Crunchyroll has manga to read, dramas to watch, a store to shop, an expo to host, and news to report, but of course, anime is its bread and butter. But Crunchyroll caused quite a stir when it was announced that they were moving into making original content, not just bringing over Japanese creations or being a part of an anime production committee. High Guardian Spice was met with a lot of negative feedback, in part due to the focus on the people behind it rather than the show itself.
But as part of the Great Streaming Wars under its parent companies (Warner & AT&T), Crunchyroll continues to make changes. Their latest announcement includes a partner with its own expansion goals: WEBTOON.
The history of WEBTOON, also known as LINE Webtoon, dates back to 2004-2005 when it was launched by South Korean search engine Nevar. Then, in 2014, WEBTOON launched overseas thanks to its subsidiary which operates the LINE messaging application. WEBTOON has become incredibly popular, including partnerships with Star Wars and Stan Lee. One of its current series, Lore Olympus, was just revealed to be getting an animated series by The Jim Henson Company.
Note that a good portion of WEBTOON’s content is…well, webtoons. Just like how there is some debate about what constitutes a manga/anime (Does Avatar: The Last Airbender count as an anime? Is Amazing Agent Luna a manga?), webtoons versus webcomics versus manhwa has some gray area. Generally, though, webtoons are no longer strictly from South Korea like manhwa. Unlike webcomics which are read like a newspaper comic strip, webtoons are read vertically with users scrolling down through an episode. Some webtoons have flairs like animated graphics or music. Other platforms with English versions of webtoons include Lezhin Comics, Manga Toon, Spottoon, and Tapas.
As for LINE Webtoon, they get about 15 million readers a day, and the company is spending millions of dollars to raise that number.
Their two main sections are Canvas and Originals, with Canvas being comics freely uploaded by creators while Originals have direct support from WEBTOON. Between the two, there are about 2,600 titles on WEBTOON, and about 240 of those are Originals. Both get some revenue by using the platform, but Originals may get directly sponsored by WEBTOON. The most successful creators earn over $10,000 a month.
But for users, current series are completely free. As Business Insider Australia explains:
“Kim has been able to keep comics on the site free through a total of 16 different revenue models which include purchasing native advertisements from other app services, selling IPs and creator IPs to different markets, featuring comic characters in ads, and turning some of their characters into licensed products.”
Users can purchase Coins to either read new chapters in advance or chapters from completed series, but readers can also read some chapters of finished webtoons with Daily Pass. Creators get royalties from the use of these.
While Korean culture has been rising since the 90s, it’s been exploding since around the early 2010s thanks to K-dramas and K-pop. TOKYOPOP and Yen Press have licensed Korean manhwa over the years to capitalize on this years ago, but webtoons — both Korean and foreign content — have risen dramatically thanks to the abundance of free content on WEBTOON and elsewhere. This is likely a contributing factor to the manga industry’s initiatives likes MANGA Plus or the Japanese app Palcy.
The fact that WEBTOON is spending millions of dollars for ads on TV, in theaters, on the Web, and in public squares is likely to increase the pressure and raise WEBTOON’s profile.
So while anime is likely going to dominate for years thanks to merchandising, webtoons are climbing fast. It’s no surprise that more webtoons are getting adaptations, and Crunchyroll, with a significant amount of Asian content, is a natural partner for WEBTOON. In fact, Crunchyroll already has animated content from WEBTOON’s catalog on its platform.
Several years back, Japanese studio Production I.G. created an OVA of Noblesse. More recently, WEBTOON has been making animated shorts and releasing them on YouTube — some promotional, some as actual story episodes.
According to the press release, both companies will:
“develop and co-produce original animated content. Projects will be based on WEBTOON’s expansive catalog of properties, and both companies will team up to handle the distribution, licensing, and retail of each new series.”
That leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Could the “animated content” just be higher-quality versions of WEBTOON’s current animated shorts? Full series? OVAs? Is it possible that Ellation Studios — who is behind High Guardian Spice — will take on some of this work? After all, there has been practically no information since its reveal in August 2018.
I do find it interesting that one of the common complaints of that series was that it wasn’t from Japan, that they should be only putting money toward Japanese content.
Crunchyroll is no doubt getting some financial incentive from this partnership that they can use for their platform and anime/manga licensing. But I’m not seeing the negativity of “OMG, Crunchyroll should just stick to Japan!! It’s only for anime/manga!!” like I saw back in August 2018. Most of the comments seem to be requests for which webtoons get animated. So yeah, I have a feeling that all those people complaining a year ago weren’t really concerned with outside-of-Japan Crunchyroll after all.
Still, perhaps Ellation Studios will have nothing to do with this agreement. Maybe these productions will actually be considered anime and be produced by studios like Production I.G. like Noblesse was.
On the other hand, I am surprised they aren’t marketing toward more Korean or Western outlets. Noblesse also ended up getting an OVA by a Korean studio. Content on WEBTOON is fully owned by creators, but considering WEBTOON already has connections with companies like Lucasfilms, I’m surprised they aren’t trying to cozy up to other Western studios. Not saying that they’re better (or worse) than Japanese/Korean ones, but the U.S. does have the largest entertainment industry in the world. It will also be interesting to see if any of these productions will make it on HBO Max, expanding the potential audience for those shows.
Either way, fans will just have to wait and see what Crunchyroll and LINE Webtoon have up their sleeves. In a few years, will we see 22-minute WEBTOON adaptations added each season just like Japanese content, or will it be mostly 2-minute episodes of highlights or extras of stories? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
I personally don’t read too many webtoons since I like a print page format and find scrolling for a full picture annoying. (What can I say — I’m a fan of print books after all!) But there are a couple of series I think I’d check out, and I even backed Let’s Play on Kickstarter. (Because again, I like physical media!) Regardless, I’m just glad that this isn’t leading to some type of Internet war/boycott like some of Crunchyroll’s other announcements. Considering a certain other anime online war is pretty much over, I appreciate not having a new one taking its place.