17 replies to this topic

[pigasus]

I was looking through my follows, and I realized I've been paying a lot more attention to webtoons compared to manga lately. Stories like TOG, Kubera, anything by Ha Il-Kwon, and lots of others, they're a lot more interesting than the average manga I'm seeing right now.

 

I wonder if any of you feel the same, and if you do, any reasons you think this is the case? I'm figuring it's because there are only a few webtoon scanlators, and they're only picking up the best of the best webtoons, as opposed to the hundreds of manga scanlators already on the web.

Edited by pigasus, 14 February 2014 - 03:15 PM.

[Dragon88]

I would say webtoons and mangas are about even now.  Though I would have to say with mangas there are lot more options then webtoons.  Most webtoons I noticed are action types while with mangas you can see love story to sport mangas.  But I also noticed that now there are lot of good webtoons.  I am currently reading 24 mangas/webtoons excluding the ones that are in long hiatus like HxH, Berserker, etc....  Out of those, in my top 10, 6 of them are webtoons.  However I read lot more mangas then webtoons.  As I stated before there are more options with mangas.  I would say as time goes by they would be even footing.

[zno]

Not sure that it will be understandable but i try

Ive two spdeed : the ones I read as they go out, the ones with a lot of late that I try to catch when I have some time

In the first, there is all the webtoon I read since I already catch my late for the ones I read and some manga

In the second there is a lot of manga that I rush sometimes and all the ones I discover with some late [the ones i didnt catch in one time, they end here ] (so it go really slowly since I have also my books, BD and comics along with that... Its like a infinite reading stack in complete disorder and its alive, keeping to get bigger !! )

So at first, my answer was that I put more attention to webtoon too

But in reallity its about 10-20 webtoon chapters per week for a lot more of manga (Im currently catching up a bit for Mouryou no Yurikago and I certainly read more than that I read of webtoon )

So thats not that I am all into webtoon, its that Im not too late with the small amount of webtoon I read whereas Im completely lost with all the manga Ive got to read

To sum up :

- Yeah, webtoon certainly the first I check since im up to date

- But, there is a lot of manga that are waiting to be read (and when they will be up to date they will stay ...)

[NomMango]

I've been reading webtoons a lot too. Sadly I can't add most of it on my MAL list.

[rmr]

Personally, i can't stand the format, and the art in any webtoon i have seen is horribly lazy. For those two reasons not a single one has caught my interest

[Equiliz]

I'm now reading more toons than manga's I think. It all started with Tower of God; everything started with Tower of God..

[phanta]

Same. When I first tried ToG I hated the webtoon style & gave up 1/4 of the way through chapter one. Now I love 'em, don't have to wait for the next page to load, updates are more reliable since you don't have to buy & scan the raws, and imo the full-colour makes the art more interesting than that of your average black&white manga. It's all down to personal preference in the end though, I don't think one is universally better than the other

[Equiliz]

I have to agree that the "all in one page" is so nice to read on my computer with the webtoons so I don't have to wait for every new page to load.. 

[Dragon88]

I'm now reading more toons than manga's I think. It all started with Tower of God; everything started with Tower of God..

I actually started with Noblesse and then later on I found out about Tower of God.  Either way I am surprised that people don't like the art.  I would of suspected that people would like webtoons art more seeing as its with color instead of black and white.  And honestly if you don't read webtoons just because of the art, that is really bad.  Art really shouldn't stop you from great stories.

[zno]

Personally, i can't stand the format, and the art in any webtoon i have seen is horribly lazy. For those two reasons not a single one has caught my interest

That's true that the format is really different and I understand that it can be a no for some people

 

Speaking about webtoon art, I discover this one today and I found the art truly amazing with some interesting cutting (I thing that's the word )

http://vatoto.com/read/_/180448/fisheye-placebo_by_tapastic

But I think, we sometimes have to overcome our "repulsion" for some art because the story behind it is good (For exemple, Liar Game art is not amazing [even if compared to my way to draw, it is completely amazing] but their something behind, and after reading it I began to be familar with the art and it never bothered me again )

 

What do you mean by lazy ?

