The art of Dragonball vs the art of Jojo Part II: The Point of Panels

This entry adapted from a discussion originally posted on the Something Awful Forums

What shape is this supposed to be?

This picture is supposed to make you see a triangle. How about this?

I’m assuming most (all?) of you were able to see a chair. You’ve seen a bunch of chairs like this one before and millions of years of evolution have ensured that your brain is fine-tuned for pattern recognition. Fictional stories work the same way – you get some details and then use your prior experiences to interpret the details as a narrative.

So what’s this?

Most will understand that this is a diagram of some sort because you’ve seen diagrams like the before, but will be unable to identify what this diagram is supposed to depict due to unfamiliarity with the subject in question.  (It’s a small engine’s carburetor.)

An unclear narrative is similar.

a story about levirite marriage posted:

A man’s brother dies before begetting any heirs. The man marries his brother’s widow. While having sex with his brother’s widow, he pulls out before climax. God strikes him dead.

You have heard other narratives, so you recognize one when you see one, but this one just kind of seems like nonsense. This story has long been used by annoying people to claim that all kinds of harmless things are bad. But let’s tell the story again the way the original audience would have understood it.

a story about levirite marriage posted:

A man’s brother dies before begetting any heirs. As custom dictates, the man is tasked with the duty of providing his brother’s widow with a son, who will be legally considered his brother’s son, raising that son, and managing his brother’s estate until his brother’s heir comes of age. The man instead decides to steal all of his brother’s stuff for himself. God strikes him dead.

With this context, the story becomes much more clear. The guy was a greedy dick.

Just asking questions

If a comic’s clarity describes how easy it is to understand a story’s events, intensity describes how easy it is to feel a story’s mood. All else being equal, heightening a comic’s intensity comes at the expense of that comic’s clarity. The most common way this happens is via panel transitions. I’ll use a sequence from chapter 159 of Dragonball to demonstrate.

What’s Yamcha doing here? We have the requisite cultural background to understand that this is the depiction of a concerned man from the shoulders up, but it’s impossible to say where the character is or why.

This is the panel that immediately precedes the one we just saw. We’ve seen enough cockpits or depictions of cockpits to understand that we’re looking at one. So Yamcha is piloting a plane.

We don’t need to see the back of the plane’s cabin behind Yamcha in this panel because we understand that this panel happens sequentially after the previous one, so Yamcha must still be in the plane. Now we have enough context for a narrative – Yamcha is flying a plane. He looks down as he wonders why his radar fizzed out.

In this shot we see that Bulma is behind Yamcha and it is once again clear that they’re in a plane. The narrative becomes – Yamcha is flying a plane. He looks down as he wonders why his radar fizzed out. His attention is grabbed when Bulma shouts and points at something ahead. We have to make the inference that Bulma was actually here there entire time, just not in our view.

This is a totally different view than the one we had previously – we now see an airplane flying toward an explosion in the distance as well as speech bubbles. Because we’ve primed ourselves to look for patterns that form a narrative, we link this image with the ones that came before it in sequence. This is the plane that Yamcha is flying, only now we’re seeing it from the outside. The speech bubbles must belong to either Yamcha or Bulma, and the story now goes: Yamcha is flying a plane. He looks down and wonders why his radar fizzed out. When Bulma shouts and points at something ahead, he looks up and realizes that the interference was caused by a massive explosion.

Every time we jump from one panel to another, we have to figure out what’s going on in the new panel based on what we’ve already seen. If the new panel doesn’t show much in the way of scenery, more effort on the part of the reader is required for it to be understood. It follows then that all else being equal, the fewer times the viewing angle changes and the smaller any changes to the viewing angle are, the clearer the comic’s story will be. Imagine that instead of four panels, we just get one like this:

Don’t laugh, this happens all the time in mainstream comics. This entire setup is more clear – we don’t need to make as many assumptions (in fact it would be more clear if I were doing this at home instead of at work and had redone the “shouting” speech bubbles.)

So why use this

instead of this?

