

I know manga is usually read right to left, top to bottom, but this panel
confuses me a bit.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VuMUe.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VuMUe.jpg)

The guy on the right looks all annoyed and "!" first, and then we have the
blonde sliding in like 'are you guys on a date too?', but chronologically
isn't this a contradiction? Shouldn't we have seen the main character ask his
question first and then spiky guy's reaction?

Or is this panel showing things simultaneously?

If someone could show me in what direction/chronology I'm supposed to
read/understand this, it'd really help.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-09-07T15:25:10.940
25689
2015-10-13T12:38:50.893
17803
question
naruto panel-arrangement
Are the events in this manga panel happening simultaneously?


This would be a personal answer based on my own experiences: in cases like
these I interpret the height of the speech bubble as order. The left bubble is
higher up than the right one, so that happens first. There's nothing stopping
the right one to be placed higher up, as it wouldn't hide any important
details or anything in the art. Therefore I would read the bubbles in this
panel left to right.

The following image is from <http://shadow.randomfandom.com/gh/styles.htm> and
shows reading order. Look at number 4 and 5, that's how I interpret the two
speech bubbles in your example.

[![Reading order of Manga panels and speech
bubbles](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GtUsy.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GtUsy.jpg)


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-09-10T22:53:03.723
25778
2015-09-13T12:06:13.063
2015-09-13T12:06:13.063
16688
16688
25689
answer