Case study: Haunting over the Shoulder from Domu: A Child’s Dream

February 28, 2020

Prior to his creation of Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo worked on the suspense filled Domu: A Child’s Dream. A story depicting a psychic nightmare terrorising an apartment complex, with an old man and a little girl at the centre of it all.

Early on in the story, a young man is sat in his room working on model planes. But while he’s working, the old man, essentially the antagonist of the story, appears on his balcony before moving to looking directly over his shoulder without the boy noticing. What makes this so noteworthy is the fact that it is done in just two panels on a single page.

Due to how time progresses in a comic, this one page creates this uneasy state within the reader. Time is usually determined based on context clues. Given that the boy has his light on and outside the window and balcony is dark, we can infer that it is late night or very early morning. But between the two panels, we can’t distinguish how long it too the old man to move, nor how long he was stood there. It could have been a mere matter of seconds, still frightening, but less unsettling. Or, he could have been there for several hours. Slowly making his way over to the boy’s desk. The two panels only show us the beginning and end of his journey.

The first panel also uses it’s local and design to draw heavy attention to the man just floating there. The curtains drawn open and the night sky create a panel within the panel. As we move to the second half of the page, and the second main panel, it’s almost as though the old man has escaped his confines. It suggests that this otherworldly psychic figure could even do this to the primary panels. Appearing behind the reader just as he has the boy in the book.