Sakamoto Days: Pictures And Words
A picture is worth at least a thousand words, probably more.
Preface!
When I started reading Sakamoto Days, I was grateful to be in another action comedy starring an unbeatable, retired assassin. Long has The Way of the Househusband been my palette cleanser whenever I need something fun to sink into. Long has The Fable been pure, unadulterated joy.
Sakamoto Days is very similar, except it’s a cohesive storyline with more meaningful character additions and growth, as well as fun relationships to follow. It’s not just all slapdash hilarity, it’s got some substance there too.
If you caught my One Great Panel from Sakamoto Days earlier this week, you may know where this is going, but that panel stuck with me so much that I had to expand on it and explore the ways in which pictures and words work together, either to tell the same story, or to tell two different stories. It’s something I’ve been having to learn myself as I write graphic novel scripts, and it’s something that is such a creative weapon once you learn how to wield it.
I always knew I was going to write about this topic on MangaCraft, I never thought it would come from Sakamoto Days.
Preface over.
There’s this really amazing picture book that just came out from the dream team of Brandon Sanderson (words) and Kazu Kibuishi (pictures). Picture books only have so much room to make their impact, but this one, ironically titled The Most Boring Book Ever, is the definition of word economy.
In literally a few sentences, it creates an entire world of magic and imagination that even adult readers will appreciate.
What makes the book so special is that the words and the pictures tell two very different stories. Sanderson’s words tell the story of a boy sitting in a chair, thinking of laundry and clouds, and doing his math homework. He stands up once, then sits back down.
Kibuishi’s pictures tell the story of a boy battling sky pirates, dragons, and thriving in a fantastical cityscape that is so rich in imagination you want to see an entire epic set in this world.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Kazu Kibuishi, and I just had to know what the script from Sanderson looked like when he got it. Was this a collaborative effort, or was it all spelled out from the start?
Turns out it’s the latter. When Kibuishi got the script, that fantastic background was scripted, and all Kibuishi had to do was bring it to life. And bring it to life he did.
The point is, when you’re working in graphic mediums like comics, manga, picture books, etc. you have the unique ability to use two artistic weapons to tell one story, split them to tell two different stories, or use picture to enhance the words (or vice versa).
Before we get into Sakamoto Days, here’s what you need to know: Sakamoto is a chubby man, once the greatest assassin ever, now retired and running a convenience store with his wife (Aoi) and daughter (Hana). However, the assassin world won’t leave him alone. Shin, a telepathic assassin, joins up with Sakamoto, as does Lu, a former Triad, and more are coming, but the bad guys keep coming too. It’s silly, it’s often spontaneous and ridiculous, and just when you least expect it, it’s emotional too.
Even briefly.
And that’s all you need to know.
I don’t want to repeat myself, so if you haven’t read about the One Great Panel from Sakamoto Days that spawned this post, you can see that below, but to give you the gist, here’s a quick rundown—for 15 chapters, Mr. Sakamoto is stone-faced, with his eyes shielded behind opaque glasses about 99% of the time. Then we flashback to the birth of his daughter and just like that, we see the first glimpse of his emotions, as he cries tears of joy.
To say it again—Mr. Sakamoto’s eyes are always unseen, hiding behind opaque glasses. On the rare glimpse of an eye, they are blank. He’s too well-trained to betray his feelings with his eyes. We get no emotional beats on him aside from what he says, and he doesn’t say much.
So when we finally see his eyes crinkling with tears and we see the love he has for his newborn daughter, it really hits. And only pictures could have delivered that so quickly and so cleanly. Sure, words could have said, “boy, he really loved his daughter,” but using the impact of letting us see his emotions for the first time brings serious meaning to the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
This actually reminds me of another One Great Panel, from Wind Breaker, which you can see here:
You can tell, just from that image, how much is happening around the very simple text of “Hmmm!” and “Well said!”
Sakura is primed and ready to punch out Ume, all his classmates are holding their breath, unsure of what’s going to play out, but all that tension and detail and character is only told through the visuals, not through the words at all.
The reason why I’m so fixated by this Sakamoto Days panel—or picture, if you will—is that no matter how many words you’d have used to try to describe Sakamoto’s emotions, it never would have hit as hard as seeing his eyes and witnessing his emotions for the first time. His eyes, crinkling at the corners as he battles tears. I invite you to try to write a paragraph or two in which you deliver the same emotional sledgehammer. Words can do it—they are magical things after all—but never as quickly as a picture does, never as efficiently.
And we have to talk about the set-up as well. Sakamoto Days has done such a tremendous job shielding Sakamoto’s emotions this entire time through the use of another visual consistency—his glasses.
Again, how in the use of prose are you going to convey that no one could see his eyes most of the time? I suppose you could build it into the overall tone of the story, but it’d be clunky. This might be one of those details that just doesn’t work in prose.
I haven’t read all of Sakamoto Days yet, but it’s started to become a theme that when you really want to drive the point home, just reveal his eyes. This happens again about fifteen chapters after the One Great Panel, this time to different results. Take a look:
Out of context, it probably doesn’t make much sense what’s happening here, but here’s the important part—the opaque glasses are meant to shield Sakamoto’s emotional output. But here, by revealing his eyes, we get to see exactly that—the resolute, unflinching expression that sees him up against an immortal foe and still unbothered by it all. Those same eyes that, occasionally, show how passive and calm he is, now—with minimal if any changes—giving off a more confident, fierce vibe.
That’s where the words and pictures teaming up come into it. Without those particular words, I’d take this as more of a blank stare, like he’s shown us in the past. But with the words, he’s a badass. He’s resolved to look past the fact that he will not kill another person and instead focuses on a good old-fashioned beat down.
I want to loop in another personal anecdote for a second. I was workshopping a graphic novel script starring a child from a broken home. My problem was I didn’t know how to write that in without touching on it in dialogue, and since it wasn’t the focus of the story—that is, it wasn’t about him being from a broken home, he just happened to be—I didn’t know how to fit the details in without forcing a conversation that didn’t serve the story.
Thankfully, that’s what workshops are for, and through the power of creative discussion, it was suggested that I could use pictures on the walls of this young boy’s house to show a full family—mother and father—when in the present action, no mother is around. That allows readers to make assumptions—did she die? Leave? Ascend to a higher state of being? Whatever the case, we now know that the mother is not in the picture anymore (pun intended).
I never had to write anything into dialogue regarding the missing mother other than when it made sense to the story. No more forcing information into narration. Behold, the power of pictures.
This is but one small piece of Sakamoto Days, but it’s a huge piece of visual storytelling. I probably could have gone deeper into this subject with a different series, but it makes it easier on all of us if we just have to reference one panel to see just how much emotion can come across in a single crinkling of tear-filled eyes.
Hey, creatives: Think of an emotion you want a character to convey. Now draw that character displaying that emotion. When you’re done, take that visual and write it instead. This is a fun exercise for writer’s who are visually minded and for artists who don’t often do their own writing.
Hey, fans of Sakamoto Days: What are some surprises you’ve found in series similar to this one? Any stories where you didn’t expect certain emotional beats or a surprisingly well-told joke it a serious narrative?
Love this!! :D