https://fictionhorizon.com/webtoon-will-invest-in-japanese-webcomic-studio-no-9/>Webtoon Entertainment is making a bold move in Japan with its first investment in a local manga and webcomic studio. The company’s Japanese subsidiary, LINE Digital Frontier, has acquired a minority stake in Tokyo-based studio No. 9, known for popular titles like Savior of Divine Blood and I Am the Strongest Transcendent.>This partnership aims to expand Webtoon’s content library in Japan, a rapidly growing market for the global webcomic platform.>Founded in 2016, No. 9 has built a reputation for creating manga and webcomics that resonate both locally and internationally. Many of its works have already been translated into multiple languages, including Korean, English, and Mandarin, reaching Webtoon’s global audience.>As part of the deal, LINE Digital Frontier will appoint an outside director to No. 9’s board, strengthening collaboration between the two companies.
>>275251472Can't wait for the Korea fad to die out desu. I still love shin and buldak ramen though
>>275251472>Webtoon>investNice joke, this thing just cash out
>>275251501Damn they even copied ramen?
Not really surprising. Kadokawa and others have all started Webtoon lines, the format is becoming popular with the younger audience, particularly girls. I expect we'll also see some acquisitions over the next 2-3 years. Nothing at the level of the Korean attempt at Kadokawa, but Korean companies are gonna go after some of the smaller companies to get the IPs.We'll probably see some of the western publishers scooped up too. I can't see Seven Seas staying independent much longer, a Chinese company is gonna scoop them up.
>>275251946I hope it fails quickly enough, but I know better than to expect that. The format is a terrible one.
>>275251960Can't see that happening. People are growing more dependent on their smartphones by the day, while paper media is dying. Standard page formatting is a dying breed.
>>275251972It's not just the scrolling part and all the wasted space. The quality is worse, whether that's partly because of the format or because they don't want to spend money or can't get better people. Seeing the same series in both formats shows it.
>>275252013Not sure what you mean by quality, but that's usually more an issue of the artist end than the format. But when it comes to art, coloring is one big resource-drain that necessarily takes attention from elsewhere like lineart. Most webtoon artists don't have the kind of assistant squads as serialized mangaka do, but the release schedule is no less brutal. This shows in the heavy reliance on crappy 3D models too.
>>275251972Smartphones also give them some extra features to use. Seen some manhwa and Manhua use background music in chapters.
>>275252064Yeah, I've seen some with animated backgrounds too and parallax effects, which is pretty cool.
China numbah 1 our comic superior
>>275251960It probably won't because of fujos
>>275251472Korean Webtoon corporations are way too overreaching and infinitely more soulless than your average manga. It's like as if every single manga publisher unironically only produced isekai because that's what sells and forced their authors to only copy the most popular works over and over, without any variety whatsoever. I wish them failure in all of their endeavors but I know they'll eventually worm their way in.
>>275252462They do it because it works. Mass-produced, mass-appealing slop makes money. Just wait until they start AI generating it all.
Has /a/ ever read manga on a flip phone?
>>275252487>Mass-produced, mass-appealing slop makes moneyIsn't that just light novels?
>>275252539Nah.
https://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2007/1217/wtf
https://www.jepa.or.jp/jepa/chronicle/26-2/I don't want to go off-topic, but I found another article about Japanese people reading manga on their cell phones in the 2000s.
>>275252013Overall everything is worse, i also hate they are colored
>>275252515Woah... I'd definitely would if I were of age to possess a flip phone at the time.
>>275252659What is this future technology!?
>>275253134The future has fucking arrived
This is supposed to be anime btw
>>275251946I already saw one manga in webtoon, they just cut their panels, colour them and make them big
>>275251946Surprised they still haven't made their own Yakuza/like a Dragon game with Lookism, shit is literally Korean Yakuza
No thanks, one Solo Gooking is already bad enough
>>275252515I used to read doujins on fakku using a Nokia 5310
>>275251472>Tokyo-based studio No. 9, known for popular titles like Savior of Divine Blood and I Am the Strongest Transcendent.Literally who?
to be confused with project no.9?
>>275254996Number 9 is fairly prominent as an indie publisher. When you buy digital manga you'll see a lot of older titles distributed through them.
It's a shame since I enjoyed the indie yuri push from Number 9, and now it's probably going to go to shit.
>>275251472>>275251501>>275251946webtoon is korean?
>>275255068>indie publisherSo literally who?
>>275251472>Webtoon Entertainment’s minority stake in No. 9 underscores its ambition to blend local Japanese creativity with its global platform, ensuring a steady stream of compelling content for audiences worldwide.Whoah, it's fucking nothing. Gooks are like parasites
>>275251472Webtoon is gonna bankrupt super fast just like their manhwa industryhttps://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2024/12/602_384301.html
>>275255573They need to get piracy out by the root.It's pointless to get webtoon everywhere if nobody is willing to pay for it.