 

I actually started with Noblesse and then later on I found out about Tower of God.  Either way I am surprised that people don't like the art.  I would of suspected that people would like webtoons art more seeing as its with color instead of black and white.  And honestly if you don't read webtoons just because of the art, that is really bad.  Art really shouldn't stop you from great stories.

The same for me

I suspected some color appeal too but I guess that for manga fans, black and white is the normal [I think that color not really surprise me since I began with french/belgian comics that are [mostly] colorized. That's later that I discovered mangas and their little black and white format [I think that I was most surprised by the pocket format than the color BTW]. A bit later I began to read american comics too [colorized and size between the last two]. And I discovered webtoons with Noblesse and next Tower Of God (same as you ) and that's an other colorized format

I bet like I read a lot of different things (comics and books too), that was easy to me to adapt to webtoon (that BTW is not so far of classic printed comics, I mean it could be a completely different way of making comics since they do not have paper limitation )

[rmr]

That's true that the format is really different and I understand that it can be a no for some people

 

Speaking about webtoon art, I discover this one today and I found the art truly amazing with some interesting cutting (I thing that's the word )

http://vatoto.com/read/_/180448/fisheye-placebo_by_tapastic

But I think, we sometimes have to overcome our "repulsion" for some art because the story behind it is good (For exemple, Liar Game art is not amazing [even if compared to my way to draw, it is completely amazing] but their something behind, and after reading it I began to be familar with the art and it never bothered me again )

 

What do you mean by lazy ?

 

I'll take as example "Tower of god" which i think is one of the most popular, there are significant less drawings compared to manga, and even then, most of them don't have backgrounds, are very simple (they don't have many details), it doesn't uses many dinamic angles (many of them are just a profile view or a front view) The color doesn't really help a lot, and i will even go as far as to say it makes it looks worse, it doesn't really look better than your average deviantart user, and what i dislike the most is that the autor uses a LOT of gradients, which i personally dislike. A seriously lot. 

 

The one you gave a link for has really good art, but then again, the format is a serious deal breaker for me

[Dragon88]

Wow lot of people care for the art.  Its funny because to me I hardly care about the art.  As long as I can make out the different characters and scenes, art doesn't matter to me at all.  I just read for the story.  Heck they can even have no picture and if the story is good I would read it.   So I guess I really don't see the fuss with the art.

[zno]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,

I wrote something quite long and I accenditally close my browser in the middle !!!!!! I try to remember what i said (and it will be long )

 

Wow lot of people care for the art.  Its funny because to me I hardly care about the art.  As long as I can make out the different characters and scenes, art doesn't matter to me at all.  I just read for the story.  Heck they can even have no picture and if the story is good I would read it.   So I guess I really don't see the fuss with the art.

Comics with no pictures exist ! That's call books !

Spoiler

Of course, I'm trolling kidding

 

Basically I was trying to make a comparison between what tou can look for in comics vs in books

First the comics [We are on batoto after all ] :

- the art/design : the first thing you see (so it really matters)

- the plot/story : without story, a comics is just a picture

- the "mise en scène"/disposition : the format,: even if its often related with the art (manga generally have the same format, webtoon idem ...), its not really the same thing for me (rmr  for exemple cant support that in webtoon even when he appreciate the art)

 

Its the same for books but that's only displayed with words

- the "plume"/style of the author

- the plot/story [again ;)]

- the disposition : less present but chapter lenghts [sometimes really short/long] and a better ex : Bartimeus and his bottom page notes that can be really disgusting for some people

 

For books the disposition part is often in the style part (IMO) and doesnt really matter. So there is only two points : how the author wrote and how you are interested by the story. That's two works (scriptwriter and writer) often mix in one

For comics, its more like movies, youve got the scriptwriter for the plot, the designer for the art and the director for the disposition often mix in one or two jobs.

 

With that in mind there is only two way to DIRECTLY drop a book (you really dislike the author's style or the story) and three to DIRECTLY drop a comic (you really dislike disposition, art or story).

 

After that, that's a combination of all that points that will make you go on or drop it (from personal preferences)....

