dates refer to the initial Japanese run, not the publication of translated books.
2 Nekketsu shōnen is a combat genre which is characteristically features a young, passionate
protagonist, who faces increasingly powerful foes in his quest (Ferrand and Langevin 2006: 30-31). Other series pertaining to this genre are Toriyama Akira’s Dragon Ball and Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto.
that person will die. Combining Machiavellianism with megalomania and ultimate hubris, the boy decides to take it upon himself to rid the world of all evil. The series maintains a dark tone, and mainly functions in the mode of the thriller, pitting its fiendishly clever antihero against equally clever forces of the law.
While it would certainly be possible to establish thematic similarities between some of these series (e.g., the shinigami figure in Bleach and Death Note, or the treatment of romance in two different types of shōjo), others differ to such an extent that most content-based comparisons would appear forced. This very diversity makes it easier for one to put the content at a distance and focus on the more formal aspects which these manga have in common. Thus, I will now address different constants which were found. Although I will initially be basing myself on concrete observations, my ultimate agenda will be to interpret how these findings affect the experience of reading manga: in this manner, I hope to establish the foundations for a phenomenology of mainstream manga. The usefulness of the latter results will be touched upon in the concluding paragraph.
Accelerated reading rhythm
One of the main characteristics of the manga reading experience is its quick rhythm. Of course, the speed at which one reads is subjective and varies according to context and intent, but there are elements within all comics which can aim to influence the “natural” (i.e. immersed but casual, as opposed to analytic) manner in which the panels and pages are read (Baetens and Lefèvre 1993, 53). Comics are already prone to a swifter reading than isolated images, for the mere reason that they are meant to be read as part of a series, and thus always push the reader onwards, towards the next panel (Ibid., 20; Groensteen 1991, 46), but elements can be identified within our corpus that
One of the factors which can accelerate or slow down the natural reading rhythm is the amount of information contained within the average panel. Indeed, it stands to reason that, the more complex the information conveyed, the more time the reader must spend in order to decode it. The average manga volume contains more pages than most serial comics or bandes dessinées (graphic novels excluded), but each panel conveys significantly less information, on several levels. This is noticeable, for starters, on the level of narrative content, i.e. the actual events taking place in each panel. Most often (albeit not always, as we shall see), the manga panel is not text-heavy; this plays a very important part in reading rhythm (Baetens and Lefèvre 1993, 18), as text invariably requires a different level of concentration than the comics image, which is typically iconic and underdetermined (McCloud 1994, 31-42). Thus, manga panels framing a character will characteristically not contain more than one or two text balloons, with relatively short text. In cases where there is more text (such as when a plot point requires more extensive explanation), text balloons are often read against a static background representing elements of the setting in which the action is taking place, instead of the character. This background can also be abstract, or even completely blank. By thus isolating the text from visual content or action, the reader is allowed to momentarily devote his whole attention to the text, without having to connect it to visual information, thereby simplifying the process and quickening it. It is also interesting to note that manga include varying numbers of silent, or nearly wordless panels: a close examination of randomly selected single volumes from each series demonstrated this, as the percentage of panels featuring either no text (onomatopoeia excluded), or a single word (such as an interjection) ranged between 14% and 31% 3. While clearly not dominant, silent panels
are not exceptional either, and their lack of text can contribute to increasing reading speed – provided the image content cooperates, of course.
