slr2moons | Zombie-induced artisic commentary #1: Yazawa Ai

When I'm trapped in a bout of zombieism and the subsequent lack of drive to do anything productive, I take on pointless projects like changing my LJ layout. I still rather like this green thing I have going on, so instead, I've decided to babble about what I admire and find notable about my mangaka. Let us begin!

Nana's Yazawa Ai

art: A master of the empty panel, her spartan style is the antithesis of the clutter you'll find in most uber busy and overtoned shoujo manga. Of course, Nana's target audience is older than your average Shojo Beat reader, which I'm sure is a large part of why. She realizes the value of a single-panel page, and how much impact one figure against a plain background can truly have. She makes magnificent use of silent moments to portray emotion, yet she isn't afraid to jam-pack a page with small panels and dialogue to relay a conversation in seeming real-time. She has an unusual line method, one that uses deep shadows in dark and tight areas, rather than the standard make-a-line-thicker-when-it's-at-the-bottom-of-something. You can see a faint wobble in her lines, something that would normally count against an artist, but in her case, it works. ~~I have yet to figure out why she can get away with it.~~ *is baffled* She rarely uses tone for shading. Instead, she uses it more for flat colors, such as clothing.

plotting and story: Yazawa-sensei is a master at character-driven stories, taking her time to portray events, able to stretch one evening out into eight chapters of content that are never boring. She dangles bits of information, scattering them here and there through her pages, slowly building up her characters until you know them, but you can't figure out exactly when you realized it. Except for the occasional side story, the entire series is told through the viewpoint of either Hachi or Nana. Yazawa makes magnficient use of this in voiceovers. Hachi will be thinking something, yet we see Shin-chan in the background, and Hachi's words echo or underline what Shin must be feeling, too. Yazawa-sensei's ability to pull off this subtle and powerful storytelling method leaves me speechless in awe.

Required onsen scene?? Every manga must have one! No. :P Not as of vol 14, anyway. Lots of bathtub scenes, though.

s2m's "Bwa?" factor: The thing that makes me sweatdrop about Yazawa-sensei is how much she loves to torture her characters. I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again, but when it comes to Nana, you can always count on the bad option happening. If you've ready any Nana at all, you know what I mean. Missed opportunities, things that go wrong, bad decisions (oh, Hachi..), worse luck, misunderstandings...whatever happens, it's almost always bad. I suppose this makes the rare instances when something good takes place that much more remarkable, but still. Nana is one of the more realistic manga sagas out there (no magic, sci-fi, or far-fetched premises to accept) but not even real life is always this against you. O.o And I really really sweatdrop with all the extra time given to ~~the rat bastard~~ Takumi. He must be uber-popular in Japan or Yazawa's personal favorite, b/c he is all OVER the manga. I don't try to hide the fact that I do not like him, so it gives me much frustration that he has so much screen time. Nana is filled with interesting characters that always seem to be brushed over in favor him. I want backstories on Nobu, or Shin, or Misato or Miyu or Shion or Asami or even the photographer who ruined everthing. But who do we always seem to get?? Takumi. *sulks* I'm ashamed to admit I used to find him very attractive, back in the beginning before vol 6. Once I got to know him??? Oh no, I changed my mind FAST. *snarls*

And finally, since I find drawing men to be particularly difficult thus pay close attention to the efforts of others...

On Yazawa-sensei's men: Yazawa certainly excels at drawing the lanky boys. Almost all of her men seem to be the standard body type of lean, with long torsos, thin arms and legs, and nice big manly hands (you know I like the manly hands). Oh, except for Gin-chan, of course. He's a fun change to the normal pretty-boy style ^^ I'd love to see some back history on him. *evil chuckle* Gin-chan's really grown on me... And this will sound rather bizarre, but I love how she does manly noses, too. It's a shame the best nose is wasted on ~~the rat bastard~~...but oh well. Ren's is nice as well.

I could keep going on about use of background tone, the wide variety of costumes for the women, and other such things, but this I think is long enough. I suppose I should go be productive now. :P