Naver Webtoon said it reformatted the popular Japanese coming-of-age manga "Skip and Loafer" into a color scroll webtoon and will offer it exclusively on Naver Webtoon Daily+ (Plus) and Naver Series starting on the 12th.
"Skip and Loafer" is a school coming-of-age story that delicately depicts a girl who moved to the city from the countryside adapting to urban life and growing up, and it has steadily won love from readers in Japan and Korea for its realistic emotional arc and fresh friendship narrative. It earned critical recognition by ranking high at the Japan Cartoonists Association Awards in 2020, and the anime, also well received, built a strong fan base. A second season of the anime has also been confirmed.
Along with the release of the color scroll webtoon, Naver Series will pre-release volume 12 of the print edition and offer benefits for 30 days, including free viewing of volume 1, a 10% discount on single volumes, and discounted sets. The partitioning edition will be available to view for free every night at 10 p.m. for 14 days, and during the same period, there will be a giveaway event for a set of merchandise for buyers of the print edition. Readers who view the work will also receive cookie rewards and three passes to the color webtoon gift box.
Naver Webtoon is steadily expanding its strategy of reinterpreting globally popular intellectual property (IP) as color vertical scroll webtoons. Japanese works such as "Parasyte," "Hell's Paradise," and "The Man from Nowhere, becoming a Sword Saint in the Boonies" are available in multiple languages, and "Slam Dunk New Edition" drew attention with a limited domestic release in vertical scroll format.
In North America, major publishers such as Dark Horse and IDW are continuing collaborations by converting popular comics into the webtoon format, and in September, it also announced a project in partnership with The Walt Disney Company to present about 100 flagship IPs, including Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars, as vertical scroll webtoons.
Naver Webtoon plans to continue expanding collaborations with diverse partners based on its technology and format competitiveness and experience operating a global platform, strengthening its IP reinterpretation and global distribution strategy.