Going beyond the merely textual to include the visual and thereby examining the full diegetic information conveyed by the panels, we can find several points where the
3 Selected books were: Fruits Basket vol. 19 (14% silent or one-word panels), Death Note vol. 2
flow of information is slowed to a trickle: a large number of panels or even pages (particularly in cases where one or two panels take up an entire page) is used to convey relatively little narrative. For example, in chapter 276 of Bleach (vol. 31), we come across a scene where the protagonist, Ichigo, has been all but slain by an enemy. Nel, his ally, also injured, spots him and crawls toward him, calling out his name and weeping. This single string of actions takes up three entire pages, or seventeen panels. Similarly, in the final pages of chapter 132 in Fruits Basket (vol. 23) it takes two characters three pages (ten panels) to work their way up to a kiss. And in the opening pages of Kitchen
Princess’s tenth volume, a temporary good-bye and the memories it conjures fill up two
pages (ten panels). Scott McCloud has already noted that manga, unlike most other forms of comics, are characterized by a fairly significant presence of “moment-to-moment” and “aspect-to-aspect” transitions (McCloud 1994, 70-81), where the passage of time either diminishes or, in the latter case, vanishes in favour of lingering quasi-description (Groensteen 1993, 53). Although not all the examples given here correspond exactly to McCloud’s categories4, they do correspond to a slowing down of the diegesis.
Of course, this technique of spreading the diegetic content over more panels and pages is most likely not done with the conscious intention of speeding up the reading process. Ironically enough, it is meant to slow down the visual narration, for dramatic reasons: either to enhance the suspense (“Will Ichigo still be alive when Nel finally reaches him?”), or to prolong and highlight the moment by making it literally take up more space, thereby ensuring that the reader gives it due attention and importance. In short, the objective of this technique is to enhance emotional response in general.
However, it is quite arguable that, in this case, slowing down the narration does not bring about a similar change in reading rhythm. Keeping in mind that I am only concerned here
4 As a reminder, McCloud establishes five viable types of transitions in comics:
moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, and aspect-to-aspect. Attempting to apply McCloud’s system to the corpus proved quite challenging: the fine distinction between moment-to-moment and action-to-action transitions was food for hesitation, as were cases when subject-to-subject transitions threatened to coincide with aspect-to-aspect ones. Not to mention panels where the visual content was equivalent to an “aspect,” but which contained text balloons (which logically are the equivalent of an action, inasmuch as speech is an action). I circumvented these difficulties to accommodate the scope of this paper (as we will see in the next section), but examining these finer points and learning from them would prove to be an interesting and useful task for the future.
with the naive, non-analytical reading experience, it is much more likely that the reader’s already hasty rhythm will be maintained, even enhanced, during these sequences, due to the diminished information. This is not to say that the slower pace does not register, or that it does not have emotional impact; rather, the spreading out of information over more panels enables this impact to occur, precisely without having the reader slow down. Indeed, it would be fairly simple for a mangaka to force the reader to dwell on a specific panel or sequence, by creating elaborate images which would require the reader to decrypt them and extract the detail and ensuing meaning. The fact that this so rarely occurs in mainstream manga is symptomatic of just how essential fast-paced reading rhythm is to the experience it provides.
Another element contributing to a quickening of reading rhythm pertains to the graphic level (as opposed to the semantic one), and lies in the absence of colour. Although the fact that the vast majority of manga are created in black and white is
evident, this particularity has an effect from the perspective of phenomenology. Indeed, in the absence of colour nuances, the eye is solely concerned with a single contrast between black and white, which can accelerate the decoding of the image. Of course, it is possible to create complex visual effects using only black and white, as Frank Miller’s Sin City comics demonstrate, for example: in these comic books, Miller repeatedly creates striking panels despite a total absence of chromatic nuance (no shades of grey are used), where the shadows, folds, and wrinkles invite the eye to linger. However, other visual factors are combined with manga’s chromatic poverty: minimalist, uncluttered panels. Indeed,
mainstream manga (and a good portion of alternative manga as well) are generally characterized by an absence of detailed backgrounds in character-centric panels. As any reader of manga knows, this in no way signifies that setting or décor are completely absent from manga. Often, the setting is presented through an establishing panel, and the majority of the backgrounds in the following panels within the scene are left blank (or are filled with an abstract, expressive design, as we shall soon see). This does not mean that the background no longer exists, only that it is not being represented. This efficient technique augments the need for closure and reader participation (McCloud 1994, 67), as
the reader needs to fill in the missing information, but it also diminishes the need for taking in detail.
