The Rise of Web Comics

Webtoons or webcomics have become very popular in the last few years, the most notable are the series coming from South Korea where webcomics was popularised first. It has spread to other places such as China but the word webtoon is also often used to refer to webcomics but it is often used as a metonymy to refer specifically to Korean series. It does make sense since the Korean series were the ones that opened up this market space both in the west and in the east debatably. But Since I will be referring to non Korean series too, I will use webcomics, a more general term that can include series from all over the globe.

The strong association of webtoons with South Korean series probably helps strengthen that association of webtoon with Korean series. Naver, one the biggest webtoons publishers in South Korea called their western platform Webtoon. However, Webtoon publishes many western works as well since it allows people to submit their works and this actually gave many western artists and authors to write their stories and publish it there. I will come back to this topic later but first I hope to explore the beginnings of the webcomic market in South Korea and China.

WEBTOON / Naver

Why these two countries specifically? South Korea because it is where webcomics first emerged and the place where it expanded to the rest of the word and China for similar reasons since the explosion of its webcomic market it has grown significantly and whilst it does not have the global reach that South Korean series have, it has started to mark its territory. There is also another factor in these two countries that is significant and that's the fact that they had a market for physical comics and manga magazines in the 90s and early 2000s.

This physical market of comics and comic magazines was partially grown within these countries through the 20th century like in Japan but on a significantly smaller scale. Of course, Japanese manga expanded this market as anime series like One Piece, Conan and the likes became really popular in both countries. However, it was still not a big market especially for domestic cartoonists/comic authors.

Aspiring authors with the rise of the internet instead of taking the route of seeking a publishing house for their work, chose to publish their own work online in their own websites. This got the ball rolling and eventually Kakao with Daum webtoon and Naver emerged in South Korea. Both sought to create digital platforms to publish comics in the early 2000s, in a way these platforms would serve to give a space for these comics to garner readers which printed manhwa magazines had been losing. These early versions of webcomic resembled more standard manhwa or comic panelling and style but it was the first step into the digital age as stable internet became increasingly available for the average consumer. The monetisation methods were still all over the place and it varied depending on the platform but as time went on companies like Kakao and Naver would adjust as they were threading relatively new ground.

These new platforms found an audience in Korea partially because of their accessibility and gradually as technology advanced more features were added such as social media interlinks and the likes. It took more and more of physical manhwa media which meant manhwa magazines and publishing houses saw great decline. but the market for webcomic itself was still not large but it was growing and it was at this point in time that one little technological leap changed everything.

The rise of Smartphones in the late 2000s and the leap in broadband cellular network to 3G and subsequently 4g meant access to the internet on the move was better than ever before. Paired with the utility of smartphones that made it so phones were no longer just phones but actually a little computer that could fit one's pocket and could use various apps, play games and so on. Phones became little mobile entertainment machines and for the webcomic market this was the chance it needed to break into an audience that was looking for things to entertain them whenever they were on a bus or train to work and back for example. of consumers when it comes to entertainment nowadays. In part this was helped by ‘snack culture’ that emerged which refers to the consumption of media in short time rather than long or deep consumption, in sense the popularity of Tik Tok, Instagram nowadays are a good example of the expansion of snack culture.

Webcomics were already on the rise but tablets and smartphones opened a whole new path for them and the growing popularity of vertical reading with readers prior to tablets and smartphones became standard after webcomics migrated to the mobile apps version of the digital platforms such as Daum and Naver. This was important because it made webcomics much simpler and therefore faster to read because panels were more spread and spaced out than in normal comics and this helped mobile readers' consumption. This was the beginning of an explosion of popularity of webcomics in Korea that took the market to massive heights.

This meteoric rise of webcomics in Korea happened in a sense because of the technological developments but that alone does not explain it because the content is also important. In that regard Webcomic stood out from the past manhwa, its format was easy on the eyes and it stands out from manhwa that were tagged sometimes of inferior copies of Japanese works because of their resemblance to Manga's style. It also had a lot more variety than Manhwa to begin. Another part of this was the apps are clean and easy to use and chapters flow rapidly due to the vertical format, in addition there is the ingrained communal aspect in these platforms, they actively encourage readers interaction after every chapter and that is a way that the readers can have a direct exchange with the author which gives a way for readers to feel directly involved in the series.

The story in China is very similar to South Korea with a similar time frame as well. China is a market with a lot of potential due to the sheer amount of consumers. The take off of Webcomics is a bit more recent in China and it kind of mirrors the rise of Kuaikan. Kuaikan began in 2014 and it has since then became the biggest platform in China, beating other competitors like AC.QQ, U17 and Bilibili Comics and many others.

