The Importance of Manga Paneling

When thinking about what makes manga distinct from other mediums, I’m sure many of you think about Japanese culture, the fact that it’s read right to left, how it’s black and white etc. For me though, one of the most distinctive aspects of manga is something that I rarely see discussed. Manga paneling is an underappreciated facet that makes manga stand out so much and I think it’s important that more people know about it.

Let’s start off with a very basic question, what is a panel? Panels are used in all forms of graphic novels, whether that be manga, manhwa, western graphic novels etc and act as a frozen moment in time. By stringing these panels together and reading them in order, you can create an ongoing story. That is paneling at its most basic, but, just as cinematography is about more than pointing a camera at something, paneling also has many layers to it.

Manga, being highly influenced by American comic books after World War II, began their panel-work quite similarly to western comics. At the time, panels were typically rectangular or square and would be evenly distributed throughout the page with six panels if they were square or three panels if they were rectangular.

However, it wasn’t long before mangaka began to discover new ways to express themselves through their panel-work. An early discovery was the use of diagonal panels to convey action more effectively than in typical panels. Another great discovery was using different sized panels to manipulate pacing with large panels slowing down the story and and smaller panels speeding it up.

However, some of the most distinctive manga panel-work had yet to come. The Year 24 Group’s (also known as the Forty-Niners) appearance in the 1970s sparked a revolution in Shojo manga and, amongst their many other accomplishments such as introducing more complex themes regarding sexuality and gender, they introduced perhaps the most radical change to paneling as seen yet.

Rather than restrict themselves to typical paneling, many of the Year 24 Group chose to reduce, and sometimes even eliminate, panel borders, allowing images to flow more gracefully to each other. This was achieved by various means such as exploiting negative spacing, more circular panel design and softening the edges of images as they transition to the next image. This panel-work is stunning and has to be seen to truly appreciate it.

I had read comic books and graphic novels before I discovered manga and enjoyed many of them. However, when I discovered manga, it became more difficult for me to go back to many series that I had previously enjoyed. Western comics and graphic novels have been improving their paneling in recent years but I still consider manga to be leagues ahead when it comes to panel-work. Let me know what uses of paneling in manga have stood out to you and why panel-work isn’t as discussed as it should be.

Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!