Main Words #5: Pastel and Anime Midwest

Hot on the heels of a successful panel at Anime Midwest, it is week 2 of haremtime. The panel was not as strong as it could have been in terms of the content provided by myself and the team, and the laptop didn’t work with the projector. I have some future safeguards for panels we/I will be running in the future. I might look into buying a cheap laptop and only use it for presenting so we can guarantee that it will work. I was the only one on the panel with enough knowledge to be on the sort of panel it was (a loose discussion under the general umbrella of harems), and even I felt woefully under prepared. Gotta read everything, man. The audience really bailed us out, and I am tremendously appreciative. They were psyched to participate, and I let them banter too much; it got a bit rowdy at times. Oh well, live and learn. I promise my next panels will be more organized and focused, and the topics I have planned are going to be a treat to run. See you there? Oh yeah, Daisho Con is the next place we can be found, in the Wisconsin Dells in November. Tony will be hosting some sort of panel, and I’m probably going to sneak one in as well. I like the idea of a highly visual panel with strong potential for participation by people without knowledge of particular manga. Since no one actually reads this, I don’t have to keep it on the down low away from you, dear reader.

Back to more pressing issues. I have a month or so of free nights starting today, so I’m going to be dumping my brain into these notepad articles as fast as I can, posting them weekly as is my wont. The first List article will be up later this week once I finalize the format of it. It will probably be like a tier list with a changelog for now. That format is interesting to me in this context, so why not. Also some video content soon. This is a very long winded way of introducing the topic this week, which is…

How do you introduce new characters to the story? What does that look like?

I’ve been reading Pastel. Not too deep into it yet. Everything is very bland so far, just ‘boy and girl are obviously in love immediately but never tell each other yet do everything for and with each other and are jealous when anyone else talks to their counterpart.’ On the other hand, it has some of the most haremest character introductions around. The image I chose is the perfect example of how it works in manga across the board. It is a scene from chapter 26, in which a character shows up.

This one page explains everything about the situation. The artist starts with what is effectively a slow pan that hides the face, focusing on the body of the person in question. What do we learn? The person most likely is a woman, based on the shot of the heel and breasts. I don’t judge. The artist wants us to believe that she is someone whose figure will be of some importance to the plot (or it is just fanservice), meaning that she is going to be attractive to some degree. The jeans indicate that she is dressed casually, an impression somewhat belied by the heels she is shown to be wearing. Her hair, what we can see of it, is lighter colored.

And that’s all. Isn’t it?

Of course that’s not everything the page shows. The last two panels indicate that she is surprised by what she sees upon reaching her destination. Maybe she hasn’t been around the area for a time, and something has changed. Or maybe it is some other reason to be surprised. The last panel shows the reason, she sees Mametarou, most likely the dog pictured. She knows the dog, and the dog knows her. It is rubbing up on her leg and doesn’t feel unhappy to see her. So either she is very good with dogs or has spent a lot of time with the dog. Long enough to form a bond with between them that lasted whatever duration she was away. It does take a reasonable time for a dog to grow large enough to be noticed, so she has been gone for a while. The dog, for what it is worth, did not seem to notice her until she was close enough to see it, so it is either old or just not observant. On the other hand, it can’t be too old, since she has noticed its growth, and dogs tend to slow in physical change after being puppies.

To summarize what we have learned from this page, someone, a woman, is coming to a building up some stairs. She is at least somewhat attractive, and knows the dog who lives there. She most likely knows whoever owns the dog as well. She hasn’t seen the dog in a while, so she has most likely been away for a time. Let’s see how we did.

The woman in question has old ties to the protagonist from his past. She shows up and walks into his house to wait for him to return while he is away. She has shown up unannounced after a long absence, but used to basically live there. So we were right!

Good work team! And good work, artist, this is a fantastic page that I just happened upon while reading. I didn’t even stop at the time, but I guess the page made that large of an impression in an otherwise ho-hum experience. Maybe this manga deserves more credit if there are more pages like this. Every character should show up in scenes with this much detail. Is this even about a harem, or just tangentially related? Who knows.

The things you can learn with just your eyes are neat. Thanks for joining me on this silly excursion that most people would complete in about 2 seconds before flipping to the next page. I should do more of these as I read new manga.

Kenton

Amateur eyeman