Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Door to Door
The story begins in the Surgery room on page 9. Mimeo is created in the surgery room, and his door into humanity remains open until the final pages when it appropriately closes. The panel design before this door is opened in the prologue is really out there. There is only one evenly bordered panel in the entire intro while the rest of the prologue is told in open space or in diminutive dream bubbles that fade into the main story. It's interesting that Mimeo's sojourn into humanity possesses no unique paneling like we find in the intro. Everything is cut into squares and rectangles. Maybe this is Tezuka's commentary on human uniformity, but I felt cheated that this chaotic opening sequence had no artistic presence in the actual story. It's akin to a trailer snatching your attention with fantastic cinematography, only to find the actual movie shot standardly. An gradual evolution of paneling- going from loose to rigid- to mimic Mimeo's ascent into humanity would have been less jarring and frankly an interesting concept. Go me, if only I could draw.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with you that I would have enjoyed to see Tezuka play more with panels as he did on page 7 and 8. For the most part he keeps everything contained within rectangles and squares, which feels rather limiting. One place I did notice where he plays a bit with the disruption of panels without actually breaking the panel formatting is on page 87. On this page you see John shoot a gun at the top right of the page and then directly across in the next panel the bullet breaks the rope holding his friends captive. This bullet, though it doesn't physically break the gutter space, feels like it travels across two panels. I found this use of panels very effective and would have loved to see more examples like it.
ReplyDeleteWhile I also agree with you that it would have been interesting to play around with the panels, I think the current use of the panels also holds meaning. The seemingly unstructured panels at the beginning seem to suggest some sort of wild quality to the story, a quality which Mimio initially carries as well. However, when Mimio walks out of the machine, he is presented as being almost, if not entirely, human. As you pointed out, the panels then become more structured and remain unchanging throughout the rest of the story. Is it possible that this is the point? I would argue that this implies that Mimio was human from the start, not that he develops his humanity over the course of the story. Mimio remains a constant, what changes, in my opinion, is society's perception of him.
ReplyDelete