The first is more intense. But why? It has more tension. By tension I mean it raises a question that has an interesting answer. The more uncertain and interesting the possibilities, the greater the tension. Pretty much any narrative is going to implicitly raise the question “what happens next?” but an interesting narrative narrows that down to a few enticing possibilities. So here we have a story-within-a-story.

The greater narrative is that Goku is locked in a battle to the death with King Piccolo, with the tension resting on the question “Can Goku defeat Piccolo?” When we jump in here, King Piccolo just unleashed an incredible attack at Goku. We then cut to this scene. A question is raised, causing tension, “What is causing the instrument malfunction?” The resolution to that tension (Piccolo’s attack caused the malfunction) sets up even greater tension than before: “If Goku was at the site of the explosion, is he still alive?” “If Yamcha and Bulma are headed in Piccolo’s direction, are they in danger?” “If Piccolo can create such explosions, how can he be stopped?”

Now consider this panel:

Many of you will recognize it, but let’s try to look at it with fresh eyes. To understand it you have to first try to figure out what exactly you’re seeing here – it’s two fists meeting at the knuckes. The spatters of white-out (probably supposed to be blood?) imply force, so it’s two fists punching each other. We have to use our knowledge of the series to understand that this panel shows the fists of Star Platinum and The World punching each other. Showing this moment with such an extreme close-up is much more intense than showing the same moment with a wider view since this view shows a forceful collision, but we have to think harder just to understand that this is a collision in the first place, and devoid of context it’s not particularly meaningful at all.

With the previous panel next to it (now forming the entire page), it becomes clear that Star Platinum and The World have punched each other with incredible force.

The entire sequence goes like this:

If you had been following the story, you would know that the greater narrative is that Jotaro is locked into a battle to the death with DIO, and the overall tension rests on “Can Jotaro defeat DIO?” In this set of panels a minature story-within-a-story also plays out. By showing the extreme close-up of the fists, the viewer starts to wonder “Will The World overpower Star Platinum?” The framing of the aftermath guides the viewer to DIO’s injured hand and then to his reaction, raising the question “Has Jotaro dealt a definitive blow to DIO?” Once those are resolved, there’s even greater tension as we wonder “If even that can’t stop DIO, how will Jotaro manage to survive?” on top of the still unanswered question “Can Jotaro defeat DIO?”

Imagine if it had gone like this:

The story hasn’t changed, but far less tension has built up. The literal sequence of events is clear, but the story is less intense.

Using these sorts of panel transitions to heighten suspense has some drawbacks. Every additional panel forces the reader to figure out how this view is related to the one they just saw using what they’ve read previously, and change in viewing distance or angle place an even higher burden on the reader. If you have an extreme close-up and you’re relying on the reader to have picked up a cue four panels ago in order to understand what exactly is being shown, you run the risk that the reader didn’t pick up that cue and isn’t going to understand.

You will find that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure uses a huge number of extreme close-ups and drastic changes in viewing angle, while Dragonball tends to use more establishing and medium distance shots.

As a result, Jojo requires more effort to read, while with Dragonball you can jump to pretty much any page and quickly get the gist of what’s going on.

More panels doesn’t equal more intense:

Much complaining has been made about “decompression” in comics, like this famous example:

It looks like western artists looked at manga and thought, hey, these Japanese comics sure have lots of panels where they don’t do much! Japanese comics are popular. If we have lots of panels then our comics will be popular! Hooray!

But consider that in the panels from Dragonball a story-within-a-story is actually playing out.

Goku punched Piccolo really hard and he seems pretty hurt. Has Goku defeated Piccolo? No! Now he’s close to Piccolo and has a broken leg — he can’t escape! Will he even be able to survive? How can Goku defeat Piccolo?

And think about these panels from Jojo:

DIO has stopped time and has dropped a steamroller (road roller?) on Jotaro. The steamroller is getting closer and closer to crushing Jotaro and Jotaro is frozen by The World’s time stop. Jotaro actually looks terrified! How can Jotaro escape from this attack? Is this the end?

