Before Solo Leveling’s success, we’ve seen the releases of Tower of God, The God of High School, and Lookism build dedicated fan followings and set the stage for an impressive manhwa-to-anime pipeline. The last year has seen multiple more webtoons announce anime adaptations including Tomb Raider King, Omniscient Reader, and The Beginning After the End, to name a few, and according to a major publisher, this is only the beginning of the webtoon mania as the coming year could see up to twenty more webtoons picked up for anime adaptations.
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At a press conference held in Tokyo on February 13th, 2025, as confirmed by Hankyung, Kim Shin-bae, the CEO of Line Digital Frontier, revealed that Line Manga plans to launch 20 webtoon anime adaptations in 2025. From one adaptation in 2022 to two in 2023, Line Manga has gone all-in on webtoon adaptations in the last year, upping the number to twelve in 2024 and it plans to almost double this target in 2025 with CEO Kim stating that Line Manga plans to invest and collaborate even more with Japanese anime studios in the coming year.
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Line Manga Plans to Produce 20 Webtoon Anime Adaptations in 2025
After Piccoma, Line Manga is quickly becoming one of the leading webtoon platforms, especially in Japan, housing many popular and promising titles like Omniscient Reader, The Remarried Empress, Savior of Divine Blood, and many more. Line Manga even became the top-grossing app on the market back in May 2024, with multiple titles grossing over 100 million yen each per month, and according to CEO Kim Shin Bae at the recent conference, the platform now makes up more than 50% of the webtoon market share.
Besides Korean-made webtoons, Line Manga also houses Japanese webtoons, including underrated gems like Senpai is an Otokonoko, a series discovered through Line Manga’s amateur “Indie” section which recently found great success as an anime. As such, Line Manga is looking to create a strong webtoon adaptation pipeline, particularly in Japan, given the global popularity of Japanese-style animation.
Part of this plan has seemingly already been put into motion with Line Digital Frontier’s recent investment in Studio No. 9, which is likely only the first of Line’s collaborations with Japanese studios. According to CEO Kim, Line Manga is looking to build a “webtoon ecosystem” through not only anime but also live-action dramas and merchandise, which means webtoons could soon be head-to-head with Japanese manga in terms of franchising, if not on an even more global scale.
Source: Hankyung
