Comic Analysis 2 - The Caterer at the Maiko Manor (Patreon)

I am currently obsessed with The Caterer at the Maiko Manor by Koyama Aiko and as I read more, I find myself looking deeply at its pages to get some insight into improving my comics that a lot of other work doesn't do for me. 

The basic summary of this manga is that two young girls attempt an early career path of becoming Maiko, or traditional japanese entertainers, which is a field with a rich and unique history and culture that affects the every day living situations of the girls that choose this career. One girl, Kiyo, fails out due to a fundamental misalignment of life skills but lands herself in a position to be the caterer at the Maiko house. The other girl is her best friend Sumire who is deeply inspired by Kiyo from their time as friends in school and is motivated to become the best Maiko possible.

I think the way I want to describe this author's work is to call it very lean, with every decision in regards to its layout, composition, and pacing to be very deliberate and purposeful. A description like "lean" sounds like it would be a no-frills type of affair but I think the technical abilities of Koyama Aiko are always on full display throughout. there's great consistent use of small markings for texture to liven each panel as a whole, be it the wood walls of the manor or the detail in rendering the wide range of food that Kiyo cooks up regularly. The pacing is also quite lean as well, consisting of a smaller count of 10 pages per chapter which puts it lower than the standard 18 or so of common weekly series.

With that said, I wanted to look at chapter that had some pages that really stood out to me, chapter 53 in volume 6.

This chapter doesn't have any deeper significance on why I picked it, but I think it does take place at a nice moment in time for the story. To set the stage a bit here, through the comic thus far we have been learning that Kiyo seems to be unphased or at least quick to adapt to this new life as the caterer for this household of working women. The comic takes her perspective most often and she is the first character we see the perspective of, but we never really get to see her worrying about her place in the house or dwelling on her inability to perform for the career she set out for with Sumire. Sumire on the other hand, is seen by her peers and those above her as an incredibly hard worker who is excelling at her training, but when the comic takes her perspective we see her inner doubts and hesitations front and center (which are kept in check by just spending time with Kiyo, becoming remotivated by Kiyo's full speed ahead demeanor). Kiyo is more proud of Sumire for all of her achievements than of anything she herself has done, and Sumire continues to strive for being the best from the support of her best friend. With that laid out, we see the first page.

This comic has the conundrum of having a first page limited in its shape and size by the placement of it's logo which has remained consistent after a certain point. We see Sumire towards the end of one of her jobs entertaining guests with some other unnamed Maiko. This page has a beautful layout that managed to fit 2 beats within its confined space. We get a front and center shot of a hairpin on Sumire's head which functions both as a great eyecatch as well as the focus of this first beat. The customer makes a comment about the hairpin and how the seasons are changing, and how the maiko will have different flowers in their hairpin depending on what season it is, to match which flowers are in bloom for the time. This panel has the most going on in it's background as its best chance to create an establishing shot for a location that doesn't have too much importance. The Maiko converse with the guest to try to suggest him to pay for their services again, and we see Sumire observing the conversation from behind, narratively seeing her sort of get removed from the flow of the talk. In the final panel which is the smallest on the page, we get an isolated Sumire thinking to herself that she is being made aware of the exact time of year she finds herself in. Placing her figure by itself with no BG details is a subtle way to get the idea across that what we need to focus on here is Sumire's forming thoughts. We can look at the size of the panel here to have almost an extra pull here, almost like a bottleneck of time, squeezing out attention here before something of significance. Usually comics use panel size to emphasize importance with the bigger panels being more important (and that is still sort of true here), but I find that this is a good example of panel sized being used for something else important here, a relationship with time. The bigger panels feel less connected to time, or like you are supposed to perceive them as taking up more time while the smaller ones become more locked into the length of time it takes to read the thought and move on.

