TOPCO Media Jumps Head First into Adult AI Animation
As if my Google Search History wasn't messed up enough.
About a week ago, the Korean digital news blog eDaily reported that TOPCO Media had produced an AI-powered webtoon-to-animation production pipeline and used it to produce their first title, Office Romances are Strictly Forbidden.
During my time at Toptoon (a sister company to TOPCO Media), the company was pitched multiple times about AI webtoons produced by a number of studios in Korea. There were a few that had promise, but most of them failed a quality review and none of them were quite good enough to risk the pandora’s box of publishing AI webtoons.
My, how times have changed.
Bubble, Bubble. Toil and Trouble.
In the eDaily post, the company mentions using three publicly available AI products to develop the title. GROK, NovelAI and a local production instance based on Comfy UI.
GROK, available on X, is one that most people are fairly familiar with. It is a generative AI chatbot not altogether too different from ChatGPT in its interface.
Novel AI and Comfy UI, on the otherhand, have more niche and specific functions. Novel AI markets itself as an AI image generator and writing assistant to develop and produce anime-styled art for stories. And Comfy UI is a general-use generative AI, but it is specifcally capable of generating videos and sounds including voices.
In theory, it makes sense. Use GROK AI to bring together story elements, characters and plots which can be fed into Novel AI to develop images which is then translated into video and sound using Comfy AI.
Essentially, Studio 19 (the studio that directly produced the title) used separate AI systems like LEGO pieces to piece together a fully-animated and voiced anime without the need for storyboard artists, animators, writers, editors, or voice actors.
So, how did it turn out?
Taking a Sip of the Witch’s Brew
Spoiler alert: not well.
Office Romances are Strictly Forbidden originally launched in Korea with 2 full paid episodes and one free prologue. The first episode is just over 8 minutes long while the second episode is a herculean 13 minutes. It launched in Taiwan shortly after, with the same content split over 4 episodes instead of 2.
Contrary to what I, and many others assumed, the videos are regular landscape view and not portrait view. And clocking in at a massive 21 minutes 11 seconds for the entire series, it’s not particularly long enough to be considered a full-length series nor is it short enough to be a “short”.
The “animation” consists of short animated gifs that cycle forwards then backwards an uncomfortable number of times while the audio plays in the background. And, inexplicably, only the female character is voiced. The male characters’ dialogues are given in text which may actually be a blessing.
Toptoon may specialize in adult webtoon content for male audiences, but the platform/publisher has a long history of publishing a robust library of content. From 청소부K (Sweeper K) to 나는 엄마다 (I am a Mom), there are some major hits on the platform not to mention a small but popular catalogue of romantasy titles put out through secondary publishers.
The publication of Office Romances are Strictly Forbidden is a frankly jarring and far cry from the quality standard that Toptoon has traditionally been known for.
Moving Forward
The eDaily post made a point of saying that the title generated 6 times the amount of money required to produce it in Taiwan. And while that could mean the title generated a profit, it currently sits at ~150,000 views on Toptoon Korea after lauching in September. In Taiwan, the series (which has 4 episodes instead of 2) has ~70,000 views. While that isn’t low for the Taiwanese market, 150,000 views isn’t particularly high for the domestic market. It’s either a sign that this content isn’t performing well in Korea or a sign that the platform no longer commands the same audience it once did.
Just like Kakao and Naver, Toptoon has had recent successes in the Japanese market to help counter the stagnant Korean market. But unlike their mainstream counterparts, Toptoon has struggled in the western market. Their Daycomics platform still hasn’t found their footing and now, after nearly a year under that name, it looks like they’re shifting back to Toptoon Global (from Daycomics which was previously Toptoon Plus).
Why does this matter?
Because while the Korean and Taiwanese platforms have one animated series available for purchase, the North American platform currently has 5 with another set to launch later this month. The series’ haven’t caught on with audiences yet as most view counts hover around the 2000 to 3000 view range.
At a time when the Korean webtoon market is struggling and adult content in the western market is being policed at an alarming rate, it makes sense that Toptoon would be attempting to branch out of static images.
This is a relatively new endeavor for the western market with Office Romances are Strictly Forbidden having only launched October. It remains to be seen whether western audiences will be drawn to the recently rebranded service or whether Toptoon’s foray into what is essentially hentai will pay off.
But I doubt it.