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Yes, and IMO people also put too much emphasis on which country the art comes from.

While webtoons are primarily Korean at that point, Korean authors are also publishing manga in Japan and participate a lot in the anime/manga/game/illustration culture in general (same for Chinese or Taiwan artists, or from wherever they live really). The net and pervasive use of digital tools has really blended the borders, and there are many artists who happen to speak Japanese and publish in Japan, but come from different backgrounds.

It's easy to see in the game or anime community (Korean/Taiwan studios are already at a very high quality level), the last Fire Emblem for instance has a Brazilian character designer.

I also think the same thing is already happening in reverse, with Japanese artists going for the international market when their style would have more impact/better reception there.

>the last Fire Emblem for instance has a Brazilian character designer

Wait, what? Who?

Was thinking of Mika Pikazo

I remembered her as from Brazil, but it looks like she was there only a couple of years after high school. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mika_Pikazo

The country still has relevance as it acts as a kind of "brand". Different Countries have different culture, history and preferences, resulting in different plots and characters. Artists know that, and often adapt according to the country they are working toward. This allows people to better choose their preferred "flavor" of content.

Though, this is just at the moment the case. It would be better to find some way to name those flavors independent of the country, to remove the underlining problems that sometimes spread in such setups.

FWIW: webtoons are huge in Thailand, I don't know where the content comes from (Korea, probably?) but it's a format that lends itself really well to translation.

I would love to see more crazy, experimental, weird stuff on webtoons that might diverge completely from the anime/manga/game/illustration aesthetic. The form itself is so promising!

I agree with everything you said, but want to add, that with regards to this article it's also just the Economist being the Economist. When they say X eclipses Y, they mean makes more money. The fact is that culture is a completely different, parallel value system, that they just don't grok. The most culturally valuable things, frequently only have limited, or no economic value, contemporaneous with their creation, and they're just not gonna get that.

I've been watching the Webtoons stuff, and I'm gonna give Peerless Dad another look because you mentioned it, but I couldn't summon up a single one that has really impacted me.

Peerless Dad is excellent. It starts off with a trope (secretly high-potential martial artist) and gimmick (but he has triplets). But, unlike others which fizzle out once the gimmick gets old, this one actually gets better because of its main gimmick. (the MC being a dad).

The MC is competent, knows his limits and navigates a complex class system to set his own children for success and safety. And then it has its badass moments to bring it all together, which is far more rewarding with the time it spends doing the 'boring' groundwork.

Cool, I'm sure I saw it go by, thinking I didn't give it enough of a chance.

Very surprised to see a comment about Peerless Dad on HN, and it being top comment. Huge fan of the series. But surprisingly, I've found the spin off series Administrator Kang Jin Lee to be even better. Peerless Dad has suffered a bit from trying to weave too many threads simultaneously which takes away from the focus on the main character. As a result, it occasionally struggles to thread the needle, especially with the politicking subplot. Administrator KJL starts with an incredible premise (What if you took a high functioning autistic amoral sociopath and tried to teach him how to blend in with normies) and has kept building on that premise to some really good shit. IMO it hasn't suffered any of the same inconsistencies of Peerless Dad. Still love PD though.

> they mean makes more money. The fact is that culture is a completely different, parallel value system, that they just don't grok

You mean a newspaper about the economy has to explain to you that they're talking about the business side of things, you can't just assume good faith on the part of the author and instead assume that they're some unthinking, cultureless robot who only cares about money?

Yes, mea culpa. I was calling out that I expect them to concentrate on economics, beyond that I surely went a clause too far.

I think that even if you stick with a purely economic analysis, looking at the print market size might not be at all right? There's so much money in secondary goods (well, for the publishers). People have mentioned movies of course, but just general merchandising is a huge win (see Star Wars as a good US example of "the primary material isn't the point")

Having said that I don't know anything about the Korean market on this front, and I can totally see a legitimate decline from Japanese publishing just like in many other media spaces over the past couple of decades.

Yeah, and this is kind of a baffling oversight considering the value of franchises is well understood. There's even a table on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media...

Edit: I don't know what happened to this article - it used to list a LOT more Japanese stuff - Bleach, Naruto, Pokemon, Mario easily dominate stuff like the MCU in terms of value.

Looks like some source issues and editor drama from the talk page[1] and the edit that removed Mario[2].

The editor drama is apparently a user who made many thousands of edits over the last 17(!) years, using multiple accounts, and misrepresented sources[3][4][5].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_highest-grossing_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_highest-g...

[3] https://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga...

> The fact is that culture is a completely different, parallel value system, that they just don't grok.

No, they just report on that. They report on money-related things. Doesn't mean they don't understand other things.

That's fair, overstatement on my part.

If you took the time to read The Economist, it would be clear that culture is well understood. In fact, a section titled “Culture” features in every issue. More broadly, I would go so far as to say that topics of a socio-cultural nature are de rigueur, without which, The Economist would surely be reduced to a shell of its current self.

That's fair. I'm sure I did not give a fully-balanced view of the Economist.

Yep, many countries can access the latest chapters for free from official distribution channels and yet Oda of One Piece is estimated to have net worth over 200M.

One Piece has spawned 56 video games, 18 movies, had a themed section in Tokyo Tower and a long tail of licensing on clothes, toys, snacks.

I am not sure there is that kind of verticality on the web toons market yet BUT I have observed that there is an orthogonality to the recent new koreaboos and this wave (spurred by Squid Games, Black Pink, BTS etc) has pretty broad reach so let's see where this goes...

First I’ve seen someone mention Peerless Dad in the wild. It and maybe-sometimes Magician are the only webtoons I’ve found which felt like there was good writing. No doubt it’s because Peerless Dad was originally a light novel and this is the authors second time telling the story.

One more with an interesting story is Sweet Home.

I liked Whale Star, too.

It also feels like the manwha QOL situation is no better than the manga one. The illustrator for solo leveling died just a few months back. The industry seems just as predatory if not worse, and the publisher field a lot more concentrated.

> I'm all for disruption in the manga business. The working conditions for the mangaka (authors) are inhumane and slavish. Early deaths and chronic health problems are the norm.

I mean, what we call disruption tend to worsen workers conditions. Half of the disruption is "breaking existing regulation" and the other half is "finding loophole so that you can take advantage of someone weaker".

I couldn't see any episodes at that link, but https://www.peerlessdad.online/ worked for me.