The previous page's resolution meets its head through the tangible moment of Sumire returning home thinking about how a years has passed, and the more nebulous moments of her reflecting on those she left behind + Kiyo who shares her journey with her over the course of the year. The memories are detached from reality and time by the use of modified panel borders. Similarly to the size of the panel affecting time, the borders can also pull off this effect when there is a lack of text to do some of this weight lifting for you. 

The final panel here is Sumire's eyes, not looking at where she is going but only inwards to her thoughts, and her eyes convey enough that the extreme closeup is good for variety which outweighs including other emotional signifiers like mouth or body language.

as I had written before in my first analysis, I like organize my pages into beats, splitting the rows on a beat by beat basis. Some pages may play with organization of panels but I find a strong page will still have its clear divisions of small story beats to rows of some sort. We start this page with one of Sumire's fellow Maiko (she is referred to by the others as Momohana, as Maiko all get their own fake name when the become working professionals) asking her a question about new girls coming to their respective manors. Sumire is brought back to reality but isn't quite following along with the conversation. The next panel is a followup to the initial thought, forming what the beat of this row is about: A group of new girls will be coming to begin their Maiko training soon, as school is finishing it's semester. 

The girls continue on about it, but Sumire is back in her thoughts again, so we get a shot of her face again as she processes this new information. The final panel is subtly showing her trying to keep a poker face, her thoughts still pensive while she asserts a position outwardly as being accepting of the new girls. The other girls make a more honest comment about the situation, clearly not troubled by the same thoughts Sumire might be having, and the group enter a building shown from the outside. This panel works will with all of these events happening at the same time because they work well in unison with the shot of them entering, sort of symbolizing the group moving on from this train of thought/conversation as they move into a new space.

It is a new day in this town the Maiko live in, and some resident Maiko return home from work. We don't know who they are talking to until the new row, the next beat being Kiyo; so now we have a perspective switch, which can justifiably demand its own beat to convey to the reader. The girls ask Kiyo what their lunch will be and we get an interesting shot of them from behind, obscured by the curtain to the kitchen. This decision feels like its purpose is mostly for variety, as the rest of the page takes place in the kitchen and it would be beneficial to prevent the scene from getting monotonous, since that doesn't seem to be the feeling that this scene is asking for. It also does a good job of conveying body language of the girls' excitement for lunch, with their feet kicking up a bit. We return to Kiyo's perspective as she continues working on the food, the girls leaving the scene to go clean up and get ready to eat. This final row here is pulling us back to Kiyo's general demeanor: roll up the sleeves and get the job done. The last panel is a shot of the food as it is being prepared with no thoughts or distractions, Kiyo is going through the motions and is fully attentive to preparing the food.

This page is all about the food preparation, which doesn't say much more than what the last panel established. It feels more like the author getting to have fun with their story concept, getting to enjoy the act of making food as well as drawing food. This is a page that really stood out to me when I first read it for a few reasons. The drawings are excellent at portraying the food through pure black and white linework with the only gray tones used on the empty panels for some variety. But I think what is really strong here is the one wide panel in the center of this page. The rows of panels above and below have the same general shape and size with differences being purely for compositions sake. This again can be linked to both emphasis and time flow, and to prevent the page from feeling completely insignificant we get a short breather of Kiyo lighting the stove, almost like a chance to take a breath for a second between quick bombardments of vague time as well as having our brain stimulated to fill in the gaps between actions however much we can imagine. The shot of Kiyo is our grounding to show us exactly what is happening in that moment.

We get the grand reveal, The final meatballs portrayed very deliciously (as well as maybe not even how they are presented within the world, more for the reader than for the girls). The panel underneath takes up less space despite it being crammed with more information, because this author knows that the grounding force across this whole comic is the food. The girls begin eating and we get a lively scene of the dining area, really just fun to look at. Kiyo's hard work comes to a head with a thank you from the diners.

