This Week in Anime

Want Your Bad Romance

Steve
Lucas, the "This Week in Anime" name has been working fine for the past 8 years or so, but I think it's time we shake things up. Let's rebrand into something new and exciting. And I believe I have found the perfect two words to sum up everything that we do here weekly.

Note that I'm not married to the font.

Indeed, I am! And in the spirit of baring it all, I want to commend our editor, Rebecca, for originally turning us onto this promotion. She posted a screenshot of that "Toxic Together" logo, and I thought that was a good opportunity to dip my toes into the wide world of webtoons. After all, what better way is there to learn about an art form than by peeking into its most problematic side? In short, I'm a webtoon noob, so I ask any veterans in the comments to be kind.

That's also the first one I read, and while it wasn't my favorite either, it was good at priming me for the format. It's weird, tonally inconsistent, and overall rough around the edges in a way that evoked my memories of reading webcomics in the mid-2000s. I wasn't surprised to notice that—these are an evolved form of Korean webcomics—but it was still amusing.

Moreover, it's interesting to observe that these more amateur qualities still come through in the rapidly growing webtoon industry. This is a far cry from stuff that comes out of the older and more rigidly structured manga industry in Japan. There are pluses and minuses to that. I guess this is also a good place to note that the majority of these titles are BL.

A lower barrier of entry is a blessing and a curse, but even the poorer results have value as part of a whole phenomenon. Like, granted, the economics don't map onto the webcomics scene I remember, but the intertextuality is very similar. Even in this small sample size, you can see different authors and artists riffing on similar themes and tropes. While this is the kind of insularity that got us into our current isekai anime situation, this scene is still largely novel to me, so I'm not annoyed by it! Yet.

Speaking of common themes and tropes, our next example tackles the big one. And by that, I of course mean omegaverse.

Cozy Obsession (specifically the "all ages" version) sees a dude get transported into the plot of an omegaverse novel that coincidentally starred a protagonist with his very name. Or maybe the book is reality. Or maybe nothing is. One thing that is real is the omegaverse.

It's also better composed than Triggering Idle Desires because it does more with the webtoon structure. For those unfamiliar, a single webtoon "episode" is a long, unbroken vertical scroll, so you're meant to read these on your phone or tablet, and the direction of the action is from top to bottom. That means an artist can put together these extended and unbroken panels and backgrounds that you can only do in this digital format. Until we start printing things on scrolls again, at any rate.

Sadly, the anatomy is what holds this one back for me, although I know big, broad-shouldered BL boys have plenty of fans out there.

Those patterns and more apply to We're Not Brothers At All! as well. This is the first one that came together for me, though! I think it strikes a good balance of trashiness with concreteness. Like, the premise is that a rich playboy seduces his estranged stepbrother, without letting his stepbrother know who he is. It's not "true" incest, but I'll take what I can get. However, it also introduces some deeper emotional beats about family that do a lot to ground the characters. It's easily the best-written of these first three examples.

Good catch!

I generally like the art, too. It's in the same milieu as the others we've covered so far, but it uses colors better, and there's a surly dog. Those are two points in my book.

My Pet Bat, though. That one has style for days.

It is a highlight of this excursion. The flat coloring, limited palette, and extremely confident paneling/pacing elevate a solid story about two wounded souls coming together. It stands out from the crowd. It's also pretty funny and adorable. Still toxic, but a gentler poison.

The nurse is cute, too. And she's an ally! To either LGBT youth or to vampires. Maybe to both.

Oh, that's what Rainbow Dash has been up to lately.

I'll give it this: the name is appropriate. While it's tagged as a love triangle, these opening chapters sketch a far more complicated polygon. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate to a more compelling narrative. It flits around its cast of dudes in various forms of businesswear. This had the most free chapters—seven out of all of them, but I don't think that extra time helped much.

What I will say is that this is the funniest motto possible for a high school, i.e., my "happy school without violence" banner is raising a lot of questions already answered by the banner.

The sheer thirst on display makes it stand out. I'm being genuinely complimentary, too. Out of all of the series featured, I think this one has the most sensual gaze. It comes across as really tactile and authentic, even if the narrative doesn't go anywhere unexpected in the free chapters. Above average paneling and scene composition, too. I probably won't continue it, but I respect the craft.

I would have liked a couple more episodes on this one. It starts slow, and I think the story needed more time to cook. Then again, I might have been distracted by how almost every character looks like they're in a staring contest.

I respect the black-and-white art, though. The norm for webtoons is color, as you might have already noticed.

Speaking of norms, out of the 11 series featured on this "Toxic Together" promotion, 7 of them are BL, 3 of them are het, and only one is GL. I don't know how precisely that ratio maps onto Lezhin's entire library, but BL holds the majority. I scanned through the current ranking posted on the site (by popularity, I'm assuming), and the top 100 was 90% BL and 10% straight romance, with no GL to be found.

Lezhin is also just one of many webtoon platforms, so I'm sure the demographics skew differently on others

This and Don't Look for Me both work in that same space of vaguely European aristocracy as seen through the eyes of a plucky female outsider, so I think it makes sense to talk about them together.

Ophelia is the much more straightforward romance of the two. Although maybe "straightforward" is the right word when her mother's romantic history is as sordid as it is long-winded.

It has the benefit of being an actual fantasy with magic and fairies and the like, so I think that liberty helps it look more adventurous. On a technical level, the art is really clean and professional. Ophelia's is no slouch either. It goes pretty hard on the clothing details, and the erotic symbolism is also on point.

I think they still count as panels! But the structural language is distinct enough from a page-based medium to warrant novel styles and techniques. Things "flow" in webtoons much differently than they would on a panel transition between page two and three, for example. Technically, I don't have many critiques for Ophelia or Don't Look for Me. But as it pertains to this promotion, I found their toxicity lacking. Ophelia is set up with her step-brother, but that barely counts as incest when European nobility is in the picture. And while Ufemia is treated poorly by her adoptive family, she escapes with the help of the male lead. Good romance fodder, but not exactly spicy.

Now you're speaking my language!

It's a touching love story about a spoiled bully and the pervert masochist girl who wants him to keep drenching her with milk.

This is about as silly and trashy as this promotion gets, so naturally, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This is also where I discovered that Lezhin has uploaded YouTube versions of several webtoons, with limited animation and some Creative Commons music and SFX mixed in. That's a cool little option that plays off the continuous way the webtoon episodes are drawn and scripted.

Look at that face. She was born to be a star.

Thankfully, our final feature doesn't skimp on the toxicity either. It may be the only GL option, but Getting to Know Grace has enough physical and mental abuse to sustain several webtoons.

I was shocked to see it touch on racism and slavery in a moderately thoughtful way. Herta is a slave who has to hide the color of her eyes to attend their yuri academy, and she's constantly cognizant of that while navigating all of her relationships across these chapters. She's manipulating her mistress while her mistress manipulates things behind the scenes. Is their bond fake? Codependent? Romantic? All of the above? That's a lot of stuff cooking, on top of very evocative art. So many folds and frills.

And I'm aware I'm more biased towards GL works than BL, but regardless, this was one of my favorites of this bunch. Up there with My Pet Bat.

And we barely scratched the surface of romance webtoons here, let alone webtoons in general. Seeing as we're both writers for a site with "anime" in its name, this is a little outside of our comfort zone. But no medium is an island. We've already had several anime based on webtoons, such as Tower of God, and like it or not, a show based on a Korean webnovel just swept the Anime Awards. This is the present. This is the future. And while I have little desire to check out Solo Leveling, I had fun digging into this spicy smorgasbord.

I, for one, am trembling in anticipation. Normal, ordinary anticipation.