Story Manga
Story manga (Japanese: ストーリー漫画) is the dominant form of comics in Japan whose themes are overtly dramatic (akin to film, hence the name "story" manga) which utilise time-synchronized sequences, size and layout of strips in a double-page spread, along with the viewing speed of the reader to simulate dynamism, similar to cinema storyboards. The time-control technique of story manga means that frames are set out chronologically, linked by motion lines or onomatopoeia with little or no narrative text. It is generally accepted that Osamu Tezuka pioneered story manga after World War II, while recent research suggest that technique of cinematic presentation has been used much earlier. In contrast, the comics prevalent in America are characterized by more densely drawn color illustration accompanied by a larger amount of text. This type of comic, similar to story books, requires readers to stop at each frame for a significantly longer time and "read". Moreover, the majority themes of American comics were limited until very recently to the superhero genre, whereas story manga tend to be more diverse in genre and theme.
Komawari literally means frame splitting/allocation. Because the Japanese language is written from top to bottom, right to left, frames can be viewed more easily if they zigzag from top to bottom and right to left. This arrangement allowed the reader to view rather than read the page. Also to compensate for the increased viewing speed between frames, Tezuka, who is credited as the founder of story manga, conveyed information more through pictures rather than through text. For this purpose, he eliminated narrative text almost entirely by introducing more sequences of strips to convey the shift in events or by using side characters' dialogue to indicate the story. To maximize information through pictures, he utilized many symbols and onomatopoeia, for example, in Japanese manga, the "#" symbol on someone's forehead (frown) means that person is cross. As this technique massively increased the number of strips needed to convey each scene of story, caricatured line drawing similar to Disney cartoons became widely popular among Japanese comics.
Until very recently, the establishment of the time-control system had been credited to the work of Osamu Tezuka in the period immediately following World War II. However, recent academic research show that a prototype version of story manga can be seen in much earlier works such as Krazy Kat (although that was still a 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 angles such as zooming out or close ups. This pre-dates The Adventures of Tintin, first published in 1929, and "Superman" from 1933.
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