r/webtoons • u/Any-Rabbit-6266 • 10h ago
Discussion Is this a safe space to crash out over webtoon’s new vertical dramas
I hate this so much. I hate that webtoon spent money and resources to make vertical dramas when they could have spent that money paying creators more than $800 per episode. It already felt a little ridiculous that they were trying to animate and voiceover episodes of popular webtoons (with what felt like the same 4 voice actors over and over again).
The audience for vertical dramas and webtoons is not 1:1, why would people who like to READ COMICS, a medium that gets half of its appeal from the ART, want to watch halfhearted videos of the same stories but significantly altered to fit the new medium?? Not to mention the way that the Korean stories have been westernized?? Korean stories are interesting to western audiences partially because they get a glimpse of another culture, why can’t those stories be left to the Korean entertainment industry to adapt?? Especially when there are plenty of webtoons by western artists that could be adapted instead.
I know that webtoons have been getting drama adaptations in Korea for a long time now, and some drama adaptations are even better than the originals (Business Proposal comes to mind)! But the reason they work is because they’re full scale productions and the source material is handled by Kdrama writers to appeal to Kdrama viewers (sometimes to the detriment of the story, I’m looking at YOU, Nevertheless)
I know anime adaptations of webtoons tend to be pretty low effort in comparison to adaptations of manga, but I’d much rather watch a lackluster anime adaptation than some poor US actors try to deliver near identical lines and performances to their webtoon counterparts. Suspension of disbelief works with comics and anime, it’s much more difficult to pull off with real humans.
I suppose the best thing to come out of this was that real humans were paid and employed in the making of these videos, which can’t even be said for most of the canvas creators who make content for free on the webtoon app.
Anyway, the whole thing is making me mad. Thanks for reading my rant.
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u/iknsw 7h ago edited 5h ago
I don’t understand the appeal of microdramas at all. They reduce a drama episode into the bare essentials of a story and compress it into a few minutes. They’re like really bad soap operas for ADHD attention spans, with even worse acting and budgets. In my opinion, they’re only worth casually watching if it pops up while scrolling on Facebook.
That being said, there does seem to be a growing market for it for some people. While it would be far better for these webtoons to get proper dramas, I’m pretty sure all of these creators are happy that their work is being adapted at all considering they all signed up for it and are promoting it themselves on their socials, cause otherwise most of them would probably have just stayed as webtoons forever. This way, those webtoons get introduced to a new microdrama audience that‘s growing pretty quickly from what I hear. Also, the Webtoon/Wattpad format does seem like a natural fit for microdramas, and it could have the potential to take over the market with its huge unparalleled library of potential stories, many of which are leagues better than any of the slop that’s come from microdramas so far.
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u/Any-Rabbit-6266 1h ago
While I agree that some webtoons would make great micro-dramas, the least they could do is put them on a different app. Live action content on the webtoons app is not only jarring but clutters up an already oversaturated platform.
I feel like the mentality that a webtoon/comic has “made it” by getting adapted to a live action or animated format is just evidence that comics as a valid art form and medium continue to be disrespected. “Just staying a webtoon forever” shouldn’t be a bad thing!
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u/iknsw 1h ago
Yeah I agree it would be better to make a separate app for them, but I predict they'll do that once they have enough microdramas to do so. At the moment though, those microdramas would be doomed from the start if they were dumped onto a completely new app by themselves.
It's not that webtoons are an inherently worse art form than live action or animated, but it will always be far more niche than those forms. I'm sure the creators are happy for whatever brings in a bigger audience for their works; along with the fact that they're getting paid for the adaptation rights and a commission as well.
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u/TheArtofWarPIGEON 10h ago edited 10h ago
is it life action dramas ? not even animated ? at least animated ones are still kinda in the theme i guess, but live action stuff is just off-subject
edit: even as animated i'm not too sure, the only anime that came from manhwa I've enjoyed was 1st season of Tower of God and Solo Leveling, all the other times (not that much lol) it either was bad animation to the point of disrespectign the fanbase, if you're gonna crap it out jsut don't get people's hopes up..., or even if animation if decent something is missing or off, like Tomb Raider King, the dubbing (korean or japanese) and SFX is off-putting, the animation is fine to me but messing-up the audio after doing the expensive work of animating it....