I have just mentioned, in passing, expressive backgrounds, which also hasten the reading rhythm, but for different reasons. Expressive backgrounds are a staple in manga, particularly in shōjo, where emotions are consistently brought to the foreground, and are crystallized in the form of flowers, bubbles, flashes of light, or abstract evocative shapes (Gravett 2004, 79; Schodt 1983, 89). This phenomenon is certainly at play in Fruits
Basket and Kitchen Princess. A similar phenomenon arises in shōnen such as Bleach,
where movement lines are greatly exaggerated during battle scenes to emphasize violence and/or movement, or where imaginary lines converge to highlight a focal point within a panel. The result is that the main information of the panel is highlighted through
overdetermination, and is thus more easily picked up by the eye.
A final mechanism which increases reading speed through overdetermination is the presence of stylistic ruptures. Manga’s particularity in this respect is pointed out by Thierry Groensteen, who writes that comics are typically characterized by a homogenous style within a single work (Groensteen 1999, 146), but also points out that manga
constitute an exception to this rule (Ibid., 53). Indeed, it is quite common for mainstream manga to feature at least two graphic (and corresponding narrative) levels: one which stands for normality, the other for the extreme. Thus, in Bleach, characters will frequently have exaggerated reactions (usually in for comic effect), and the style in which they are drawn will change, becoming more iconic and caricatured, bringing the reaction to the foreground. Similarly, to give another example, characters in Fruits Basket will be represented as blank, minimalist silhouettes whenever an uncomfortable moment comes to pass. In Kitchen Princess, a similar technique is employed to signify great excitement or agitation. Provided that these graphic codes have been mastered by the reader, they allow for meaning to be conveyed instantly and simply, thereby allowing the reader to, once again, move on quickly to the next panel. These stylistic ruptures also have an effect on another level, that of contrast, which we will address in the next section.
But first, an admission: readers will no doubt have noticed that there has been little mention of Death Note up to this point. This is because the latter appears to constitute a true exception to most of the aspects that have been dealt with so far. To begin with, the series, being an intricate psychological thriller, is extremely text-heavy, in spite of the presence of silent panels. Not only that, but it does not subscribe to the semantic poverty of panels to quite the same degree as the other series do. Blank backgrounds do arise, but slower diegesis is quite rare (a notable exception being the protagonist’s unrepentant admission of his guilt in chapter 104 of vol. 12, which is built up over three pages). More categorically, there are no stylistic ruptures. However, this anticipated incompatibility of Death Note with the rest of the corpus was one of the reasons for its inclusion in the latter: indeed, in spite of differences, this series remains a very popular manga, and its borderline atypicality is not a reason to exclude it, but rather constitutes grounds to look deeper for elements which do connect it to other mainstream manga. However, the fact that the three other series (and many others beyond the corpus) adhere to the principles examined in this section warranted their analysis, as they do constitute a major part of the manga reading experience.
Contrast and fragmentation
Stylistic ruptures such as the ones mentioned in the above section have another effect, in addition to increasing the reading speed: they create an effect of contrast. This is, of course, implied in the very use of the term “rupture”. But this type of contrast has important consequences regarding the phenomenology of manga. Indeed, every time such a rupture occurs, it signifies a shift in register, a tiny destabilization (even after the code has been assimilated by the reader) that is equivalent to a fragmentation, not of the content, but of the manga as a whole. Indeed, if a comic strip’s effectivity relies on graphic and semantic co-dependency and reciprocal overdetermination, i.e. iconic
solidarity (Groensteen 1999, 21), then these stylistic discrepancies disrupt the flow on the visual level (and arguably on the semantic one as well). These recurring ruptures are not
powerful enough to put the integrity of the entire work into question, but they do
constitute frequent cracks within the work, which are integrated into one’s perception of the latter and into the reading experience itself. In other words, fragmentation comes to be a part of the phenomenology of manga.