>>275251501>Can't wait for the Korea fad to die out desu.same
>>275252487>They do it because it works.given the cratering webtoon industry, doubt it
>>275251501With Korea itself dying out, it might not be that far off. Japan is also dying out though.
>>2752563232 more weeks
>>275255766they already tried, it's what got them in this mess to begin withit's also what gave terminal cancer to the westoid vidya industryword of mouth only works through piracy, piracy only comes from thirdies, the result is word of mouth from thirdies is the best marketing you can possibly get, guerilla jeets don't come anywhere close to the effectiveness of giving a third worlder something he likes and for him to never shut the fuck up about it for the rest of his life
>>275256496the jp birth rate is already going back up anon>>275256550more like, last year
Korean women >>>>> Japanese women
>>275256694Gookshills on /v/ are even more forceful than the ones on /a/ and that is saying something
>>275256815after losing sad penis, here they have nothing to really hook people withon /v/ they have both lobotomy corp and ruina because they are legit good games with good gameplay, and both get ruined by their endings, and retroactively ruined by limbus, but by then they got people scammed into the pipeline anyway so it doesnt matter oh yeah, BA also exists, sucks for them it fucking collapsed lmfao
>>275256885>oh yeah, BA also exists, sucks for them it fucking collapsed lmfaoBlue Archive is the Overwatch of gacha games. It was only ever good for porn of the characters.
>>275256885Blue Archive has so much Yostar Japan influence in it (that and being a Priconne clone in many ways) that it hardly even feels Korean to be honest. If not for a few KR-JP translation hiccups in the events, nobody who doesn't already know would have been able to tell it's not a JP game.
>>275256721Here your Korean women
>>275256977Korean stuff will never be japanese lmao.
>>275256977Is BA even have any korea name character or korea theme event, korea costume yet or it's still the same generic copy paste japan SoL anime theme and costume?
>>275256977you can tell the korean influence is massive because the writing is shit>>275257070they still remain a bootleg DaL and to aru
>>275257070It has a Chinese-themed school but nothing explicitly Korea-themed as far as I'm aware (left the game half a year ago, loved it but after the main story ended it became a repetitive chore, 2-3 fun events aside). It runs on Japanese anime tropes indeed. I think the most Korean thing is the Kaiser corp, modeled after the chaebols. Japan has zaibatsus too, but Korea really loves to depict and hate their version of corporate overlords in media.
>>275256815Well, they used Culture war as a platform to shill a censored game and still doing that to this day. It's hard to top that kind of atrocity
>>275257185>It runs on Japanese anime tropes indeed.Translation:>The writers are ironic weebs that watch more westoid memes about anime than actual anime and write based off that.
>>275257223The fact I even have to ask which game in particular are you talking about really drives home the point, holy fucking shit.
>>275256885>Pre Limbus PMfags>Constantly avoid Gookshilling and other Gookfags while focusing on their own products>Limbus era PMfags>The fanbase immediately turn into another retarded Korean worshippersIt's like seeing a horror movie where a entire town got massacred overnight and all of it's dead citizens are being replaced by a completely different people
>>275257288It's more like Yostar Japan told them what vibe to strive for, and they went from there.
>>275257503Anyone with a brain left PM for dead once the limbus betrayal happened.I was there to witness the "JUST HAVE F(A)ITH BRO" spam, trust me I truly wanted to believe, I wanted to place my trust on PM that they would deliver on a good story, or at the very least use the gacha money to deliver a good third game to finish the sephira trilogy. But no, it just turned out to be yet another korean cash grab in the end.
>>275257637trying to pin the blame on the jp side doesn't work when it's pretty run off the mill korean writing
DICE anime when?Hopefully never holy shit this became such a mess after they finally met the child GM
>>275251972>Standard page formatting is a dying breedScrolling is a perfectly fine way to anything with pages though, both on a smartphone and on PC.
>>275255203Yeah
>>275256721You can have it all for yourself, I have zero interestMust feel good man
>>275251972i have been hearing this 2 more weeks bro literally since smartphones became mainstream a decade ago
>>275251972He types this as millions of people read black and white "standard page" format manga on mangadex, shonen jump plus, etc. on their smartphones.
>>275256721Enjoy your plastic
>>275254535My fuarking hero
>>275253479Peak.
>>275256667As a third worlder, where the fuck are the armies of thirdie Diabolik Lovers fans?
>>275259047be the change you want to see in the world
>>275258663>>275258906Do you think these changes happen overnight? But webtoons already have millions more daily readers than traditional manga, while manga magazines have all moved to web releases and print numbers are dwindling. If you've been paying attention, you'd have seen what a huge transformation has happened in the past 3-4 years alone. I don't hope for the death of page format, but if enough readers say they prefer the infinite scroll format to pages and some big shot sees that, the deathblow is right there.
>>275251472>LINE Digital Frontier, has acquired a minority stake>minority stake
>>275260180i would expect something to shift at least slightly when there's a literal decade of TWO MORE WEEKS BRO, THIS TIME FOR REALmeanwhile webtoon slop is collapsing and this seems to be it's dying gasp when it's not even a majority stake
>>275251472>known for popular titles like Savior of Divine Blood and I Am the Strongest Transcendent*cricket noises*
>>275255573>Webtoon is gonna bankrupt super fastI don't see any evidence to suggest this.