Whereas this set:

Isn’t really raising any questions at all. Except maybe “What is Wolverine going to say?” which doesn’t seem to be a question attached to particularly high stakes.

To sum up, adding more panels increases a story’s emotional intensity IF they are used to increase tension by raising and answering questions. But decompression for decompression’s sake is dumb. Don’t do it, bub.

Sharktamer: “I’ve always hated that skip a beat empty panel thing in comics. It’s so overdone and such a bullshit cop out substitution for a real joke now.”

Coming up eventually: setting, anatomy, and violence

Coming up sooner than eventually: Forums Poster and Noted ADTRW Personality Xibanya agrees to do a Let’s Read of Diamond is Unbreakable.  The whole thing.  Oh what a beautiful Duwang!  (What have I gotten myself into…?!)

You should be playing Slam Fighter II!

For the last month I’ve been working closely with my fiance and a few other friends to make a video game for the tenth annual Something Awful Game Dev Challenge and the result is AWESOME.  I wrote the script and did the art and animation, so after reading all my wordswordswords on the right and wrong way to approach visual storytelling, you finally have the opportunity to see me put my money where my mouth is.  Download Slam Fighter II for free here!

Featuring an original soundtrack by Screaming Color and the voices of Melanie Ehrlich and Michael A. Zekas.

Dragonball vs. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (Part 1)

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball Gaiden, Dragonball vs. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

Previously in this series we’ve discussed at length some of the reasons why the art of Dragonball is so appealing and effective. In order to highlight the different techniques Toriyama uses when making a comic, I compared the art of Dragonball with several other comics in similar genres, most of which were poorly planned and executed. Today I’m going to do something different. We’re going to compare Dragonball with another comic in a similar genre, but one whose art is equally effective and whose aesthetic and storytelling styles are different in almost every way – Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, particularly the Stardust Crusaders arc.

Revisiting Clarity of Form with The Joker

A reader let me know that they thought that in this post I was unfair to block out the Joker’s silhouette in the following two panels because the Joker’s white face stands out against the purple sleeve behind it.

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball: Conclusion

Roshi: One-two. Balance. Balance.
Krillin: Whup!! Waak!!
Krillin: Huhh huhh
Goku: Pant pant
Roshi: Keep it up! Walk slowly and you’ll be swallowed up by the sand!
Roshi: Careful now! You don’t want to get swept over a waterfall!
Roshi: Run!! Lose steam here and you’ll be devoured!
Boys: Waah!!
Goku: W-we’re done…finally…
Roshi: Believe me, this will get much easier as you do it every day for the next eight months.
Goku: Huhh huhh
Roshi: So…that’s all for your EARLY morning routine…now, for your MORNING routine…
Krillin: Gluk…!
Narration: So, Kame-Sen’nin’s training is tough after all! Will the “Strongest Under the Heavens” Tournament be motivation enough?!

Roshi:

Goku:

Krillin:

Here are the last of the expressions from Chapter 30. I could add commentary, but at this point I would just be repeating things I’ve already said, so I’ll let these stand on their own. This post concludes my main analysis of the techniques employed by Toriyama that make Dragonball so effective as a visual narrative. I plan to take a closer look at the fight scenes in a future post as well as use of background elements, but as of this post I have covered the foundation of what I think is needed to make a good comic.

To recap, here are the key elements that make Dragonball‘s art great:

• Clarity – The identities and physical actions of each character are very clear.

• Composition – Lines, shapes, word balloons, and the placement of objects are used to guide the reader’s eye through page elements in the correct order

• Rhythm – Panel sizing and guiding elements manipulate the reader’s perception of the speed by which the story advances

• Direction – Choosing a premise for the story and goals for the characters ensures that disparate elements form a coherent whole

I hope everyone enjoyed this overview and I hope that you will all go forth with a renewed appreciation for this incredible series.

e X: “Oh, absolutely. The stuff you posted was excellent and it will definitely be on my mind the next time I read through the manga.”