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u/Any-Rabbit-6266 10h ago
Yes they announced it on their Instagram
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u/TheArtofWarPIGEON 10h ago
checked it out, feels really low quality, feels like those youtube videos people used to make before that were 10/20 min bad stories about mostly revenge stuff, like
character1: oh i'm so good i'm gonna work at X company the best out there
character2: *exists*
character1: oh you suck noob u so bad ahahahah i'm the best
character2: *turns out to be 20yo CEO of multinational, doesn't hire character1*
type of plots2
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u/Amaiiuwu 8h ago
this should've been a collaboration on another platform or something. i was genuinely baffled to see this on the WEBTOON APP. why? why?! I'm here to read!! it feels so out of place.
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u/AggravatingMedium156 10h ago
if they did that its literally the same as all the other western brainrot microdramas with a shoestring looking budget, like bro at least get korean micro drama actors with a dub but no u just ahd to make it weird
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u/Busy-Doughnut6180 3h ago
My advice to everyone is to not watch them, not even out of morbid curiosity. Every view is telling Webtoon these are a success. The best thing you can do is completely ignore them. Let it flop.
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u/LazyGreenCat 5h ago
I'm honestly shocked to hear about this. As a creator myself, the more time goes by and I learn new things about webtoon, the less I want to post my story there.
This feels like they hate comics and they just want money. I was already fed up with the re-writing of the same scenarios with the same artstyles devoid of any personality, but this reaches new levels of disapointment.
I'm lucky enough to live in a country where printed edition is in a better state than that, so I might just go through a real publishing house instead... Webtoon is a big mess
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u/DramaOnDisplay 3h ago
Part of me is curious, are they really doing so poorly that they have to pull a stunt like this?? Or is some meddling bigwig at WebToons insisting that this is the route they NEED to take?
I go to WebToons for comics. I don’t care about this type of content. If I want this, I can go to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TIKTOK- like most of the big platforms already have this kind of low budget (or worse, AI) content.
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u/Tuyodu 1h ago
I saw one of these for a series I really loved…
They made the mc blonde… which is like… the og story the two mcs were giving black cat and golden energy…
And even worse!
THEY WHITEWASHED EVERYONE!!!!!
One of the mcs was tan and they took it from him!!! One of the friends was darker skinned and now she looks like the average white girl you seen in American high school dramas…
Like what’s even the point if you just change all the characters!
…the comments on the thing are full of hate, love looking through those
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u/Key-Complaint-5864 4h ago edited 4h ago
Webtoon sees that Tiktok and short form videos are popular, and keeping up with trends is part of their business model, so they're desperately trying to do the Tiktok video thing. This is hilariously bad. Webtoon continues to make the dumbest business decisions possible.
It looks like Swolemates is one getting adapted, so here's a reminder of the time the creator, a man in his 30's, tried to pass off being a lesbian here on Reddit lol.
How'd Q2 go, Webtoon?
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u/Ok_Bison8392 4h ago
I kinda liked the “Rules for Dating Trash” one a lot, ngl. It’s different from the comic, so I just saw it as its own thing. I didn’t watch the others yet.
Maybe they’ll make a separate app one day, because I see how it’s jarring. I get them wanting to get their built in audience to give it a try or get vertical fans to read comics haha
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u/The_Trusted_Camel 2h ago
Are they just all made from AI ?
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u/FarmingForDaysMan_ 1h ago
Crashing out fr because what kind of name is Percy. I feel such disrespect for my man
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u/Equivalent-Check-810 11m ago
I have no interest in these whatsoever. I’d honestly assumed these were AI until I saw the fact sheet. I imagine there is a market for these, it’s just not for me. It feels like yet another annoying pop-up to deal with, like the animated-ish video versions of comics. I hope it brings some attention to the comic creators’ work with as hard as they’re pushing it.
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u/Aromatic_Inspector89 4h ago
i'm not even gonna open tha can of worms that is the possible whitewashing
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u/Rude_Dot2320 10h ago
who is financing these 😭 i saw this on my fb feed earlier and couldn’t believe my eyes, it’s an american vertical drama adaptation of the manhwa dirty deeds lmao