I love this panelling conceit in Okazaki Mari's Shibuya District, Maruyama Neighborhood where the scene extends beyond the panel borders, drawing attention to the idea of the panel as the deliberately-selected "shot" of a camera. Here, we are invited to imagine this as footage of an interrogation, the straight-on shot of the suspect from a procedural. Within the frame, the drama of the moment heightens into a standoff between law and subversion as we join the characters in their understanding that this situation is truly serious. We sense the prospect of lasting repercussions, and so understand Itoi's feeling that, in this moment, her friend Ariyoshi is really cool. Yet our eyes stray outside the panel and we are reminded that this is not an interrogation, just a cop telling off some kids at the behest of their parents. The contrast washes out of the scene, and with it the gravity of the moment.
Here's another, where both the characters' lower legs and the narration fall outside of the panel boundary. Reading it again as the framing of a camera--perhaps this time a disposable or a point-and-shoot--the panel separates the starkly beautiful postcard memory of the moment from the material reality of the situation, that of a pair of teenagers out on a dark city street, aimless and far from home, as the chill of a winter night sets in.