A physical comics magazine market existed in China with magazines like Manyou and Manhua Show but like in Korea it was not too big and it struggled to expand. Like Korea as well, the spread of the internet across China gave way for platforms like Dongmanzhijia and then Youyaoqi in the 2000s. These made success with original webcomics most notably Youyaoqi. The success of these comic platforms and the greater expansion of the internet and the introduction of smartphones in the 2010s in China meant new names came into the party such as huge corporation Tencent, with AC.QQ or Tencent Animation and Comics. Tencent used its full power to not only bring Japanese comics to its side but also korean webtoons and it brought over a 'wait and get it free' monetisation model from Korea and of course, it's bigger size meant it could court domestic authors from the smaller Youyaoqi. This is probably the biggest difference from Korea when it comes to the Chinese webcomic market, Japanese comics held and still hold a lot of popularity but they were widely read digitally through pirated platforms and Tencent and other platforms opened up legal ways to read these foreign popular series.

 

Manhua Show - A magazine with Original Chinese works influenced by Japanese works

Kuaikan came into the game later than AC.QQ but its approach was more similar to the Korean companies when it came to creating a platform that was aimed at mobile phones. It had a streamline interface and the community aspect similar to Korean apps. it also focused more on domestic works, at first it had a much larger female user base but that gradually evened out as it invested more and more upcoming domestic cartoonists and exclusivity contracts. So it reaped and sowed a great deal of promising domestic cartoonists and it grew to hold the best of the best when it came to domestic works exclusively. These exclusivity contracts with cartoonist or comic studios is the great source of fierce competition between different competitors companies in the webcomic business, Kuaikan ranks first in this of course with a 53% rate which is more than twice that of the second place Tencent. Gradually, the comic fans that read Japanese works had begun to read domestic ones as well and overall the consumer base of webcomics increased a lot in recent years in China.

Kuaikan - literally Quickly Read

Bilibili comics came much later in 2018 but it did not build its own platform, instead it bought out Netease comic division that was created in 2015. Netease was a medium sized platform with a lot of japanese works from a lot of different publishers but it also had many domestic works. It was brought out by Bilibili and it was expanded its catalog of works and now it competes with Kuaikan and Tencent for exclusivity contracts with promising and well known domestic cartoonists.

Why is this rise of webcomics from Korea and China relevant? The biggest relevance is its competition with Japanese comics and of course anime. The maturation of the webcomic market has been fast and these companies have begun to move to broaden their works into other multimedia projects like TV series, animation, games and so on. Korean webcomics have been adapted into drama, both for their own market but also sometimes for netflix like Sweet Home. South Korea has an audience for animation but it's not as prominent as in Japan, and its anime industry which is prominent works mainly in the backstages of production from Japan and the west. However, the recent animation for Tower of God, God of High School and Noblesse made things a lot more interesting. Naver/Webtoon was a producer alongside other Japanese companies. Naver becoming interested in seeing their shows animated especially as anime becomes bigger for western audiences is not a surprise, the really interesting aspect was the interest in the Japanese side.

Webcomics have actually grown significantly in Japan, Naver entered the market with Line, a manga reading app for mobile phones that included a lot of Japanese works but also many of the popular Korean works like the ones I just cited. Line became the most popular comic application in Japan, the biggest comic market in the world. But Line lost that title to Piccoma, an application that started in 2016. Piccoma was Kakao entry into the Japanese market and whilst at first things were slow as it leaned more on Japanese works to begin in, when it began to bring its most popular webcomics from Korea together with its 'free if you wait model' it spiked in sales to absurd levels. A notable title was Solo Levelling which became the most popular series in the app. A large part of this was that there was an increasing popularity of digital manga reading in Japan but they still had the standard comic style that felt a bit more awkward to read in mobile phones and tablets. The webcomics from Korea and China brought over in Piccoma had the scrolling style which paired with the app clean interface and monetisation scheme that favoured quick reading that was perfect for the 'snack culture'. Hence, Piccoma now sees its sales match big Japanese publishers and it has begun attracting Japanese authors to publish webcomic in its platform rather than the still large print manga industry. In addition, it has also made other publishers like Kadokawa to try and make vertical reading versions of their manga. In a sense, the old traditional monochrome manga industry in Japan has found itself maybe under competition with webcomics but there is still a space for monochrome webcomic in the standard Japanese style and that is shown by the success of Jump+, a digital platform spinoff from the most popular manga magazine in Japan. It publishes many titles and it has given rise to big titles like Kaijuu 8 recently, but unlike Piccoma, it still focuses on the sale of physical volume releases of its series.

The rising popularity of webcomics from Korea in Japan will mean more anime adaptations of Korean works will be coming in the future. Funnily enough these series are completely localised with the name of characters and setting changing to Japan if necessary. China has, however, begun to adapt its own work into anime. After all, China is a huge market for anime. Hence, the Chinese companies Kuaikan, Tencent and Bilibili whilst they at first co produced stuff with Japanese like 'The Outcast' a big Tencent title, it has backed away from that and turned inward with its own studios handling the animation production nowadays. I doubt there will be a turn away to Japan again, so we will be seeing the best chinese comic animated as Chinese production. Do not be surprised to see webcomics like Solo Levelling, Retry get games, live action and animation in the future.

Some interestings links -

.https://barnettcenter.osu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-08/webtoon_as_a_new_korean_wave.pdf

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305119880174

https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201215.523

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/special/manga-changing/