Story manga (Japanese: ストーリー漫画) is dominant form of comic in Japan which synchronize sequence, size and layout of strips of double-page spread with viewing speed to simulate dynamism, similar to cinema storyboard. The time-control technique of Story Manga means frame are set out chronologically, linked by motion lines or onomatopoeia. In contrast, type of comic prevalent in America are characterized by more densely drawn picture in colour accompanied by much larger amount of text, closer to story book. This type of comic require readers to stop at each frame for a significantly longer time and "read" text. Moreover, the theme of American comics were limited until very recently to superhero gener. This type of magan are know in Japan as "American comic".
A prototype version of story manga can be seen in "Krazy Katt" (although that was still one-panel comic strip) and "Sho-chan no Bouken" (Sho-chan's Adventure), published in 1923 which has 52 frames over 13 pages for each story using cinematic viewing angle such as zoom out or close up. This pre-dates The Adventures of Tintin, first published in 1929, and "Superman" from 1933.
However, the establishment of the time-control system, and founding of story manga is credited to the work of Osamu Tezuka in the period immediately following World War II. Tezuka strive to move manga story telling from children's fantasy story to more mature cinematic story in wide ranging genre such as medieval themed action horror (Dororo), medical drama (Blackjack) or fantasy historical epic (Hinotori) to modern adaptation of classic literature (Faust). Osamu Tezuka introduced number of innovation, most notable one being much freer and therefore more dynamic use of frame size and layout as well as liberal use of onamatapea and symbols to convey information without use of texts.
Because Japanese language is written from top to down, right to left, frame can be viewed more easily if it zig zaged from top to down and left to right. This arrangement allowed the reader to view rather than read the page. Also to compensate for the increase viewing speed between frames, Tezuka attempt to convey information more through picture rather than through text. For this purpose, he eliminated narrative text almost entirely and conveyed story development through short dialogue and pictures. To convey more information through pictures, he utilized many onamatapea and symbols, for example, in Japanese manga, "#" symbol on someone's forehead means that person is crossed. He also borrowed drawing style from Disney cartoon, which was also adapted to maximize information through simpler drawing.
This new format became vastly popular in Japan and most manga start to be serialised weekly. As a result of this rapid weekly production cycle, detailed drawing in colour became practical impossibility and disney like face in black and white become the main drawing style of manga. Another consequence of story manga is its authorship. In Japan, authorship of manga is not given to person who actually draw the picture but instead given to someone who draw up komawari (literally mean frame divisio), that is someone who decide size and positioning of strips for pictures and dialogue, much akin to directors of film. In professional manga production which have to produce episode every week, actual drawing are almost always done by numbers of assistants who specialising in separate field such as background, inking/tracing or placing toner.
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Famous quotes containing the word story:
“If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, “I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life.” I mean people are going to say, “You’re crazy.” Plus they’re going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that’s a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)