Comicbook characters’ facial features and actions and movements as two sources of humour: the case of Fullmetal Alchemist

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses images and texts from Fullmetal Alchemist, a 27-volume Japanese comicbook series, and aims to illustrate and discuss how comicbook characters’ facial features and active movements are used to visualise humour. As the ways that readers perceive humour while reading comics are influenced by many factors, both graphic and textual components are examined. The results show that various drawing skills and strategies are used to construct characters’ facial features and movements as two sources of humour. Our qualitative analysis further shows that halftone effects, suppletion, and micropanels can all be used to construct characters’ facial features in a funny manner. Furthermore, reduplication, macropanels, neo-amorphic panels, and mimetic words are used to humorously present characters’ actions and movements. This paper suggests that as comicbook humour is multimodally constructed, its perception requires a reader to parse both graphic and textual components.

KEYWORDS:

• active movements
• facial features
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• humour
• Japanese comics (manga)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Mehrabian gives the equation for any feeling as including: 7% of verbal feeling; 38% of vocal feeling; and 55% of facial feeling (1981, 77).

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullmetal_Alchemist.

3. Inner speech can be defined as ‘the subjective experience of language in the absence of overt and audible articulation’ and can be referred to as ‘private speech, self-talk, covert speech, silent speech, verbal thinking, verbal mediation, inner monologue, inner dialogue, inner voice, articulatory imagery, voice imagery, speech imagery, and auditory verbal imagery’ (Alderson-Day and Fernyhough 2015, 931–932).

4. When one’s body is under stress, the ‘fight-or-flight’ response may be triggered by the autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic branch (Cannon 1915), which may further induce pupil dilation. This is takes place to allow sufficient light to reach the retina (mydriasis) and adapt the lens for distance (McCorry 2007). This automatic response of the body may help the eyes more rapidly understand what is actually taking place at the moment in time.

5. According to the quantitative results of Cohn (2011), there is almost no statistical difference between the use of macro and monopanels in Japanese comics, but there is a higher proportion of micropanels. In contrast, American comics have been found to use more macropanels than their mono and micro counterparts. As Cohn has further explained, Japanese comics describe whole scenes as often as they show the parts of scenes. Cohn, Taylor-Weiner, and Grossman’s (2012) follow-up study has further shown that Japanese comics focus more on the parts of scenes via the use of mono, micro, and amorphic panels. In contrast, American independent and mainstream comics use near equal numbers of macro and monopanels, far exceeding the numbers of micro and amorphic panels.

6. The concept of the neo-amorphic panel is an extension of Cohn’s (2013c) definitions of amorphic and macropanels.

7. According to Kinsella (2000), the term gekiga, which means ‘dramatic pictures’, was invented by a Japanese artist in 1957 for describing a new genre of serious adult manga dramas.

8. As also pointed out by Akita (2009), there is terminological confusion in the literature regarding the use of these terms for Japanese mimetics. For example, gitaigo ‘phenomimes’ can be referred to as ‘non-phonomimes,’ as ‘mimetics for an external mode of an object,’ or as ‘mimetics for a visual or textural experience’ (Akita 2009, 14). Gitaigo sometimes even include phonomimes (see Yamanashi [1988] 2007).

Additional information

Funding

This study was financially supported by a Mobility Grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for Scholarly Exchange under contract MG002-N-16.

Notes on contributors

Li-Chi Chen

Li-Chi Chen is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Linguistics at Casimir the Great University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He is the author of Taiwanese and Polish Humor: A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis. His research interests lie in discourse analysis, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics, particularly in the fields of the linguistics of humour, language and gender, language and culture, nonverbal communication, and comicbook studies. He also has an interest in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

Eryk Hajndrych

Eryk Hajndrych is a research-teaching assistant in the Faculty of Linguistics at Casimir the Great University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He is also the Chinese translator of Kim Jest Ślimak Sam?, a Polish children’s picture book on gender equality. His research interests lie in Asian literatures, focusing on contemporary Taiwanese, Japanese, and Chinese literary works, and socio-pragmatics, particularly in the fields of language and culture and visual language.