In the middle of the high rise of webtoons, webtoon publishers often put to good use of open contests to pick out talented artists. The largest by its scale among the open webtoon contests, Lezhin Comics World Comic Contest came to an end successfully.

Among many webtoon contests, there are many reasons why Lezhin Comics’ contest receives most attention; like its largest scale of the prize money and the highest level of possibility of gaining worldwide attention. But most of all, to pick the best one, it is the diversity of genre.

In the contest, two mature contents, each from BL and GL genre, which are relatively minor, are prized at the Third Place.

1. Royal Servant (BL / Third Place)

Royal Servant is a BL romance Fantasy fiction, depicting sad and dangerous love of servants toward their masters with special powers (and special beauty). If you think the major readers of BL genre are male gays, I recommend you to reconsider that. Surely, it is ‘women’ that the major readers of BL genre, which depicts loves between men.

I commend the author’s successful attempt, resolutely targeting the women readers who probably the most of those who have liking to BL genre.

The reasons why the works closer to the genre of Battle Action, for examples, from manga <Black Butler>, <Rozen Maiden> to Korean webtoon <Noblesse>, which have a large fandom of women are the mysterious and luxurious atmosphere and many beautiful, noble characters who appeals to the women.

Royal Servant, in BL genre where women are the majority of the fandom, even deploys nobility and mysterious magic at the front, making its world appealing to hearts of ‘otakus’ enough to let them dive into.

From the beginning, the characters, beautiful servants and absolutely powerful masters, boast their overwhelming presence; and among them there are the sad but cute protagonist and his master who repels him as if he has a traumatic past. As it seems, no matter what happens between them they will earn the work some serious fans, so I’m giving a high score for it.

2. My Girlfriend’s Ex-Boyfriend (GL / Third Place)

While Royal Servant mentioned above makes the best use of its genre characteristics and induces immersion of a specific group of readers, <My Girlfriend and Her Ex-Boyfriend> approaches with the material both male readers and female readers may have interests on.

It’s a story of the female protagonist, who have been with only girlfriends, go through as she goes out with ‘Sena’, who never had a girlfriend before. It shows a complex of emotion among three, the protagonist, her girlfriend Sena, and Sena’s ex-boyfriend ‘Hwang Joonsung’, as they meet one day and events follows.

A remarkable point of this webtoon is, though its genre is GL, surprisingly there’s the existence of Joonsung at the core of story, who is an ex-boyfriend of the protagonist’s girlfriend, so I couldn’t predict at all to which way the story would unfold.

With those three each with a strong personality, I tried to predict what a love story it would tell, but I couldn’t clearly tell. It made me to expect more, because even if my prediction on the story was correct, I couldn’t tell how they will act to it with what emotion.

Lastly, even if I see myself as an extremely heavy reader of webtoons, the theme of homosexuality was not easy on me.

But as I read the webtoon, if high quality webtoons like this continue to pour out, I thought soon the BL and GL will be a larger major genre, where its fans not limited as in a minor subculture. I expect the Lezhin Comics World Comic Contest and the two webtoons to be the beginning of the wave.