Bad Seafood: “I enjoyed the lot of them. Thanks for sharing.”

Have a question or comment?  Please let me know!  And try applying the analysis I used here to other comics you read.  You might be surprised by what you find!

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball: Plan Today if you can’t Plan Tomorrow

In this entry we’ll continue to reverse-engineer the thought process Toriyama went through when deciding how to depict the characters’ facial expressions in Dragonball Chapter 30 and we will also discuss the techniques Toriyama employs that permit him to tell an ongoing story that is both coherent and consistent without planning anything ahead. You have to have read the other effort posts in this series to understand this one. You can find all the previous entries in order right here.

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball: Storytelling through Acting Continued

Visual storytelling and “Good Acting” Continued

We’ll continue here with the next segment of Chapter 30. Please read the previous entries in this series if you haven’t already. (You can find them all in order on the Effort Posts by Series page in the header.)

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball: Deliberate Omission

Should a character be in a panel or not?

As established in the previous entry, the decision to exclude something from a comic is just as important as the decision to include something. If it helps, think of this as similar to the sound engineer’s choices while scoring the anime on whether or not a section should have music or silence.

If we have an establishing shot where a character is in the foreground and other characters are in the background, what that means is that the character who is the focal point of that panel’s composition is aware of the presence of the background characters. By that same coin, if we have a panel where “geographically speaking” a character should be in our line of sight but has been omitted, that means that this character isn’t relevant to the foreground character’s mental state. It’s also worth noting that it’s often understood that if we have an establishing shot where a character is in the foreground and other characters are in the background, the characters who are not the focal point of the composition are not aware of the presence of the characters who are the focus.

Examples:

Background characters relevant to focus character’s mental state. Focus character irrelevant to background character’s mental state.

This is a rather common means of establishing a scene in both cinema and comics.  Here’s an example from a different comic:

Moving on:

Character who is logically in our line of sight omitted because they are irrelevant to focus character’s mental state.

Foreground characters relevant to focus character’s mental state. Focus character irrelevant to foreground character’s mental state.

Having established a basic foundation on when a character should be in a panel and when they should not, I also want to note that this choice can also depend on the artist’s style, but this principle generally holds in both manga and western comics. Regardless, once the artist knows a character is going to be in a scene, they should also start thinking about that character’s action. The artist also needs to think of the character as an actor on stage; the character will be delivering a performance through the artist’s drawings.

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball Part Four: “Tell, Don’t Show”?

The following is adapted from a post that originally appeared on the Something Awful forums.

What is visual storytelling?

Toriyama, already an industry veteran by the time he began creating Dragonball, is a master of visual storytelling. What I mean by that is that Toriyama uses his art to do more than just show us what nonverbal events are happening in any given scene. The art reveals to us details about the setting we are in, the mood we should be feeling, and who the characters really are.

Forget “Show, Don’t Tell,” Remember the destination

Anyone who has ever had instruction in creative writing or who has read any kind of pop culture criticism has heard the rule “Show, Don’t Tell.” The point is that when we’re consuming some work of fiction it’s boring and not fun to have a bunch of details of supposedly interesting things spoon-fed to us when it would be more interesting to actually see those things instead. In my experience, however, this “rule” is an axiom cooked up in response to the fact that nobody likes an exposition dump, but it doesn’t do a good job of explaining why “telling” is bad.

Lajos Egri, in The Art of Dramatic Writing, points out that when you’re telling any kind of story you don’t have to know how it will end when you actually start writing it, but you HAVE to know the premise, which usually just a brief set of words that sum up the message of the story, such as “bravery leads to victory” or “selfishness leads to ruin.” Egri says that people who start writing a story without a premise are like someone who takes off running in a random direction who doesn’t know where they’re going but will decide when they get there. (He goes so far as to say they’re lunatics; clearly jogging was not all the rage in 1942 Hungary.) We like most stories to play out like a scientist proving a thesis – a story is a stand-in for real life. We want the story to say “If someone is like this in this circumstance, then the result is this.”