Another page that grabbed me, we get some beautiful compositions that take up this top row as the girls eat and time passes freely. The staging is varied and the camera finds itself tight on various angles, getting us extremely close in on the scene in a way to almost overwhelm. It feels like it's saying "don't look for too much here, this is more of a vibe than anything narrative". Sumire enters the room late (which has been established as a frequent occurrence throughout the story to show her spending a little more time learning to catch up to her coworkers that are more experienced) and the girls ask what she was up to. Of course she was making an extra effort as she always does which gets its own row for its narrative beat. Kiyo starts to serve Sumire her food when the congregation is interrupted by someone, calling Kiyo and Sumire's attention to an otherwise run of the mill lunch time.

The "Mother" of the manor gets a front and center shot to make the announcement addressing the thoughts that Sumire was pondering at the beginning of the chapter about the new girls that will be joining the household, bringing them back to attention. We get smart mirror compositions which highlight the beat here of their being a range of experienced Maiko as well as newbies, having Kiyo and Sumire on the newbie side to sort of give us a bit of full context of the scene we find ourselves observing. The final row is what the mother is trying to convey with this speech, the girls must all now be good role models for the new Maiko in training and are all equals in regards to building a healthy household. We already got our shot of the mother at the beginning, so this final panel gets us a fuller shot of all of the residents attentively listening to what is being asked of them.

A stoic shot of the mother concluding her speech finished the beat, and the row underneath gives us our two different perspectives that copy the pace of the mirror shot previously. The experienced girls decompress and understand that it's not as intense or serious as it is being presented, but Sumire is struggling even harder than before now that she is forced to revisit her thoughts about her journey thus far. The older Maiko sense Sumire's tension and ask her what's wrong, to which she responds that she is worried. She finishes of this beat by finally voicing what has been bothering her in an indirect way, so we only get a shot of her body language, obscuring what her face might be telling us in this moment where Sumire understands that she won't be the new girl any more and the her role is evolving to a new stage in her career.

The older girls see the struggle and we get a panel of their faces, words don't need to be said to see that they understand the feeling and have all shared an experience similar to it in their past. One girl offers a kind gesture to Sumire as an "older sister" and reassures her that she will be able to do the same for the new girls that arrive. Sumire's response resolves this beat and takes up its own row, showing that she is now feeling more determined and ready for what comes next, understanding the symbolic gesture of what was said. The final row is the realization that the "older sister" that offered her a kindness was actually eating Sumire's food, delfating the tension and seriousness of the scene with a gag as well as showing that the older Maiko still mess up all the time and that sometimes things like that will just happen and that's ok. Kiyo has her own moment of reflection similar to Sumire, but Kiyo is the type of girl to not dwell too much in her thoughts, represented by someone asking for another plate and Kiyo being brought back to reality to continue doing her best at her job.

Again, these pages are so effective at conveying ideas so quickly and feeling free to skip out on visual details that may detract from the essence of the chapter, as well as keeping a brisk pace to keep these understated moments from being boring. Just all around solid visual storytelling. I have also been really fascinated with the specific amount of zoom some panels have, pulling in close enough that sometimes the tops of characters heads are cut off by panel borders. We sometimes see moments that share the same basic emotion behind them that will have different amounts of zoom and I haven't quite figured out if there is any benefit other than filling in the negative space more effectively, which is really more of a personal style decision than anything. Bubble placement that sometimes covers character's faces even if they are the one speaking is another oddity, but I believe it to be a decision made for smoother flow between speech for our eyes. It results in some compositions that I would have avoided if I was creating these pages from scratch on my own, but as I think more about them I find that characters' full expressions are not always necessary to get the idea across and this allows for more flexibility in composition. It's a very challenging approach to wrap my head around but I think this author does a lot of great examples of it and further study will really help make my pages become stronger and more diverse.

I hope some of these observations inspire you to try some things with your own work, or at least make you want to read more of The Caterer at the Maiko Manor! I mostly do this work for myself, since I think trying to put words to why you think decisions are made helps you make better ones when you have to draw your own comics. Thanks for reading, yall!