The structural analysis of indonesian horror webtoon’s visual and narrative

Abstract

The popularity and the appeal of horror media among Indonesian have been explicated as a close relation to the psyche of Indonesians which is generally inherent to the Eastern culture. This specific pattern of preferences rooted in Indonesians’ cultural fixation has been profited off across many forms of popular media; from radio broadcasts to online podcasts, from TV series to cinematic movies, and from printed comics to webtoons. Webtoon or webcomic is a term originally coined in Korea to refer to a form of graphic narrative that interweaves words and images as also found in printed comic, however, its utilization of digital information technologies implies a fundamental difference between the two. Webtoon’s vertical orientation is also one of the few discrete factors that excludes webtoon from the printed comic category. This research aims to find out how the visual narrative structures of Indonesian horror webtoon are particularly employed in evoking fear within the readers’ minds by examining some representative examples of popular Indonesian horror webtoon: Creep by Ino Septian and Gloomy Sunday by Fanky Landerson. This analysis is conducted by applying Zpalanzani-Tabrani and Cohn's triangulation analysis model enhanced by adding the structural affect theory of stories developed by Brewer and Lichtenstein and some supplemental analysis units such as gutter space and color analyses. This study suggests that there are some idiomatic similarities between Indonesian horror webtoons and horror films in general, both in terms of visual composition and units and in terms of sequence to construct a sense of suspense in an engaging and ceaseless horror experience. These findings are applicable to obtain an effective formulation in designing horror webtoon for Indonesian readers on one hand, and to draw out some encouraging remarks for further improvement on some aspects on the other hand.