Reading Manga Balloon Shapes

A speech balloon's border can suggest delivery before its words have been read. It can also distinguish one voice from another. Those functions are easy to confuse when every irregular outline gets treated as a command to imagine a shout.

Compare two voices on the same page

In chapter 1 of VIZ's Death Note Volume 1 preview, Light's scream has a sharply bursting outline. Below it, Ryuk's explanatory speech also has irregular borders.

The comparison matters more than a rule attached to either shape in isolation. Our reading is that the page gives the startled response a different visual force from the explanation. Calling both outlines merely jagged would conceal the difference in degree and in what each utterance is doing.

The border is one part of that judgment. Consider the kind of utterance, the lettering inside it and the pictured response together. A scream and an explanation do not become equivalent performances just because neither is enclosed in a perfectly smooth oval.

Use conventions as questions

Letterer Nate Piekos's guide to comic lettering describes burst balloons for screaming and rough balloons for monstrous or distorted voices. He also explains that his account mainly concerns American comics traditions and that editorial preferences vary. It supplies useful possibilities to test, not a universal key for translating every manga border into sound.

That caution makes a practical difference. If an irregular outline accompanies a particular speaker repeatedly, it may be part of how the page identifies that voice. If a speaker's normally restrained balloon suddenly changes, the change itself may deserve attention. Comparing a voice with itself and comparing it with another voice are different tests.

A border does not settle the whole performance

Do not convert a visual cue into an exact volume, pitch or accent without further evidence. A page can invite the impression of harshness without specifying how many decibels a character produces. An anime actor may realize the moment in a particular way, but that performance is additional evidence from another medium.

For commentary, describe the visible difference first and make the emotional reading proportionate to it. That leaves another reader room to agree about the drawing while proposing a different delivery. It also prevents a cropped balloon from acquiring a certainty that the full exchange does not support.

The thought-balloon guide asks who can hear an utterance. This question comes after that one: once speech is established, how does its presentation guide our sense of the voice?