It's Official. NHN's Comico is Closing for Good.
This makes the SECOND Japanese webtoon platform announced for closure in August.
Today marks the final nail in the coffin for what was the only international Japanese webtoon platform. It’s been a long time coming and while it wasn’t unexpected, it’s still sad to see this entire endeavor come to a close.
Let’s get to it.
A long time coming
On June 8, 2025, the Maeil Business Newspaper reported that NHN would be shuttering their French Pocket Comics platform with more details to come. This was a part of the webtoon industry’s internation constriction that saw the closure of European and Southeast Asian platforms. The bigger bomb dropped a week later on June 16th when NHN announced they would be closing their North American and Korean platforms as well, leaving only their Japanese platform remaining (link).
Based on conversations I had with folks in Korea, the word was that there were only two folks left in the international business team (international in this case meaning business outside of Japan), a team lead and a manager, both of whom were now charged with international distribution and rights licensing.
And now, the final bomb.
According to a report by NBNTV, NHN will be terminating the Comico platform in Japan as well.
What does this mean about NHN’s webtoon business?
NHN will be continuing as a content provider or publisher/studio producing webtoon content which will then be carried by other platforms. This, of course, is a change we already saw after the international platforms ended their service last year.
You can now find translated Comico/Pocket Comics titles on multiple other platforms ranging like Tappytoon and Tapas. More details are available on the NBNTV post, but NHN was able to close the deficit on their books in their webtoon operations by shuttering their overseas platforms.
The decision to follow suit in Japan could only mean that the platform was no longer the driving force in revenue, more likely a hinderance that was having trouble competing with the giants in digital content distribution already in Japan.
But that’s not the question we should be asking.
What does this say about Japan?
It says a lot. But before we get there, let’s rewind a little bit.
There’s been a fair amount of news about Japan recently. LINE Manga recently announced a partnership with NTT Docomo for a Anime subscription service where over 4,000 titles would be streamable on a new “Anime” tab on the LINE Manga app.
The original post made no mention of new adaptations (ala the Warner X WEBTOON deal) which means that it’ll be exclusively pre-existing titles available to view.
And back on August 1st, Lezhin Comics Japan announced that they would be terminating their services on January 31st, 2027. Lezhin Comics Japan will be shuttered and accounts will be rolled onto BeLTOON, a more recent and BL-heavy platform launched not long after Lezhin’s acquisition by Kidari Studio.
Yes, that’s right. In one month, we’ve had news of two webtoon platforms shuttering in the Japanese market.
And just last week, we got numbers for WEBTOON’s Q2 finaicials that gave a look at their performance in the Japanese market. And it’s bad.
In short, WEBTOON saw a 15.5% year-on-year decrease in Q2 revenue from 2025. 150.403 million USD isn’t anything to sneeze at and it’s still nearly 10% more than Korea which brought in 138.49 million USD during the same period, but Korea saw a 10.1% increase YoY. Similarly, the MAU (monthly active users) in Japan dropped to 21.8 million while the MPU (monthly paying audience) dropped down to 2.1 million.
Basically, every metric that matters saw a sizeable decrease in Q2 when it comes to LINE Manga’s market share of Japan.
What does this signal for the webtoon industry at large?
More than likely, a slight restructuring of the webtoon industry’s international landscape. The closure of NHN’s Comico platforms is, while sad, not a major disruption to the market nor will it change how the industry will operate. And while Lezhin Comics Japan, while one of the first webtoon platforms to launch in Japan, was all but dead the second they split BL content off to BeLTOON.
And while WEBTOON’s declining revenue in Japan is cause for concern, it is the LARGEST paying market for webtoons. Big Green will re-evaluate and adapt their strategies for Japan, but they’re not going to abandon it altogether.
The bigger signal that we’re seeing is that the international webtoon market is no longer expanding, at least not internationally. The failures in foreign markets is nearly complete with the US market being the last holdout. Yes, it is the biggest market outside of Asia and, yes, the bulk of marketing is likely spent on Americans.
But the American webtoon market is already overpopulated with WEBTOON (Naver), Tapas (Kakao), Manta (RIDI), Tappytoon and Lezhin (Kidari Studio). There are already signs that the US market is running to trouble based on stagnant revenues in publicly reported figures.
So, then the question becomes what’s next?
(If someone says short-form videos, I swear to God…)