So to put it very simply, while you don’t have to know exactly how your story ends you have to know the purpose of your story and the direction in which it’s going. So you need to include the things that will take your audience there …and ideally? NOTHING ELSE.

But that’s crazy talk, Xibanya! How limiting! How can you say that?! Sorry, it’s true. This is one of the things that is SO hard for a beginner to creative writing to grasp. If something does not carry the audience in the direction of the premise, it has no business being in your story. Speaking as someone who has had their work of fiction accepted on the condition that severe cuts be made to it, it can be a difficult and emotional for the writer to identify what stays and what goes.

Sometimes, Tell, Don’t Show?

In fiction, what actually drives the story forward and demonstrates your premise is the cast. The setting exists to provide the circumstances that allow the characters to prove your point. Egri writes that a character must have no choice but to act in the way they do. He doesn’t mean that a character shouldn’t be faced with choices (actually most good narratives demand the character be faced with dilemmas) but that given the character’s personality and experiences, they must only behave in a way that is true to who they really are. From the audience’s point of view, we decide what a character’s personality and experiences are by observing what they do and putting it together like a puzzle.

If a character shows up and they verbally narrate their life story all at once without ever being interrupted by the main cast, that tells us that this new character is experiencing some kind of unusual inner pressure that compels them to reveal the intimate details of their life, that they don’t care who is listening, and that they’re probably so inwardly focused that they may not be in an emotional state that renders them capable of really listening to others.  This can be fine if done on purpose (ie, Forrest Gump‘s framing device) but if we suspect that this isn’t the way the author intends us to understand this character, then we’re taken out of the story because the character isn’t acting “the way they would really act.” If a character is a tough guy who doesn’t give a shit about what other people think, they will tell the other characters so – by acting like a tough guy who doesn’t give a shit about what other people think. How did he get that way? Let the reader fill in the gaps – the character probably had a rough childhood or something.

But what if you want the audience to know the character’s entire detailed life story down to very specific events? You could show it in flashback or tell it in narration, but you risk boring the reader, since if you set up the rest of your story properly, they want to find out what happens next. This generally only works if the flashback or narration is very brief and is a detail we HAVE to know but can’t have explained to us by the character themselves for some reason, like that they’re not the kind of person that would just start telling people they barely know about their tragic past. But what if you need more than just a panel or two to explain this character’s very very important backstory? If those events in the past are so important, why not start the story there (or story arc, in the case of an ongoing series)? If that’s a bad idea because that’s not where the story that actually follows your premise really begins, maybe you should reconsider including this character’s sob story.

But let’s consider the approach from a different angle.

Goku is tracking down his grandfather’s four star dragonball. We know that he wants it very badly because he is trudging through a snowstorm in pursuit of it. He is eventually overwhelmed by the cold and collapses. A girl about his age finds him and takes him back to her home. The girl, named Sono, and her mother give him blankets and warm liquids and he soon recovers. They ask him why he was out in the cold and Goku explains that he’s looking for the four star dragonball. Sono becomes afraid and tells him that an army of mercenary thugs have been terrorizing their town on the pretense that they’re looking for dragonballs. The army has enslaved Sono’s father and her neighbors and is forcing them to search for the dragonballs; they have also imprisoned the village chief and will kill him if they don’t comply. After hearing this, Goku cheerfully tells the girl and her mother that he’ll take care of the problem for them.

Hey! We just “told” Sono’s sob story instead of “showing” it! I didn’t get a flashback! I feel gypped! But let’s think about this. The overarching premise of Dragonball is that a guy who is so pure-hearted that he only cares about fighting will always succeed. What is important here is not understanding the fear and pain the girl felt when her father was taken away or the anxiety she feels about what will become of the village. What’s important is seeing how the main character (Goku) reacts when confronted with this situation.

