CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

So, I was reading my favorite shounen manga as of now, and obviously, there are a lot of fight scenes. But then it really bothered me how sometimes I couldn't tell what was happening, or if what I saw was a leg or arm. Then I noticed that most shounen manga action shots are like this, which made me wonder,

Do all mangakas just kind of BS action shots? Like, the editors tell the mangaka to draw whatever because the readers will buy it?


I really want to know.

How clear an action scene is will probably depend on the author's general style and skill level. The most successful/skilled authors will have reasonably clear and welldrawn fight scenes.

Out of curiousity, what series were you reading?

MasterDias wrote:How clear an action scene is will probably depend on the author's general style and skill level. The most successful/skilled authors will have reasonably clear and welldrawn fight scenes.

Out of curiousity, what series were you reading?

Probably Trigun or Trigun Maximum. I love that series, but the action can really get like that sometimes. Like it's almost too frenetic and busy to be captured in a still picture.

I'll give a few:
Many many scenes done by CLAMP.
Much of the action in Bleach and Real Bout High School
Trigun, yes, very much so.
Battle Angel Alita
I could keep going and going, actually. The OP has a point. Of course, I grew up with the very clearly drawn action found in DC and Marvel works. (Hey, we're talking the '60s and '70s, guys. The closest thing to Manga we had was a very short handful of Anime titles, such as Speed Racer and (gag) Gigantor.)

I actually stopped reading Tsubasa Chronicles due to the messy action shots (also due to the boring story, but that's beside the point XD). I've read manga that show clear and understandable action sequences, so it's obviously possible. I just think that a lot of manga-ka tend to overdo it, thus making the pictures hard to comprehend.

Puguni wrote:Then I noticed that most shounen manga action shots are like this

Really? I read a considerable amount of manga and I think that most shonen (Trigun is definitely an exception) is clear enough to tell what is going on the majority of the time. It is mostly shojo series (anything at all by CLAMP) that have confusing action panels. That isn't a problem if it is just one panel to show conflict, but if the story is meant to have any action it's rather annoying.

Fight choreography is a big interest of mine, so this is one of the criteria I use to judge a series. Blade of the Immortal, for example, has excellent action.

EricTheFred wrote:Much of the action in Bleach

Interesting. I think Bleach is relatively clear, overall. The author does use close up and unclear impact panels, but these are usually clarified within a page so I don't find them confusing.

Well, that is the separation between Bleach and Trigun, I will admit. In Trigun, sometimes there is just no telling what happened in a particular panel, no matter how long you work at it (same problem with Jing and Alita, although less often in those series) while in Bleach you can work it out eventually... or the characters just tell you what just happened.

Still, that's different than being able to see it, when it happens, in the panel in which it happens. I think I would prefer that to having to interpret down the road.

Yeah, I know what you mean. There do seem to be alot of action scences in manga that are like that, and I know there've been a few I've had to reread repeatedly to figure out just what exactly went on to get the characters in the positions they were in afterwards, but I suppose you kind of get used to it. And, as has been said, there are plenty with very clearly drawn action scenes.

CLAMP are one of the worst offenders in my mind, especially so when all the magic and spells get casted (with multiple effect tones) along with whatever fight action. Their line weights are similar between figures and action effects which muddles the whole thing--then they like to use white splatters and things just get even more muddled.

Some manga action scenes just need more time to digest and get used to before one can decipher the actions clearly. It took me some time to get used to the super-fast paced BLAME! (or anything by Nihei, really) before I absolutely fell in love with the way he presents his action scenes.

And I would have to echo UC that Blade of the Immortal is one of the best ones out there in manga fight choreography. Bleach I really like for the dramatic "time-stop" action panels.

On a random note, Nobuhiro Watsuki came to mind in the way he puts these huge straight on splatters on any and every impact. Sometimes the splatters would be so huge that it seems the person's head exploded only to reveal in the next panel he only got a small cut with a thin trickle of blood. I dunno if that has anything to do with the topic, but it bothered me a bit for making it hard to tell if someone was really injured or not.

uc pseudonym wrote:[color="Black"]I read a considerable amount of manga and I think that most shonen (Trigun is definitely an exception) is clear enough to tell what is going on the majority of the time. It is mostly shojo series (anything at all by CLAMP) that have confusing action panels.[/color]

I agree completely, I was about to say, I haven't really seen any shounen where the action was confusing, but shoujo, definitely so.

The worst offender that sticks out in my mind, honestly, is Sailor Moon. I love the manga, but the action scenes were so brutally confusing I could hardly follow it half the time.

Confusing action shots you say?

*Pulls out a volume of Trigun Maximum, still not sold off and gathering dust in the drawer, and flips to a page at random.*

There you are.

uc pseudonym wrote:Fight choreography is a big interest of mine, so this is one of the criteria I use to judge a series. Blade of the Immortal, for example, has excellent action.

I second this. Blade of the Immortal has exceptional action scenes.

Omigosh, YEAH. CLAMP is notorious, now that I'm reminded. I hated how they did the action shots in MKR. I don't read them often though, so I can't say much more. XD

Also, I stand corrected. The shounen series I'm reading is done by a woman. D: Hopefully that doesn't say too much about women and action series. Usually she does them quite well.

It's just when lots of magicky stuff and other non-physical aspects get involved does it seem to get annoying.

Puguni wrote:Also, I stand corrected. The shounen series I'm reading is done by a woman. D: Hopefully that doesn't say too much about women and action series. Usually she does them quite well.