Another agent of contrast is pointed out by McCloud when, in the same
comparative analysis of international comics that was previously mentioned, he points out that manga contain a much larger percentage of subject-to-subject transitions when compared to bande dessinée and American comics, where action-to-action transitions (transitions between panels representing the same character before and after performing an fairly brief act) constituted an overwhelming majority (McCloud 1993, 77-78). This means that, within manga, consecutive panels showing the same character or object are significantly rarer than elsewhere. I conducted a roughly similar examination of single tomes from each of the four series selected for this research5, but doing away with some
of the nuances of McCloud’s survey6: rather than look for the five types of transitions he
establishes in his method, I merely counted transitions between panels showing the same content on the one hand, and transitions between panels showing different contents on the other, regardless of their nature7. The results where very telling: in all cases, at least half
(more, in most cases) of the panel transitions were between panels with dissimilar content
8. This means that closure, the reader’s act of “closing the gap” between panels, of
“observing the parts but perceiving the whole” (Ibid., 63), requires more of an
imaginative effort on the reader’s part. It also means, quite simply, that there is greater contrast between the panels, and thus within the page: instead of smoothly following a stream of actions, the viewpoint constantly shifts from one object to another, and of course the reader follows along.
5 Selected books were: Fruits Basket vol. 19, Death Note vol. 11, Bleach vol. 21, and Kitchen
Princess vol. 10.
6 See note 3 regarding the difficulties of applying McCloud’s method as it is described in
Understanding Comics.
7 I chose to consider a transition between a panel showing a character alone and a panel featuring
the same character accompanied or in a group as action-to-action.
8 Subject-to-subject transitions still appeared to be the dominant form of transition between
I would like to address a final element which pertains to both contrast and fragmentation: the physical fragmentation of characters’ bodies and faces in manga. Having observed that characters’ faces appeared to be often partially cut off by panel frames, and that the focus of panels regularly appeared to be portions of the body, such as feet and hands, I examined several volumes from each series9, and counted the number of
such fragments10. Generally, all series averaged roughly around 150 fragments per
volume, with fluctuations between volumes11. Given that each volume featured between
179 and 188 pages of content, this means that there was an average of at least one
fragment per double page12 (although there were obviously case where several fragments
were regrouped on a single page and none appeared until a few pages later). Two inferences can be made from this. The first, predictably enough given the direction this section has been going, is that this enhances the fragmentation of manga and the
increased closure effort, not at the level of style or the experience of time, but at the level of content itself: the reader must literally put the pieces back together. The second
observation pertains to contrast, fragmentation’s sometime corollary: indeed, the
segmentation of faces and bodily extremities is attained through the use of close-up shots, where the framing zeroes in on a detail (often the eyes, or one eye). This signifies a frequent change in “camera angles” when it comes to manga, a characteristic which has often been pointed out (Gravett 2004, 28; Schodt 1996, 25), and which we have the opportunity to once again note here. There is no doubt that these perspective changes also
9 Selected books were: Death Note vol. 1,2,11, 12; Kitchen Princess, vol. 1, 10; Fruits Basket, vol.
1, 3, 19, 23; and Bleach, vol. 1, 21, 31.
10 I only took into accounts panels where the scission of the body was striking and significant, e.g.
when half the face of the character was left out, when only bodily extremities (feet, hands) were visible, or when the torso was visible, but not the head. Thus, I did not count panels where the characters were framed in an American shot, i.e. cut off at mid-thigh, as this type of framing is quite conventional. Furthermore, I left out panels where the facial expression was fully visible but part of the chin or forehead was missing. Finally, I did not count panels where the character’s head was only visible from behind, or where the face was obstructed by a shadow or an object. It is fully recognized that this method relies on subjective decisions to a certain degree; however, the aim was to obtain a ballpark figure, not precise statistics.
