Is comic books/manga an effective way to tell a story?

Is comic books/manga an effective way to tell a story?

Yes

It's effective for "authors" who can't paint a picture using only their words.

All comics are an inferior medium compared to books and movies.

Comics are superior to movies in terms of storytelling.
It's books>comics>games=TV series>movies

If we are strictly talking about the possibility of the medium itself without regard for the works that inhabit it in regards to the capability of the medium for storytelling it should be more like

Video games>film/video>comics>books

Now when we factor in the actual works on existence it would go
Films>books>everything else desu

Films>books? That's just wrong. Books are the ultimate form of storytelling because there is no budget or limit to what can be done.

The best films transcend mere storytelling because of the audio visual aspects available to it for experiential appreciation that goes way farther than just storytelling. A good example of which is the Kuleshov effect. Look it up.

It is if you're Alan Moore

Films transcend languages even which restrict even the best translation of a book. Have you ever seen a highly visual film with little to no dialogue such as The Good, the bad and the ugly, or anything Charlie Chaplin.

Yes, I've watched a lot of movies. Books are still superior. Movies are good for short bursts of intense emotion, but nothing beats books otherwise.

Kokou no Hito is an excellent example of an artist getting the very best out of the medium. The character's internalizations are brought out really effectively through visual metaphor, and it wouldn't be nearly as effective on film due to the special effects requirement.

Intense short bursts of emotion? You've clearly been watching the wrong movies. I've seen movies that have slowly eaten me up inside beyond the screen itself and i can still see certain sequences burned into my consciousness forever when I close my eyes. I love books don't get me wrong I've read plenty, but to say that all films are good for is short bursts of intense emotion is like saying all books are good for is long drawn out wordiness to get to the point. It's extremely untrue as to the actual capabilities of either medium.

Alan Moore would say that's bullshit.

Which is why he's the best.

Yeah, I watch movies on LSD too.

A book wouldn't even come close to capturing what made The Good, The Bad, The Ugly so good.

No shit. Not all books make good movies and not all movies would make good books.

Overrated as fuck movie.

Manga is, comics aren't.

Note that I'm referring only to the original Japanese versions here. When translated to English, many things become confusing, including what character is speaking what line if they're off-panel, and anything involving movement is hard to determine due to the use of onomatopoeia which is rarely translated, and when it is, it's done poorly.

Honestly, if you think you've read a manga after seeing some 12 year old's Google Translate inspired "translation" of it, you're delusional.

When you've read enough manga you can usually infer those just fine.
It's not like they have that big an impact on what's going on. I don't think I've ever been confused who was talking in a manga.

Now LNs, that's a different story entirely.

Pic related was perfect for the LN format

>storytelling
>games at the top

>video games
That's one way to reveal yourself as a mouth breather.

No other medium incorporates the ability to interact directly with the work itself which is unique to video games that cinema and literature can never do matter what they try. Sure 99%of video games are not fully taking advantage of this unique aspect to give it the respect it is capable of because developers see games as entertainment not art generally speaking.

>No other medium incorporates the ability to interact directly
That doesn't make it the best storytelling medium you stupid retard. If anything it makes them worse because the player is usually a rubbish character.

By trying to better tell a story in a video game, you make a worse game.

Not that guy, but you're mistaking potential for reality. In reality yeah most player characters are pretty shit character-wise, but that doesn't mean there's no potential there. Video games by virtue of being audio, visual and textual are on the same potential level as books/tv/movies/comics, but also have the added element of player interactivity. As a medium, they could THEORETICALLY do everything other mediums can and more.

no that's why people don't read and watch them for story.

He's talking about the potential. A film can do everything a book can do, in theory, even if it's just a person reading a book or words appearing on a screen. Likewise, a game can do anything a film or book can do plus more. Games may be shit at the moment, but they have the highest potential.

A film can't realistically do everything a book can do, because of the time constraints involved. Anything over 2 hours is pushing it, 3 hours and nobody will watch.

It depends on the story and the author's goals. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a very good book on the subject. It mostly focuses on Western comics, but has a few manga examples as well.

You could say the same for books.

Sure, but their time constraint is far less limiting.

By "film" I don't literally mean only films. There's no time limit, you can just split things up into episodes, just like how most books aren't read in one sitting.

I'd say it depends heavily on the story itself.

For example Spice&Wolf: The light novel has pages with maybe one sentence of conversation between Lawrence and Holo, the rest is thoughts and descriptions about the conversation. The manga version is not able to compress everything into a couple of panels. Lots of details are lost. But at least it has more details than the anime adaption.


For a story like Dragonball,where characters don't even think, the manga is a great way to tell the story.

That loss of information may more be because of teh transition to another medium. For example, HunterxHunter recently had a few anons complaining about all the interior thoughts of Hisoka cause "too much text". Manga can do it though and it's better if they do it in a ability based fighting manga like HxH too.

