Homusaki Shikibu
joined Jul 10, 2021
Chapter 23 has some interesting features to it. While the whole manga is kind of drawn in an Ozu-ish way, with the inclusion of abundant pillow shots, that back-and-forth switching of POV to feature characters in a conversation gazing right out of the frame, some framing here and there, and just letting the panel rest where the action isn't, chapter 23 takes this up a small notch. There's even a (possibly intentional for better-looking panels?) continuity error where Botan is seen sitting on the left of Jin-Ran (p.075), then she switches to the right (p.078; or technically p.077, if only implied from the POV shots), before switching back to the left (p.080).
Right off the bat, in p.069, we see a nice effect (which isn't immediately apparent on single-page mode) when the focus, initially tracking the conversation, shifts over to Botan, who's looking to the panel-left. Her gaze crosses over to p.070 on the left and lands on Jin-Ran, making for a nice and subtle cue to transition to p.071, which continues the decoupling of panel-focus and foreground conversation. There's also a nice visual in p.077 panel 5 too where the two shot glasses seem to mimic the two seated together in conversation; and the shift to a pillow shot in p.081 panel 2 right at the moment of transition forcefully pulls us away from the action, setting up a quiet but strong climax to the chapter. To add, p.079 panel 4 has quite an aesthetically pleasing frame-within-a-frame: foreground text bubbles -> panel borders -> framing plant & vase in focus -> whiskey bottle at centre; though the bubble flow across panels 3 and 4 seems to have been slightly forced to achieve this effect.
A side effect of the style in execution is that the manga does suffer from some issues in scene shifting. For example, in chapter 18, cuts get very abrupt (pp.0126~0127) since the panels -- being relatively uniform in size -- don't introduce any dead time like you might expect in film. On the contrary, panels introduced solely as dead time (ch.23 p.075 panel 5) can also come off as ineffectual if the atmosphere doesn't come through. Additionally, establishing shots may not clearly signal the start of a scene well because they seem just like a normal pillow shot. It does take a bit of focus to get through the manga.
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