11 Fruits Basket, vol. 1 only counted 87 fragments, and vol. 3 had only 47; however, later volumes
saw a striking rise in fragments, with 195 for vol. 19 and 149 for vol. 23. It must be pointed out that Fruits Basket evolved considerably throughout its run, both graphically and from the point of view of layout and sequencing.
enhance the need for closure, all the while maintaining a certain dynamism between the panels.
One can legitimately wonder whether this physical fragmentation is unique to manga, or whether it can be found in other forms of comics. The question is difficult to answer categorically, as comics continue to evolve in contact with one another. Looking at bande dessinée, one can safely declare that such fragmentation is very rare in the case of classic BD: an examination of Hergé’s The Calculus Affair (1956), for example, showed only 8 fragments over 62 pages. Bande dessinée series based on page-long gag stories, such as Franquin’s Gaston albums, show even fewer fragments, given the restrictive number of frames allotted per gag. Looking at more recent popular works of bande dessinée, it is more difficult to clearly assess the situation, as BD has grown to be very diversified itself. If we limit ourselves to the adventure and thriller genres (given that analyzing bande dessinée is not the primary purpose of this paper), selected albums of the long-running, very popular series XIII (1984-2007), by Jean Van Hamme,
contained between 4 and 10 fragments over 48 pages13, a slight increase compared to the
previous era; however, the phenomenon still does not come close to what occurs in manga. It must also be noted that many of the fragments are motivated by the narrative, as are the ones found in Hergé’s album: they primarily consist in close-ups of objects held by the characters, or close-ups of a gesture. This type of fragment, which serves the purpose of making plot points or actions more easily comprehensible to the reader, certainly exists in manga; however, we also come across fragments which appear to be unmotivated by the narrative (such as focusing a panel on a character’s torso or feet, despite there being nothing happening on that level), or which fulfill a purely emotive function (such as focusing on a character’s eyes in order to highly his or her affect). This seems to set manga apart from traditional popular BD.
However, it is certain than bande dessinée is forever changing, and it would be reckless of me to claim that such differences are stable. Indeed, exceptions to the “rule” I
have just outlined already exist within popular BD. Spirou et Fantasio, a long-running series which has known many authors over the decades, can be assumed to be mostly characterized by an absence of fragments. However, when Morvan and Munuera took over the series in 2004, the series’ aesthetic changed drastically, and the album Paris
Sous-Seine features a whopping 34 fragments over 48 pages. Even more striking, the first
two albums of the thriller fantasy series Le Chant des Stryges (2004, Corbeyran, Richard Guérineau and Isabelle Merlet) each contain 50 fragments for the same format, and even feature some “unmotivated” fragments14. It is tempting, of course, to attribute this change
in aesthetics to manga’s influence, which had attained popularity in Europe by then; and indeed, in the case of Paris Sous-Seine, the argument can be made, as the album seems to feature other elements which are characteristic of manga, such as more dynamic framing, and, most conspicuously, prominent onomatopoeia15. However, such a claim would
clearly necessitate a much more comprehensive study of the evolution of bande dessinée than is possible in the context of this paper. Thus, for now, I will have to limit myself to asserting that fragmentation appears to be most widely spread in popular manga. I must, however, remind the reader that fragmentation is not a defining factor of manga, but merely one of its generally identifiable traits.
Before moving on to the next section, we can see that Death Note, in spite of previous differences, has been somewhat reconciled with the rest of the corpus: it was just as concerned by the analysis of transitions and segmentations as the other series were. While Death Note does remain on the margins of mainstream manga, I believe these last two common elements are sufficient for it to be characterized by a similar phenomenology, which I will now attempt to present and analyze.
14 See, for example, Pièges (vol.2), p. 25, where we find an unmotivated crop of a character’s feet. 15 It should be noted that Spirou et Fantasio has gone through other authors and changes since
then, and that its latest instalment to date, Alerte aux Zorkons (2010) by Velhmann and Yoann, seems to move away from manga aesthetics.
