/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4734156
I think another secondary facet of this comes in the form of a lack of ability to show, rather than tell. A lot of characters will have where they're going or the culture of a place explained to them when, ideally, the artist would just draw it. Backgrounds / environments in manga are already pretty rare in some works, which means that lots of them won't take the time to incorporate things like establishing shots or mundane explorations of a location.

These sorts of things are ultimately important in a story context because it gives us the space to show things that we would otherwise be forced to infodump onto the viewers. There are many instances in manga or anime where characters will have the details and culture of a place spelled out to them before or when they get there, when we could be shown those elements visually when the characters walk around. Rather than tell us that we're heading to a city filled with genius craftsmen, we could be shown their wonders and their works as we make our way through the streets alongside the characters. A lot of flavor can be given visually, and it rarely is outside of seeing the place for the first time (only for the rest of the introductory sequence to be filled with blank white backgrounds or little else).

Not every series does this, though. Akira has beautiful spreads depicting Neo Toyko both in life and in death. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind has many gratuitous drawings of environments and insects. Made in Abyss avoids this problem entirely via lots and lots of visual worldbuilding at basically every available opportunity (see the attached image for a wonderful sense of place and atmosphere). That said, I think the general lack of environmental depiction and visual worldbuilding hurts the integration of the "world" into most manga.

cntd.