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lmst340-Assignment One "The Arrival"

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a mesmerizing journey into a foreign land by a man trying to help his family survive. The whole time he is faced with having to understand and trying to be understood in this land, trying to make it as close to a home as he can, all the while making money for his loved ones back at his actual home.

This story is told only using illustrations, no text is ever visible to guide us. This works extremely well because of the detail that is packed into every frame, and the sequences from one panel to another are extremely short where we see everything being played out in front of us, like an analog animation, or a strip of film. When it is not doing this "strip of film" effect it is doing something as powerful and as important, it is showing us panel after panel of detail that will then be pieced together in the next "strip" to finish telling the story where those details are pertinent.

One of the "scenes" from this graphic novel that I thought worked marvelously well was the transitions between seasons shown on page 102 in the PDF, on page 101 we are shown the man leaving the envelope full of money in the "mailbox" that then flies away. Here we see the "trees" which then sets up the next page beautifully, by showing us the "trees" in page 101 and then showing us the step by step transformation they make through the seasons in page 102 we get a sense of time, as well as a feeling of being immersed in that world. Any other graphic novel would have said something along the lines of "3 months later", but with this, we really do get a sense of the scope of this man's journey in this foreign land.

Wonderful, Beautiful, I will definitely recommend this to my friends, thanks. - Salvador Casellas

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