Tabularity, folds, and phenomenology
Merely noting common characteristics of manga, while necessary and hopefully useful, is not the sole intent of this paper. Having established that different agents of fragmentation exist within manga, it is now necessary to see how they combine to influence the phenomenology of manga. But in order to do so, I will need to establish a link between these elements and another pair of notions: irregular layout and tabularity. The main point I would argue is that the above-noted fragmentation leads, paradoxically enough, to an increased tabularity of the manga page.
In order to understand why this is so, it must first be clarified in what sense the term “tabularity” is intended here. Conventionally, it is opposed to linearity, but it has often been noted that, even in the case of prosaic literature, neither notion is absolute, and that there is room for shifting and interaction between the two (Vandendorpe 1999, 41-69). Of course, panels in comics are sequential, therefore linear, by definition, but there are degrees of tabularity which can coexist with linearity; this is, in fact, particularly true for comics, because, as Benoît Peeters points out, they must fit their sequentiality within the confines of a tabular page (Peeters 1998, 51) (it must also be noted that the panel is a somewhat tabular entity to begin with). Indeed, the page can always be seized at a glance, particularly when laden with images (Lamarre 2009, 288); this is even more true of the manga page, given its comparatively smaller format. However, the manga page’s tabularity also stems from more complex factors, partially from the intertwining of the elements examined in the previous section, but also, as we shall now see, from manga’s particular style of layout.
The relation between tabularity/linearity and layout has been an important focus in comics studies. Regarding manga and our corpus, one particularity literally leaps from the page: the irregularity of what Groensteen has dubbed the multiframe, the multiple frames which compose a comic (Groensteen 1999, 38-39). As one turns the pages of a manga, one notices that no consecutive layout is the same: pages differ not just by the number of panels (which can range from one to eight), but by the parallelism and
perpendicularity (or lack thereof) of panels and margins, along with their surface and proportions. It is true that perfectly regular layouts are more rarely used in mainstream comics today, that most comics authors allow themselves room to play with the panels and adapt them to the narrative, giving the panels a rhetorical function (Peeters 1998, 62-65); however, it is rarer for margins to be quite so flexible. Mangaka make very frequent use of partial bleed effects, making some panels’ borders coincide with the edges of the page, thereby eliminating the margin entirely. Thus, the many functions of the margin, one of which is to close off and define the narrative space the way a frame closes off a painting, no longer apply, and a bit of stability and definition becomes lost.
This instability informs tabularity to a certain degree. Indeed, the loss of margins, combined with irregular, diagonal, sometimes overlapping panels, such as those found in manga, leads to a diminished importance of isolated panels, and thus an increase in tabularity. As Thomas Lamarre writes:
The manga page tends toward a distributive field, on which panels and their accompanying hints of subjective positions are dispersed and dehierarchized. […] The material limit of manga is the force of black ink across white paper, and the reveries of love and the lust of battle tend toward a complete dispersal of panels and of forms, into swirls, splashes, splotches, and dashes of ink. […] The edge of the manga page does not really frame things in the manner of a camera shot or window. (Lamarre 2009, 289)
One can easily establish a link between the exuberant expressive content
described by Lamarre and the overdetermined information analyzed in the first section: panel layout enhances manga’s already impressive expressive abilities, and is thus linked to accelerated reading. Again, this exuberance applies less to Death Note, but even in the latter case, irregular layouts and disappearing margins are present: the instability is also there. Thus, in the absence of a stable page content, the unity of reference becomes the page itself, and not the panel. Sequentiality does not vanish, of course: the manga page is dehierarchized (some might even say messy), but it is certainly not incoherent or chaotic. A reading order of panels and/or text bubbles prevails, yet its dominance is lessened considerably.