It's just when lots of magicky stuff and other non-physical aspects get involved does it seem to get annoying.

Arakawa(Full Metal Alchemist) is a woman and her action scenes are well-drawn generally, so no, gender doesn't matter here.

when i first read D. Grayman, i found the action sequences hard to digest due to the unusual art style (IMO). Blame's action was also hard to adjust to because of the artwork and the fast-pacing.

anyways, i third/fourth the idea that Blade of Immortal contains well-done action scenes.

Psycho Ann wrote:On a random note, Nobuhiro Watsuki came to mind in the way he puts these huge straight on splatters on any and every impact. Sometimes the splatters would be so huge that it seems the person's head exploded only to reveal in the next panel he only got a small cut with a thin trickle of blood. I dunno if that has anything to do with the topic, but it bothered me a bit for making it hard to tell if someone was really injured or not.

We're on the same page here. His fights are fairly average but this is a mild irritation for me as well. Because he uses what looks like blood spatters for even someone getting punched, I don't really take any blow seriously until I see the results.

Fish and Chips wrote:I second this. Blade of the Immortal has exceptional action scenes.

Does anyone else like the occasional six-panel page showing a specific exchange? I think these do an excellent job of capturing the feel of slow motion shots.

MasterDias wrote:Arakawa(Full Metal Alchemist) is a woman and her action scenes are well-drawn generally, so no, gender doesn't matter here.

My thought exactly.

i think that Berserk has really sweet action scenes too. i think the fights are extremely vivid and detailed. some of the fights can take up many pages though...

Heh, I'm suddenly reminded of Vagabond, although not in a good way. While Inoue Takehito is totally awesome at action and detail, the pace he sets in Vagabond became "uninterpretable action shots" to me because I would be nodding off between 3 chapters of people staring at each other.

Arakawa is definitely one of the best action mangaka out there, regardless of her gender. Takahashi Rumiko is another female mangaka in the shonen genre, but while her action sequences are clear, they are also quite simplistic.

Ah, the panel-by-panel shots that Samura does in BotI is definitely a neat trick. I just wish BotI hadn't been so flipped/edited here...

Norihiro Yagi, who did Claymore, is one I really like too in making action scenes. Though, I'm a bit more familiar with the work he'd done in a earlier manga called Angel Densetsu. The way he choreographed the hand-to-hand fight scenes in that is really nice.

Psycho Ann wrote:Norihiro Yagi, who did Claymore, is one I really like too in making action scenes. Though, I'm a bit more familiar with the work he'd done in a earlier manga called Angel Densetsu. The way he choreographed the hand-to-hand fight scenes in that is really nice.

Yagi's problem, at least initially, isn't a problem with his action directly but that his characters often look so similar that it isn't always easy to tell who is doing what in a battle, especially among characters with similar hairstyles. This is only a minor annoyance in a few fights however and does seem to improve later on. Otherwise, I like his fight scenes as well.

I'd prefer them with somewhat smaller panels so more happens per chapter, but I like Claymore's fights as well (with obvious objections about the identical uniforms - thankfully the main characters now wear black).

jon_jinn wrote:i think the fights are extremely vivid and detailed. some of the fights can take up many pages though...

Really, do we need another two page panel every single time Guts cleaves a bunch of people in half?

Psycho Ann wrote:Norihiro Yagi, who did Claymore, is one I really like too in making action scenes. Though, I'm a bit more familiar with the work he'd done in a earlier manga called Angel Densetsu.

Angel Densetsu has action? The synopsis struck me as uninteresting and slow, but perhaps I'll have to give it another look.

uc pseudonym wrote:Really, do we need another two page panel every single time Guts cleaves a bunch of people in half?

I'm assuming this is a fairly frequent occurrence.

I also had a little trouble making sense out of some of the fight scenes from Trigun. It's still a great comic, though.

The only shounen series I've read seriously is Rurouni Kenshin, and occasionally the fights were hard to follow. I'm not sure which series I was reading at the time, but I do remember seeing one scene and thinking: "So, is that an arm or his head?"

I agree what everyone has said about CLAMP e_e Take Angelic Layer - very cute and fun manga, I enjoyed it, but the fights were so confusing. XD The anime was better.

FMA was great, though. Clear enough that I actually enjoy the manga slightly better than the anime... And Naruto is okay. You can generally tell what's going on, although I far prefer the fight scenes in the anime.

uc pseudonym wrote:I'd prefer them with somewhat smaller panels so more happens per chapter, but I like Claymore's fights as well (with obvious objections about the identical uniforms - thankfully the main characters now wear black).

Angel Densetsu has action? The synopsis struck me as uninteresting and slow, but perhaps I'll have to give it another look.

Ugh, yeah, the similarity of his chars is definitely one of his weak points. He also doesn't have a lot of variety in his male chars either--which was a bit hard to follow in the earlier chapters of Angel Densetsu.

And yes, Angel Densetsu has action. It's one of his earlier works so the art wasn't all that impressive in the first volumes, but hang in there and there would be many sweet fight scenes. I also like the humor in the series, even if it got a bit repetitive in the later volumes.

Ah, and I do believe one of the female chars in it is a definite inspiration for Clare (or vice versa, I need to check which char he made first) complete with a younger boy who adores her (coughRakicough). This fact made me feel dumb I didn't realize Yagi was the mangaka for Claymore until I got another good look at one of the Claymore covers and wondered why it looked so much like his female chars (the protruding forehead especially).

Berserk... everything I learn about cleaving, I learn from Gutts and his many two-page spreads.