I've been thinking for a while that panel layout is one of the most overlooked aspects of manga. I almost never see it mentioned in here, which makes some sense because it's one of those things that doesn't demand your attention. Art is a topic of discussion, in a vague sort of way (usually it isn't much more than "this series has really good/bad art)". When I think back about my favorite series, I realize that a large part of why I enjoyed them was their layouts.Maybe people aren't very interested in the subject, but I believe that nothing is more important to the reading experience than smart decisions in paneling and talking about comics without mentioning panels is like talking about movies as isolated pictures. For this reason, I decided to write a long post talking specifically about paneling.
Naoki Urasawa gets a lot of deserved grief for his failures at writing long-term narratives, but those flaws didn't stop me from devouring 20th Century Boys, Monster, and Pluto. What makes Urasawa still compelling despite his limitations is that he's a very skilled storyteller, even if the story he tells knots itself into a tangle halfway through. Strong panel flow is a large part of his ability to hook the reader.
The first page is laid out similarly to how a film editor would structure a scene. There's an establishing shot, a couple medium shots to give the reader an idea of the space this scene is taking place in, and close-ups to highlight smaller details (the detective's finger-tapping quirk) and the characters' emotions. The second has less parts, but still uses small changes in scale and framing to create a visually compelling set of images. Urasawa rarely does anything radical with his panels, instead opting for a smooth reading experience.
Taiyo Matsumoto is an outstanding artist, and his paneling takes a backseat to the art within the panels. Importantly, though, his paneling still works together with his art. Take a couple pages from Takemitsu Zamurai as an example:
The first Matsumoto image makes an interesting contrast to the first Urasawa image. Where Urasawa aims for narrative clarity in his layouts, Matsumoto prioritizes visually interesting compositions. It's harder to make sense of what is going on plotwise on his pages. They have to be read slowly and carefully. The tradeoff for this is all sorts of amazing juxtapositions in his compositions. Urasawa would probably have chosen to show the laughing twins from a more conventional angle and would have lost the visual effect created by putting all these radical perspectives next to each other and forcing the reader to make sense of them. I chose the second two images because they show how well Matsumoto's artistic style mixes with his panels. Matsumoto is allergic to perfectly straight lines, and that extends to the lines of his panels. The last image is a diverse array of imperfect lines: the curving walls and ceiling of the second panel, the raw scratches in the third panel, and the thick borders of the panels.
My golden standard in panel design is Mitsuru Adachi. Adachi is famous (or infamous, perhaps) for his minimalistic art style. It's the most common talking point about him: all his characters look the same. And they do. On top of that, he tells the same story in every one of his serializations--that one's an exaggeration, but it's not too far off from the truth. Adachi is a very rhythmic mangaka: he repeats phrases, story beats, characters, everything, but always in slightly different ways, finding a new pattern for the same elements. I can't do justice to his paneling by posting isolated pages, so keep in mind this is just a taste of what makes Adachi my favorite mangaka:
Adachi is a bit like Urasawa in that he has a very readable style. There's the same cinematic playing with scale and the relative size of objects, the same alternation of detail and plot information. Adachi, however, is a much more subtle mangaka. Urasawa wants to get his hooks in you and leave you wanting more. Adachi looks to create a specific gentle, wistful, and lightly comedic tone above all. He uses small detail panels like light hitting a river or silhouettes walking on the other end of a dark corridor not to further the plot but as a sort of "filler," a way of spacing out the plot beats. He gives his scenes breathing room. You aren't abruptly dropped into the plot, you slowly ease your way in and out of it.
Poor paneling is my number one gripe against Yusuke Murata. His technical abilities are undoubtedly godly, but his panel layouts are the functional mediocrity you would see in your average Shonen Jump series. And the GIFs are amazing to watch,
but they're a pain to read (OK, I'm being a little unfair hear as Murata was obviously playing around when he drew this. It's the pain of someone with shitty internet talking).
