So, first scene of this week’s Akatsuki no Yona was absolutely brilliant cinematographically. It’s easily the best scene I’ve had the pleasure of watching this season, so I thought I’d do a quick shot-by-shot break down of the sequence. This isn’t the whole thing, obviously, but these are 10 of the most important shots from it.
- Shot 1: Su-won’s just covered Yona with his cloak to hide her from his arriving guards. It’s surprisingly non-threatening, though. We’ve got the whiteness of Su-won’s clock and the warm morning sunlight as prominent elements. Furthermore, Su-won’s body language is more tender than it is controlling.
- Shot 2: I really like how this shot is divided neatly in half, in a calm balance. The bird’s wings are folded, mimicking the way Su-won’s cloak is wrapped around Yona, thus forming the first parallel between them. Additionally, the composition of the shot (Su-won in focus, but farther away from the camera; the dove out of focus, but closer) again balance the two of them.
- Shot 3: [1/5] Medium close-up, the sun shining directly on Su-won’s face as his looks off into the distance. However, there’s still a shadow on the back of his head, as if reminding us that this man isn’t entirely noble.
- Shot 4: [2/5] The dove takes flight immediately before Su-won’s next line.
- Shot 5: [3/5] Progressing from shot 3 through shot 4, the move from medium close-up to close-up (with a perfectly timed shaky cam effect) lends a ton of power to this shot. The shadow from shot three is relegated to the very edge of the frame’s left side and Su-won’s eyes are noticeably more intense than before, highlighting which of his priorities is subordinate to the other. It’s not that Su-won must do something because he’s alive; rather, it’s that he must stay alive to do something. It gives the impression that Su-won wouldn’t care if Yona killed him, had he already completely his task. But he has not, and so he must stay alive.
- Shot 6: [4/5] And now we see the dove, traditionally a symbol of peace, fly out over Port Awa, a representative of the kingdom’s troubled lands. By this time, the dove has essentially been equated with Su-won, and so it’s as if Su-won himself is flying over the kingdom, seeking to bring peace. That, it is thus implied, is the “something” he has to do.
- Shot 7: [5/5] Finally, we transition via a match-on-action cut (the fluttering feather) to another frame split in half, with the feather from the dove’s flapping wings sharing the shot with a serious-looking Su-won. Once again, placing the two of them in the same frame in equal space equates the two.
- Shot 8: As if that weren’t enough, as Su-won releases Yona from his cloak, his arm holds out the cloth like a wing, the wrinkles in the fabric recalling the skeleton of a wing. But here, we see Su-won as threatening for the first time as he bids Yona goodbye. Despite the fact that his clothing is white like the dove’s feathers, his sword is centered between them, symbolizing their conflict, and his “wing” is blocking the light from Yona, surrounding her in shadow. In other words, on his own, Su-won can be seen as a pure figure, but in relation to Yona his character takes on more darkness (further validated by the darkness Yona experiences when inside his “protective” cloak).
- Shot 9: And then Su-won leaves and Yona is drawn almost off-model, really effectively portraying how much this encounter has messed with her.
- Shot 10: To finish, just a simple eye-level shot with a dutch angle. We’re put on Yona’s level and experience the crookedness of her world after seeing Su-won (I tease out those implications in more detail in the actual episode post), seeing a series of doorways stretching out in front of her—more trials await.
And that’s the end of that. It was a beautifully done sequence and really added a lot to the effectiveness of the narrative power of the moment.
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