The French Webtoon Industry is (Slowly) Waking Up
It's taken a few years (and a few platforms), but we're starting to see a bit of movement.
About five years ago, every Korean webtoon publisher and platform saw France as the next market to penetrate. There were an estimated 300 million French speakers worldwide and, in addition to having a native affinity for comics, K-pop had firmly taken hold in Europe.
Unlike the Spanish speaking market (which is scattered around the world with multiple dialects), publishers could focus on geographically French audiences instead of the diaspora of French speakers. At least, that was the thought.
Financially speaking, the GDP of Canada and France (key targets for digital French content) were higher than Mexico and Spain (key targets for digital Spanish content). All in all, it made for an easier target to Korean publishers.
A Brief History
Kidari Studio took the biggest step early buying a minority stake in Delitoon SAS back in July 2019 (Korea Herald) before taking full control of Delitoon in 2020. In 2019, WEBTOON also launched the French-languages service of their western brand.
Meanwhile, the Belgian publisher Dupuis launched Webtoon Factory and Delcourt (another French publisher) launched Verytoon. Webtoon Factory serviced a variety of French-native webtoons while Verytoon included a library of translated webtoons from WEBTOON before Naver was focusing on the French language. Even though Verytoon and Webtoon Factory’s tenures were relatively short, they signaled the start of the gold rush.
Piccoma Europe, a subsidiary of Kakao Piccoma, launched their services in Europe along with Tappytoon’s French service (followed by German), Pocket Comics France by NHN, and LeBontoon which was Delitoon’s older, BL-focused sibling platform. For the next five years, hundreds of webtoons were licensed for French audiences.
Here Go the Dominoes
If you’ve been following along, then you know where we’re going from here.
Piccoma Europe announced its closure in May of 2024 after just over 2 years of service. Pocket Comics France announced their own closure in June of this year.
Since 2019, Korean (and Japanese) companies have opened at least 6 French-language webtoon platforms. As of this year, two have closed (Pocket Comics, Piccoma Europe), one is in limbo (Tappytoon France), and 2 have undergone rebranding (Delitoon, LeBontoon). The only webtoon company to have weathered the shakeup is WEBTOON France who reduced their footprint with minimal launches and multiple non-exclusive contracts.
It looked for all to see that the webtoon-rush in France was all but over.
Oh, except for-
Kenaz and ONO
Kenaz is a webtoon publisher that hit success early with romance fantasy and fantasy action webtoon titles in Korea along with fantasy martial arts titles.
They made news in 2023 after partnering up with Apple to bring webtoons to the Apple Books app. This PR blitz included rumors that the Hollywood blockbuster “Gladiator” would be re-worked into a webtoon as well as popular French writer Bernanrd Werber’s “Ants” trilogy of novels. The former didn’t amount to anything, but the latter is set to launch as early as this November.
In the meantime, Kenaz was able to make meaningful connections with Media Participations in Europe which resulted in the formation of two large-scale initiatives: (1) a webtoon academy program to train French writers and artists looking to create webtoons and (2) the formation of a new webtoon platform owned and operated by the French digital publisher Izneo with support and content licensing through Kenaz and a variety of partners.
The Current State of the French Webtoon Market
Most of this post will deal with three platforms, but other platforms do exist in the French market. Notably, there’s Allskreen which publishes a significant number of webtoons or scroll-adapted manga like Radiant. But, as they mostly work with their own IPs, I’ll be leaving them out of this post.
There are three active webtoon platforms in France: WEBTOON France, LezhinFR and ONO. Compared to LezhinFR (the rebrand of Delitoon and LeBontoon) and WEBTOON France, ONO is still in the early stages of development.
That being said, ONO hosts multiple major hit titles like Solo Leveling, Solo Leveling Ragnarok, Roses and Champagne, and Cherry Blossoms After Winter as well as some heavyweights from China.
Recently, in May of this year, French-publisher Glenat bought a 33% stake in ONO. And while it’s only been a few months, September saw ONO take a step forward in French-webtoon publishing by publishing original webtoons for the ONO platform.
And, though it’s taken a bit of time, Glenat has launched three new webtoons from Slap Studio in September with another on the way in October.
My Boyfriend is a Webtoon Hero, and Fritz, Because of Love.
Here’s the Important Part…
The webtoon industry needs local creators. While there are multiple genres Korean webtoons can handle, there are key aspects of storytelling that don’t translate across to western cultures and vice versa.
In order for the webtoon industry to take root in France, the industry needs French creators to create popular titles for French audiences. That means Lore Olympus, Swolemates, The Mafia Nanny, and The Accidental Assassin.
And at a time when Naver WEBTOON is chasing profitability, it isn’t likely that they’ll be taking the chance on untested or unpolished titles like they did in the past. They’re currently publishing a handful of webtoons from French studio FlagCat, but no where near the numbers of English creatives.
And while Kidari Studio is rumored to be working on co-productions of webtoons with French creatives, their bread and butter is Korean content from studios, creators, or their very own Studio M.
Until another player joins the webtoon game in France, we’re just left with ONO. And while the publisher had multiple prestige titles, it doesn’t have a UGC platform like Canvas nor a production pipeline like other Korean publishers. But with Glenat in the game, it still has a chance.