>>275255766>They need to get piracy out by the rootWhat kind of zoomie take is this?1 pirated view =/= 1 paying customerThis shit was debunked ages ago in multiple different industries, fucking hell Gabe is famous for saying shit to the tune of 'offer a better service than the pirate sites'For most people, plug and play with 'good' quality is enough to consider better that's why netflix took off. You will not beat out pirates by offering a shit product with the word "Official" watermarked on every fucking page, that only pushes people to pirate more.
>>275255573>try to scam the stock holders, the most autistic money grubbers on the planet>get suedkoreans are fucking retarded. That's not a problem with webtoon per se, that's a problem with management.
I don't really care who makes it, long strip is garbage.
>>275264573I don't know enough about these types of lawsuits, but should it not have been obvious that a Korean company that primarily does business in Korea was going to be affected by the value of the Won?
>>275264798Going by the article posted, the lawsuit seems to be about the U.S. based subsidiary of the company, which means the western section of the company, this along with the effects of the won value against the dollar not being properly communicated lead to a breach of trust.The bigger issue is that they thought they could make a quick buck while mismanaging the company by scamming foreign investors.Class actions don't do much other than make a small group of lawyers extremely rich, but they do punish retards for doing retarded shit.
>>275264416>saying shit to the tune of 'offer a better service than the pirate sites'And shutting down pirate sites is a way to achieve that.As long as they exist, people aren't going to spend money on digital comics. It's not even a matter of 1:1, you don't even get 1:100 or 1:1000. Americans only buy manga to get expensive collector's editions or the pittance Manga+ costs that Shueisha has written off anyway. Netflix won because for technologically impaired it was more usable than torrents. There's no such difference for web readers.
>>275251501Unfortunately it's not going to happen because Korean shit is propped up by the west compared to Japanese shit.
>>275252013>whether that's partly because of the formatIt's almost entirely because of the format. There's no actual storytelling that goes on in webtoon/long strip format because it's made for mindless scrolling, not actual reading. It's anti-storytelling if anything and its existence makes Tezuka and Eisner and others roll over in their graves.
>>275265093I think mobile is an area where providing a convenient service makes a difference. Smartphones are annoying to use compared to a PC (at least in my opinion), so having an app on your home screen that lets you quickly access what you want provides a clear advantage over having to open a webbrowser app, go to a piracy site and then deal with formatting issues and ads.
>>275265248You mean scroll in their graves.
>>275251472>The company’s Japanese subsidiary, LINE Digital Frontier, has acquired a minority stakeIt is fucking nothing>known for popular titles like Savior of Divine Blood and I Am the Strongest Transcendent.Whoah it is fucking nothingSo the gooks doesn't have enough money to acquire more Kadokawa stocks so they moved on to less know indie publisher? Truly fucking parasite
>>275265297this is after they pooled money nationwide through ESG debt to have money for the kadokawa takeover by the waynow that money is smoke and they only managed to get a minority stake on said literal who indie publisher now
>>275257031Dr. Kim's Obelisk
>>275265297This is the beginning, the flow of absorption from small to large, brutes like you shouldn’t really like it and that’s good
>>275257031Do you think American liposuction surgeons keep fatbergs in their basements?
>>275257711This is the beginning, the flow of absorption from small to large, brutes like you shouldn’t really like it and that’s good
>>275266527Yeah good luck, gook. You should've worry about your birthrate first
>>275266527>>275266613What?
>>275265256Doesn't seem to work for Kakao. They even took down Tachiyomi but people still aren't willing to pay for their apps. Most readers are shit eaters and will accept formatting issues and ads on piracy sites.
>>275268137Was that a big deal? Someone just forked it and rebranded as Mihon then tachi forks used that fork as the new base.
>>275268347It made things more complicated and that scared off some users.To make it really effective you need to eliminate the aggregators so the old extensions are useless. The pirates try the hydra approach with one site getting getting taken down being replaced by multiple clones but for the users the cat-and-mouse game gets annoying after a while. You don't want to figure out what's the current go-to site is whenever you want to read something.
>>275266527with the korean economy collapsing this is more like a desperate last gasp at straws
>>275257503>>275257643I held on pretty long. Then they dropped the 10 year plan, director said he wanted to keep the team small so he can stare over everyone's shoulders, and said everything would be Limbus now. DD getting a game is probably impossible now, and the characters have been shoved in as side chars in Limbus. The only cope I have left is maybe there's story events that DON'T follow the sinners, but fuck if that'll ever happen.
>>275270789>Then they dropped the 10 year planExcuse me?
>>275270940Yeah. I don't think the dev talk was ever officially translated to english, but they said they plan to go through hell, purgatory, and heaven, and use Limbus for all their story telling. "we are looking at about 10 years", with all their delays they'll probably go over 10.