 

I personally have three way to discover comics :
- looking the art and liking it and reading it and following it if I like the story
- earing that the plot is great and being impressed or not by the art and reading it and following it if I like the story
- randomly fall on it and being impressed or not by the art and reading it and following it if I like the story
It's always the story that win in the end (Liar game, the beginning of TOG, ... for exemple didnt interested me for the art) and disposition isnt important to me (Bartimeus, webtoon sometimes have weird disposition) but its maybe because i was a huge book fan and a sometimes reading comics before the end of lycee [after that the short comics win :D]

 

According to me,

1 -> webtoon or manga dont lose on disposition part (because its just different you like it or not but I dont think you can tell than one is better)

2 -> webtoon seems have a more accessible art for new non manga readers (color) but mangaka do wonderful/amazing/wow things to compense the llack of color and read both permit to multiply different style of art (I think that try some new art is always interesting, its easier to feel that a webtoon/manga is original) : SO read both

3 -> I know amazing manga strories and amazing webtoon stories so no winner here

4 -> if all 3 points give the answer READ BOTH, all that I said before is totally USELESS !

 

I completely went insane here

 

 

Last point : the lazy webtoon

 

That's true that there is less detail (in general) in webtoons. And for TOG, I think that the art has becoming better since the first chapters

 

Finally, I'm happy that I can bypass art considerations to read interesting stories (even if I certainly droped some interesting series because it didnt appeal me at first because of the art )

[rmr]

Wow lot of people care for the art.  Its funny because to me I hardly care about the art.  As long as I can make out the different characters and scenes, art doesn't matter to me at all.  I just read for the story.  Heck they can even have no picture and if the story is good I would read it.   So I guess I really don't see the fuss with the art.

 

You picked the wrong hobby pal

[Dragon88]

You picked the wrong hobby pal

Not necessarily.  I read mangas, manhwas and webtoons because of the story not the art.  They have lot of great and unique stories.  To me its the stories that attracts me.  Art really doesn't concern me much.  But don't get me wrong, I appreciate the art because it helps to see the characters and the interactions but its not the main reason.  And I guess I didn't find any series that has very horrible art.  Only thing I could think of was Noblesse in the beginning but it wasn't too bad.  The characters just looked bad in the beginning and eventually the art got better.  But art never really concerned me.

[svines85]

Personally, i can't stand the format, and the art in any webtoon i have seen is horribly lazy. For those two reasons not a single one has caught my interest

Yes, the format (in particular the full-color) is very different, especially to someone who reads a lot of manga. It does take an effort to get used to I think, given that one wants to make the effort to do it. And yeah, I don't know that I'd use the word "lazy" to describe the art....... if only out of defense for the authors....... but the bottom line is that the vast amount of webtoon titles you see are done by brand new, first-time authors. In other words, amateurs.  

 

If you were interested, I'd suggest any of the works by Ha Il-Kwon (Annarasumanara), Nasty Cat (Trace), or a work like The Friendly Winter,  Orange Marmalade or Divine Bells. All of these have art that's easily at the top of the heap in webtoons........I'm sure there are others that I'm too lazy to look up.......but for the most part, yes, most webtoon's art work could be considered minimalist when compared to most manga. 

 

I'd have said I read a lot of webtoons, hell, I read a lot of manga, but after looking up the rough numbers it's only about 20% or so compared to the total number of titles. That's still higher ( by a lot) than the rough numbers of scanlated manga available to read compared to webtoons though. Frankly the percentage is tiny. Japanese manga is king, by a huge margin.  

Edited by svines85, 20 February 2014 - 04:46 AM.

[Saraxxk]

same thing here... i like the idea of colored pages, and there are more pictures less conversations and sometimes it takes a long time to read a single page of manga but in case of webtoons the speed is just faster, and the stories are new and more interesting 

[Dragon88]

same thing here... i like the idea of colored pages, and there are more pictures less conversations and sometimes it takes a long time to read a single page of manga but in case of webtoons the speed is just faster, and the stories are new and more interesting 

Well one thing with webtoon is that its a different style of stories.  Its not like standard shounen so they definitely bring newness.  But I would have to say manga beats webtoon still by a wide margin simply because there are more options with manga then webtoon by far.  Mangas have great comedies to love stories to slice of life to sport mangas to psycholological manga to action adventure. With webtoons so far its only action adventure series.