Chainsaw Man: A brief overview of its visual storytelling
Chainsaw Man: A brief look at artistic storytelling
Chainsaw Man is one of the best mangas out there for me. I would say it's my favourite of all the mangas. One of the aspects that makes it amazing is its artwork. Nothing matches up to it if it's not named Bleach. And part 2 does not drop the quality.
It is why I fell in love with this story. It is because of how Fujimoto uses it for visual-storytelling. Let us look at chapters 180-182 of Chainsaw Man.
We see how the first panel of Aging vs Yoru. Fujimoto draws Aging to showcase him as more overwhelming than Yoru. He was the bigger and stronger of the two. Aging takes up most of the page while Yoru falls. She looks like how you cut and paste a piece of art elsewhere. This works well in tandem with how aging's ability works. By showcasing the blurs as Black once and white once, he showcases how Yoru and Asa, of them fell prey to this power. The world reminds me of the idea of coexisting with nature.
We see Yoru's speech bubble overtaking Asa's face as she tries to use bang on herself. It showcased her ignoring Asa's will. Fujimoto draws Asa's speech bubbles or thought bubbles normally as connected to her. Sometimes they are zig-zag to showcase her emotional state. But, while her words are self-assuring, her thoughts and words are not connected to her. She does not believe in what she is saying. She is running away. She is in denial.
In chapter 182, Denji pushes Yoru away. Fujimoto draws her in a dark tone while he draws Denji in a fair tone. We see his emotions through his bold and bigger text. even though he was getting some action, his speech bubbles present the truth. He is not accepting the idea of letting Yoru lead him around. His focus is on his emotions.
We see how Yoru's face shows us a comical expression. It works to showcase how she is not relatable here. How she does not understand Denji and Asa. How she might be in denial. Asa punching Yoru works better than arguing with her again. She had already done that and failed.
Asa's eyes. They are usually black. when she is under no stress and is behaving normally. She gets hazy black eyes when she is going through gut-wrenching emotions. Her eyes take on a more Yoru style eyes design when she takes charge.
In conclusion, CSM nails the idea of visual storytelling.