Goku actually only shows the faintest shred of sympathy and it’s not really clear that Goku is cognizant of how scared and unhappy the girl and her mother are. We make fun of movies where characters barely react to being told awful things because it shows the characters to be low-empathy weirdos (Anakin: “They’re animals and I slaughtered them like animals! Even the women and children!” Padme: “eh.” Um, Padme is supposed to be a perceptive and kindhearted person. But she doesn’t seem that concerned about the pain and guilt Anakin feels about snapping and murdering the fuck out of a bunch of people nor does she seem appalled on behalf of, you know, the people who got murdered?) but in this case Goku’s low emotional intelligence is entirely intentional. All Goku is thinking about is decking more guys in the schnoz.

Interviewer: What is Son Goku to Toriyama-sensei?
Toriyama: At any rate, I wanted him to have the sense of being that rare guy who seeks only “to become stronger than before”, so much so that it feels like “there’s no one as pure as this person”. And while he does end up saving everyone as a result of that, he himself at least has a very pure sincerity about “wanting to become stronger”. What I wanted to depict the most was the sense that he might not be a good guy at all, although he does do good things as a result.
Nozawa: A strong person like this would absolutely show off that “I’m strong”, wouldn’t they? But [Goku] would absolutely not come out with that, would he? I’m always saying this to everyone, but the world would be an incredibly nice place if it were full of people like Goku.
Toriyama: I have a feeling that the world wouldn’t operate very well. (laughs)
Nozawa: (laughs)

(from Kanzenshuu)

Sono’s a plot device and only has to have enough characterization to pass muster as an actual human instead of a cardboard cutout. Contrary to what you might think based on the Star Wars expanded universe or Tolkein’s works, that’s good. If a character forms part of your central premise, they should be real people with real emotions, wants, and needs. But if they aren’t? Fuck ’em. They’re furniture. A Potempkin village of plot. A bad writer focuses on fleshing out the complex motives of characters who don’t advance the story’s premise. Why does an intelligent woman like Mai work for Pilaf? I hate to say “who cares” because it’s fun to discuss, but as far as the plot is concerned, how realistic her motives are don’t matter because she is just an extension of Pilaf’s character. The story needed to show that Pilaf was on some level aware that his plans were not good. In real life such a person might have nagging inner doubts. As explained in a previous entry, visual storytelling requires exaggeration, so Pilaf needs minions for him to talk to.

Plot, Subplot

Wait one gosh darn minute! Toriyama gives us a visual flashback of Nam’s village! We see that his village has no water and that they’re doomed unless they get some. Why doesn’t Nam just say “I have to win so that I can get the prize money to bring water back to my village?” (Actually, he says that too.) What gives? Well while Dragonball’s premise is “a guy who is so pure-hearted that he only cares about fighting will always succeed” the Tenkaichi Budokai arc has a different but complementary premise, which I would sum up as something like “Putting all of yourself into something will give you a better result than just aiming for the material benefits of success.” Goku fights until he collapses, but he still loses the tournament. However, outside of fame and official recognition, Goku’s just as well off as if he had actually won first place – Roshi ends up spending all the prize money on Goku’s dinner, so Goku effectively won the prize anyway.

We see a parallel in Nam’s story. Nam gives it his all, but he still loses his match with Goku. But Roshi is so impressed by his pure motives and fighting spirit that he provides Nam with all the water he would have spent his prize money on. Nam too is just as well off as if he had won first place. Nam’s story is the tournamen arc’s subplot, and it’s generally a good idea to have the subplot’s premise be the same as that of the main plot, as it strengthens the premise to show that it can be applied in different contexts. We are shown flashbacks of Nam’s village because we ARE meant to empathize with Nam and understand the emotions that drive him to fight. Nam is a supporting character in the main plot, but he’s the main character in this subplot. And look at the other tournament fighters – Ranfan and Bacterian are presented as dirty (haw haw) fighters who are relying on tricks instead of skill to win. Neither of them get a particularly dignified exit.

