South Korea's booming 'webtoons' put Japan's print manga on notice

Throughout this entire quarantine, I don't think I've watched a single TV show, largely due to the fact that nothing looks appealing and I don't believe in starting something and then not finishing it. Anime and manga on the other hand have been big ticket items and over the last couple of months, I’ve stumbled onto something slightly different - manhwa. A South Korean cousin to manga, manhwa distinguishes itself as a medium by being drawn in complete colour and sticking mostly to a digital format known as a webtoon.

Manhwa's rising popularity can be attributed to several things, but notably, its synergy to smartphones as it reads vertically and not left to right. Like all self-proclaimed weebs, anything that falls outside the Japanese canon hasn't traditionally warranted any time from me but titles like Solo Levelling and Tower of God (which both SLAP) have really left an impression, leading me to ponder on the ideas of monopolies in culture and authenticity. There's a certain mental association many of us make where we link the notion of the best to the place it comes from. For example, when you go travelling and you finally taste something from its point of origin, there is a chance that the happiness you feel is also supplemented by the effort and cost of the journey to get there. The more we abide by geographic hierarchies, the more we place limitations on innovation and creativity, because authenticity is not static and paying respect to it doesn't necessarily warrant producing a perfect carbon copy.

After all, anime is just short for animation, meaning it isn't restricted to Japan; ipso facto, Avatar: The Last Airbender is anime (I await your arguments).

Jeff