I honestly hope he means VN's when he says videogames.

Meant for

KEK
I never saw such a wall of text in a manga.

I agree. If the original story is written as an manga, than the mangaka knows the limitation of his medium. He can create a story which is adjusted for a manga.


Film can theoretically do everything what a book does, but not practically. The most limiting resource is money(=time). Also there is a reason why many people who have read a book, hate the movie adaption. They just imagine everything in a way they want. The movie sets everything into a finished picture. There is no room for own interpretations.

Mangastream really bloats their translations compared to Viz

You also misunderstand. A "film" can be anything, from a movie to a youtube video. Somebody putting up a book as text in a video and then adding music to it has already surpassed books in terms of potential for the medium. Not to mention audiobooks, or anything else. One could, for example, have a "film" consisting of an audiobook playing over panoramic images, this too would accomplish literally everything that a book can, but with added features.

Again, you don;t seem to understand what I mean by "potential". All books can be contained within movies, but movies can't be contained within books. Likewise, both books and movies can be contained within video games.

I know what you mean with "potential". Someone could just film a book as he turns the pages. In this sense: Yes, books are a subset of movies.

But that isn't the sense why the medium film was created and is used.

I can take a book and dive into the story with my own imagination and speed. A movie takes these possibilities you. From my perspective, when I'm reading a book I'm far deeper into the story than in any movie. Watching film is mostly a passive activity. IMO words can describe far more than pictures ever could.

Films aside, you can do the same thing by having a game that has the same text as the book, but is now scrollable and has the added benefit of hiding it's length. Not to mention, again, music. Even if you are some sort of purist who hates images and music for some reason, it's still objectively better due to the length thing.

If so why watching anime in the first place then?
An episode is about 23 min for a show, and if a show is about 12 episodes this means it takes ~ 5 hours.
While manga cover more story, take less time and can be read on public.

Don't get me wrong. I love movies, music and games. But a film or game which just scrolls through walls of text is just an other form of a ebook. It's not the indented use of these mediums.

An audiobook can enhance the book with different readers and music, while keeping the whole story. I won't disagree to this.

However, as I said: Books gives you the advantages of using your own imagination and your own reading speed, which I consider very important for following the story. All other mediums take away one or both advantages to a certain degree.
I don't necessarly consider it a bad thing to take away this possibilities, but the question was "What is better for storytelling?" and therefore I still say books are better.

This is exactly why I hate HxH, it is everything that annoys me about shounen, only magnified ten times and transformed into something actually pretentious.

A written description of something is in all ways inferior to a perfect depiction of it via another method. You can say that the writing allows you to use your imagination, but the goal of any medium is to carry across the author's intention, and a real image, sound, or what have you does so with greater fidelity. I love reading, don't mistake me, but instances where narrative would do the job better that a perfect representation are rare to say the least.

This is all a moot point anyway, since you refused to even consider my example of a game that was essentially exactly the same as a book but better. I get the sinking feeling that this is just going to go in circles if I proceed further, so there's your easy way out if you feel compelled to "win".

>It's not the indented use of these mediums.
Which nobody is denying, we're just pointing out that, since certain mediums can be embedded within others, you can strictly do more with them in principal. Nobody is denying, say, that having a book is more physically convenient than a film of that book, just that text can still be embedded in other media with more total range of expressiveness.

>A written description of something is in all ways inferior to a perfect depiction of it via another method.

This depends. Poetry, for instance, tends to deal in descriptions of metaphorical ideas that could not be presented to the human imagination in any other medium besides text/speech.

Games are definitely the ultimate medium though, as their only limitations are technical, such as their inability to perfectly capture a direct, live performance of something. Aside from that, they are in principal better than everything else and provide the greatest total possibilities.

Being an amateur novelist, so far I think I'd rather work with comics. When watching live action movies, most of the time inner monologues feels weird, looks like shitty soap opera. Anime is just acceptable because I'm used to monologue in comics. While the novel, it's feels weird to work on descriptive or exposition if you're doing 1st PoV. Action scene most of the time went shit even in 3rd PoV. So yeah, comics is somewhat superior actually.

Did anyone like this horrible cunt?

>comparing mediums
come on not this shit again. also, comics and books are a better medium games in second, the only problem with books is accessibility since the average normalfag doesn't read.

I misunderstood your game example. You mean something like the Witcher series, do you?

Games have the same main limitation as movies, that's money. Games could be theoreticlly be superior, but games especially Open World Games have one major problem. You'll get lost by its possibilities. That's poison for the storytelling.

>You'll get lost by its possibilities.

There's no reason this needs to be the case. Games allow the developer to provide reasonable constraints, there's no need to make everything 'open world' if it is of no benefit.

>5 hours
That's if you watch like a pleb.
Sup Forums watch anime at X1.1 to X1.2
Which will reduce time significantly.