Dual Purpose

With that in mind, more is always better. More worldbuilding! More characterization! More reveals of backstories! It makes the story feel richer and the premise more solid. But how can you cram in more when you’re not supposed to have a bunch of narration boxes full of exposition or a bunch or flashbacks or characters saying things they wouldn’t actually say? Well, nobody said you can’t do more than one thing at a time. The best way to show more is to take a character-based approach. Show us more of the world by having the characters interact with it while advancing the story. Show us more of the characters by having them dress the way their characters would choose to dress themselves and do things they would choose to do. Exclude everything else. And if you’re in a visual medium, do even more. Ideally everything in a panel or frame will not only advance the story, and reveal character, it will also provide visual pointers to direct the flow of the reader’s gaze, become part of a clear and pleasing composition, and indicate a scenes intensity and duration.

Here are the pages I reference. Sorry they’re Spanish scanslations I’m translating on the fly, I’m too lazy to scan my Viz copies.

Sono’s Sob Story

Sono: That’s a Dragonball?
Goku: It sure is!

Goku: My grandpa’s Dragonball looks like this but it has four stars.

Goku: In total there are seven Dragonballs and if you join them all you can summon Shenlong and he will grant you a wish!
Note how we get a long horizontal panel here with Shenlong in the background. We’re meant to bathe in Goku’s wonderment at how cool it is that there’s a fukkin’ dragon that grants wishes.

Sono’s mom: Now I understand! They want to use them to conquer the world! That’s why they’re so desperate for them!

Goku: According to the radar, there’s a Dragonball somewhere around here.
Sono: I get it now! That’s why my father and the rest have been working so hard just to find it.

Sono: This is terrible…The Red Ribbon Army…has forced the people of this village to work as if they were slaves.

Goku: So why doncha beat ’em up?
Sono: Impossible! They’re armed to the teeth!

Sono: In that tower they’re keeping the mayor of our village hostage. If someone dares to try to rescue him, they’ll kill him.

Goku: We’ll see about that. Time to get going!

Goku: Thanks a lot for saving my life! I’ll save your village to return the favor.
Sono/Mother: What?!

Sono: They’re adults and you’re just a kid! They’ll kill you!

RR Guy: There he is!
RR Canine: Get ‘im!

Nam’s Sob Story

Roshi: Hey! How envious you make me! Fighting against such a beautiful woman!

Roshi: What what? His eyes seem as serious as a manga character’s. He’s not playing around. I feel in him an incredible spirit, as it the tournament were of great importance to him.

Roshi: Let’s see.

Boy: Brother, I’m very thirsty.

Woman: Even the well is dry now.

Man: This isn’t good. We won’t be able to harvest anything with a sun like this. This village is finished.

Nam: In six months the wet season will come. Until then I wil go to the city to bring you all water.

Woman: But if you do that we won’t have much water left for the vegetables. There’s no way to endure two months that way.

Nam: I will enter the Tenkaichi Budokai and buy water with the prize money. The fact that the tournament is happening right now is a gift from God.

Woman: Thank you very much…but how will you get there?

Man: Nam, have this money. It’s from the entire village and I think that it will at least be enough for you to make the trip.
Nam: I promise to win and bring you all water.

Villagers: …Give it your best…Don’t worry if you lose…Fight hard…

Roshi: Now I see…

Roshi: I understand. So that’s why he’s being such an asshole.

Potsticker: “That’s clearly Jackie Chun in the Nam sequence.”

Aw shit, mixed them up again.

Mordaedil: “I found this particular part of the Toriyama interview interesting: ‘Toriyama: What I wanted to depict the most was the sense that he might not be a good guy at all, although he does do good things as a result.’ And then I recall the very last page of the whole manga, where he flies off with Uub. Even in the anime, this scene seems discordant. Nearly a bit chilling. The idea that Goku might not be such a good person as we’ve come to expect came through that scene more clearly to me than most others.”