The increased reading rhythm that was demonstrated earlier is both born from and essential to this tabularity born from irregularity. In the absence of stability, the reader must use momentum to maintain a fluidity of experience: by leaping from page to page, he keeps it together. But this is where fragmentation intervenes: to facilitate this process. We have seen that several elements contribute to fragmentation in manga, two of which are common to the entire corpus: transitions between dissimilar panels, and
segmentations of characters’ bodies. We have also seen that this requires a larger effort of closure on the reader’s part. But here is an oft-mentioned but all-important nuance: closure does not have to take place between two consecutive panels, or even a consecutive sequence – it can take place between panels separated by entire pages, provided that one evokes the other through its content. This idea has been persuasively argued by several authors (Baetens and Lefèvre 1993, 72; Groensteen 1999, 132-134) and it is essential to the point I am trying to make here; however, the closure I am concerned with can limit itself to taking place between panels on a page, or rather a double page.
Faced with multiple fragments, the reader must put them back together, and he must do so on the level of at least the page, in order to extract meaning and form a viable diegetic world, or storyworld (Herman 2002, 9) within his mind: he needs to connect the segmented hand to the rest of its body, fill in the missing half of the face, and combine the dissimilar panels in order to create a world from it. Indeed, even though it has been argued that comics panels do not merely select and frame a fragment of reality in the manner a film camera does (as mentioned in the previous quote from Lamarre), and that therefore a panel does not refer one to an external reality in a centrifugal manner (Peeters 1998, 23), it has been counter-specified that what is not shown can also play a crucial role in the comprehension of a story (Baetens and Lefèvre 1993, 26); I would add that it can play a role in the phenomenology, as well. Thus, the sectioned hand demands to be connected to something else, even if only in mind; the panels showing dissimilar content demand to be put in some kind of relation to one another, and the separated similar panels reach out to one another. The between-panel spaces are here thought of as a space of connection: the reader does not provide content to fill in the blanks, rather he connects
the panels together to let their union (both layout-wise and content-wise) generate meaning (both semantic and stylistic). The important distinction, again, is that this kind of connection does not take place between one panel and the one following it, but between several scattered panels. The fact that, in the case of our corpus, this process takes place over one or two pages (rather than ten) allows it to have an immediate effect on the reader. The fragmentation of the manga page increases its tabularity because more connections need to be made between the panels.
It becomes useful, at this point and from this perspective, to think of the between-panel spaces as folds, a notion borrowed from Deleuze’s writings on Leibniz. Indeed, the fold manages to evoke multiplicity within unity, contrast without rupture, difference within proximity (Deleuze 1988, 5, 42). The fold is where meaning emerges from. Thus, the phenomenology of manga is one characterized by folds, it is a medium where
structures shift, where bodies and styles are seemingly broken, and yet where the fabric continues to maintain its cohesiveness. Just like the fragmented manga page, mainstream manga constitute a flow, a somewhat uneven one to be sure (Death Note never will completely fit in with the rest), but the nature of a flow is precisely to allow for fluctuations. In a strange paradox, unity stems from fragmentation, which in the end constitutes the ultimate constant of the manga reading experience.
Having thus established a starting point for the phenomenology of mainstream manga, it becomes possible to analyze manga as a presence within the global web of media. Indeed, giving manga a solid medial identity allows us to examine it from a mediological point of view, and see how it fits in with pieces of a larger puzzle. Indeed, just as media influence the manner in which we view their content (Belting 2004, 286), they also influence the manner in which we perceive and consequently represent the world: as Belting writes, medium, image, and body are tied together in a relation of mutual influence (Ibid., 292; Debray 1992, 150). By characterizing the manga reading experience, we can thus hope to see what kind of vision, what kind of gaze manga encourage. In order to do so, a focus on medium and body was required, which was
attempted in this paper; the next step, then, would be to reinsert the image proper into the system, thereby completing the triangle, and allowing insight to progress further.
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