What are webtoons and why are they so popular among youngsters?
We have all grown up watching cartoons. Bit in recent times, webtoons or online comics have been a big hit with the student community as youngsters can watch it anytime, anywhere on their digital devices.
What exactly are webtoons?
Webtoons are mainstream digital comics that can be accessed via internet on smartphones and tablets. Webtoons originated in South Korea as a medium to compete with Japanese manga and to expand South Korean cultural influence across the world. These online comics are amusing, fresh and appealing with visual images and texts that appear in the form of vertical strips. They can be read by scrolling through a smart device and have gained immense popularity among teenagers across borders in Asia, Europe and the US. According to some estimates, webtoons have 700 million monthly users and over 1 billion views yearly.
How far has India progressed in the domain of webtoons?
Webtoons became a trend among Indian teenagers in early 2021 when they got free access to South Korean websites and started exploring BTS, the popular South Korean pop band.
Soon after, in April 2021, The Graphic India group had declared the launch of ‘Toonsutra,’ India’s first indigenous webtoon comics platform that became available on all Android devices. This was the direct influence of blockbuster Indian film franchise ‘Baahubali’ and the famous TV show ‘The Legend of Hanuman.’ Thereafter, Toonsutra emerged as a new home for story narration with comics makers across the country creating innovative and interesting webtoons for the country’s own audience.
Europe’s webtoon journey so far
Webtoons have been conquering the European market since 2020 and have already seen back-to-back launch of two webtoon platforms namely Webtoon Factory by the publisher Dupuis and Verytoon by publisher Delcourt. While the former was the first European webtoon platform dedicated to creating original webtoons, the later focussed on both creating their own content apart from borrowing from original South Korean webtoon platforms. Till now, both of them have had their share of successes, and have featured a variety of comics covering topics like romance, fantasy, horror, thrillers and humour.
Other popular webtoon mediums
Comic creators and webtoon specialists (popularly known as ‘webtoonists’) from across the globe are coming forward and creating webtoons on applications like Procreate, Canvas and Medibang. Moreover, Live Streaming platforms like YouTube and Netflix are also undertaking webtoons adaptation into animated web series or movies in order to expand their reach.