Line Webtoon is advancing abroad from the last year, with its brand www.webtoon.com. Daum-Kakao is providing webtoon contents in association with Tapastic. 

To compare it with Korean entertainment agencies, Line is a market pioneer like SM Entertainment, and Daum takes a diplomatic approach like JYP Entertainment. It’s still in early days, so yet to say who’s better.

 

Line’s global strategy is related with Line Messenger. Line Messenger is the world’s third messenger app. This messenger app has a strong position in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, and other countries in Southeast Asia. Line sees the webtoon as the content that could be consumed by more people and that could strengthen their messenger platform. Thus, to get more momentum on it, Line made the webtoon business as a CIC (company in company), spinning off the webtoon business from itself.

 

What made it possible was Line’s effort: it officially translated its webtoons in English and via www.webtoon.com, which were previously translated without a system by fans, and it took efforts to build a system to translate webtoons in languages of each country. As a result, it could find a tremendous demand of the content. In case of Line’s popular works, they were translated in more than 10 languages and was visited by many global readers. Line Webtoon did not officially reveal the number of its visitors, but it is sure they’re getting an enormous amount of traffic. Like this, a project being injected a yearly budget of tens of billions won (in 2014, 50 billion won is invested, by Line’s report) proves its reason with outcome.

 

Today’s webtoon is Tower of God, which is getting evenly good response from global readers, in the middle of such globalization. Tower of God is a webtoon like a game.

 

Bam, the protagonist, lives alone in a secluded underground world. To the boy who was living alone, a girl named Rachel appears. Bam could soothe his loneliness with living with Rachel. One day, Rachel disappears, telling him she should climb the Tower. Bam heads to the Tower, chasing Rachel who left him. The Tower is a product of the desire of the humanity. The higher the floor, the more the climber gains. Supernatural abilities and money follows.

However, only those with special abilities can enter the Tower. Bam enters the Tower without a special ability… In fact, he was a chosen one who is out of the Rule of the Tower. As he climbs the tower, he meets his company. With his companions, he climbs the Tower floor by floor. Then he faces the first catastrophe, losing his company, and gets a new ability. In season 2, Bam starts an adventure with his new company, and he also meets his old companions.

This kind of story faithfully follows Cambell’s 12 stages or 17 stages of the hero’s journey. Those comics which recorded an unprecedented hit, like Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Naruto, understood and faithfully implemented the hero’s journey.

 

Tower of God follows this plot. It’s a good work, drawing out many readers in a long time of 5 years, making a global fandom for it. The absolute support of teens also played a role in its popularity. When you talk with teens of that you read Tower of God, preferably from the start, or naming some characters like Rachel, it breaks the ice with them in no time. Tower of God is that famous among teens.

 

​There are also some points of regret. First, the drawing quality. Its drawing is in too low quality, considering a work of this large scale. Except for the main character, quality of mechanical design or background is also too low, breaking the immersion.

 

 

Second, it lacks a little of consistency and detail of the story. There are some cases of small mismatches between the content of season 1 and that of season 2, in terms of consistency or logic. There’s not enough explanation on various devices or abilities, either. So, the reader gets an impression that quality of the story is getting low as the story goes on. In fantasy works like this, the readers always ask themselves or think themselves. When they think like ‘Is it really possible? Is it logically acceptable? It wasn’t like this before!!’, they sometimes find a contradictory situation, and it further makes inconsistency of the work.

  

Lastly, the balance. As the author does both writing and drawing, I believe the balance is important. But the deviation is quite high, like while an episode is good at drawing, another is good at the story. 

 

Tower of God is actually a very famous webtoon, and it’s also a long-time serialization of 5 years. However, to put it cool-headedly, it’s not a work with a quality enough for the global market, if we follow the traditional idea. But this age is not an age a masterwork always gets through. It’s the age bad money drives out good. We must face up to the reality. Fair quality, a fair story, and the strength of no charge which overwhelms everything, and the weekly pace meet exactly to the need of the age of the snack culture, which is represented by a smartphone. Tower of God could be the best work in this age of now.

 

Since I started criticism for webtoons, I have always talked about the quality of a work, but I also feel a contradiction from the overwhelming demand of this time. It’s like a boss in a company orders “Do it quick! And do it right!” The bad cycle of overwork starts from such an order. I almost feel the agony of SIU, the author, weighing his artistic spirit and the quality of his work. 

 

Webtoons loved by teens can build stronger communication with teens. If you have a teen child, I recommend you to read Tower of God. 

 

But you have to bear a bit of complexity. Fin.