Line Digital Frontier CEO Kim Shin-bae announced at a conference in Tokyo that the company plans to adapt more than 20 webtoons into anime this year. With this initiative, Line Digital seeks to consolidate an ecosystem in which its stories transcend the digital format and expand to various platforms, strengthening its presence in the global market. The strategy responds to the growing interest in webtoons and their potential in entertainment, taking advantage of the anime boom and the demand for content based on original stories.
Naver doubles its bet with 20 anime Webtoons to dominate the global market
Kim Shin-bae, CEO of Line Digital Frontier, revealed at a conference in Tokyo that the company plans to adapt more than 20 webtoons into anime this year, this announcement is part of a strategy to expand the intellectual property (IP) business based on webtoons, taking them beyond digital comics to formats such as dramas, movies and animations: “Our goal is to create an ecosystem where stories come to life on multiple platforms and dominate the market,” said Kim.
Line Digital Frontier, which operates the Japanese webtoon service Line Manga, has already begun to realize this vision; in 2023, the company produced 12 webtoons as dramas or animations, a significant increase compared to 2022, when it only produced one adaptation; among the projects highlighted for this year are adaptations of Clevatess, Dark Moon and Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. Kim explained that these works not only attract attention in Japan, but also have the potential to generate revenue globally, especially in markets such as the United States.
Investment in webtoon production studios is key to this strategy, and Line Digital Frontier recently invested in Number Nine, a Japanese company specializing in webtoon production. Kim said the company plans to continue investing and collaborating in co-productions to strengthen its value chain worldwide: “We are creating success stories that demonstrate the potential of webtoons as a powerful source of intellectual property,” said Kim.
In addition, Kim addressed the growing participation of technology giants such as Apple and Amazon in the webtoon market, instead of seeing them as competition, Kim stressed the importance of collaborating with these companies to expand the market: “We want webtoons to become a fundamental part of global culture,” he said. Currently, four Line Manga webtoons exceed 100 million yen (approximately $674,000 USD) in monthly transactions, and Kim is confident that this number will increase thanks to improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to recommend content.
Kim also highlighted the success of Line Manga in Japan, where four webtoons have surpassed 100 million yen in monthly transactions, where three of these works are Korean and one is Japanese, demonstrating the growing interest in both local and international webtoons. “We are improving our AI technology to recommend works that users will enjoy, which will further increase the number of successful works,” Kim explained at the conference.
As for competition, Kim took a collaborative stance: “Apple and Amazon’s entry into the webtoon market is a natural thing. Rather than competing, we seek to coexist and collaborate to grow the market,” Kim said. With services such as Apple Books and Amazon Fliptoon launching webtoon services in Japan in 2023, Kim sees this as an opportunity to expand the reach of webtoons to new audiences, not only locally, but also internationally.