Blue Star: “That Toriyama quote is interesting. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Goku is some kind of sociopath or something. I think Toriyama is saying that Goku might not be “such a good guy” only in comparison to, like, Superman or something. Superman is utterly selfless (or so I’ve been lead to believe; I never got into superhero comics). Goku is pretty selfish but he’s kind-hearted and good-natured. He cares about people and has a sense of right and wrong. That good-naturedness coupled with his admittedly selfish desire to always become stronger is what makes him a hero, albeit an imperfect one.”

Thyrork: “Goku’s imperfections make for a better character. “

Agreed.

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball: Toriyama’s Design Philosophy and New Media Comics

The following is adapted from a discussion on the Something Awful forums.

I was looking through translated Toriyama interviews on Kanzenshuu, and I found some good stuff from the man himself on panel size and his design principles.

With comics, there’s the aspect of how you’re actually looking at an entire spread of two pages. You’re aware of how, “this panel is bigger than this one, so it’s a more powerful scene”. So, if [digital comics] all come out with the same size panels, it might feel a bit “off”.

Kanzenshuu includes this footnote:

Toriyama’s comment pretty aptly describes the problem with modern “keitai manga“, comics formatted to fit the screen of a mobile phone.

And some more interesting comments by Toriyama on his design philosophy and background in advertising:

Wired: In drawing comics, what is your ratio of visual information to textual information?

Toriyama: Really, as far as information is concerned, the visual side is bigger.

Wired: With what stance do you view words?

Toriyama: At any rate, I don’t waste much time blathering on about useless things. As a rule, you can understand the content to a certain extent with just the pictures, and words are nothing more than a supplement to them. I had that drilled into me by my first editor, I guess you could say…. If you’re going to come out and say something, then make it something that will strengthen the characterization even further, is what I mean.

Wired: You have to choose carefully.

Toriyama: Yes, that’s right. Instead of blathering on and on, how are you going to keep it concise?

Wired: Toriyama-san, whether it be Dragon Ball or Dr. Slump, I think your works have a large number of really “stand-out” characters that are able to coexist.

Toriyama: That might be something that was fostered in me through doing advertising design. I think that the very fact that I had to draw all these different things for supermarkets and big retailers, looking back on it now, came in handy.

Wired: Without realizing it, you were learning the basics….

Toriyama: Right. Also, keeping a deadline was also something that was fostered in me at that company. (laughs)

Interview from Kanzenshuu.

LORD OF BUTT: “Comics formatted to fit mobile screens are terrible, Comixology has the right idea- reading a comic in smart view on there is remarkably similar to that gif you posted.”

Oh yeah? I’ll have to check them out, I am totally unfamiliar with digital comics because like a decade ago they were really really bad.

Prison Warden: “The big examples I can think of that have a starkly different design than print comics (ie not stuff like Onepunch-Man which is just a comic but online with occasional spreads and such) are korean Manwha like Tower of God, which are explicatly formatted for mobiles, being like a long roll of pages rather than a book. Or like, Homestuck and such but that has actual animation and such to map out the passage of time.”

I’ve never read Homestuck but I sure have heard a lot about it and recognize the zodiac critters as coming from it. I might look at Homestuck “for research purposes only”… I have seen the long roll of paper thing done really well by the likes of SMBC though. I do think that’s a good use of the medium.

LORD OF BUTT: “Yeah, Comixology is a legit good service. I read through the first two volumes of Saga on there in Smart View on my old phone and it was completely fine, no complaints whatsoever.”

Drowning Rabbit: “I would recommend Atomic Robo: Two Fisted Tales as a really good use of the digital comic medium. It’s a comic that is specifically written for digital only. It’s also a one-shot so you don’t miss out on just grabbing that one.

Granted I really enjoy Atomic Robo, but just for the way it is implemented, I like it as a experience on my iPad as well. If there are other recommendations for comics like that I’d be down for that too!  I don’t count the ones like Batman ’66 that have print versions and don’t really take advantage of the digital medium 😦 “

Just two bux? I’m there. Thanks for the recommendation!

Prison Warden: “‘might look at Homestuck for research purposes only’? What have I done “