Webtoon Trend: Reborn Again?!

If you’re an avid romance webtoon reader, you might have noticed a thing or two, or three or…eight? The number just keeps going! What am I talking about? The fact that webtoons with a story centered on reborn protagonists are being released one after the other.
How did they come about? These webtoons are an influence of popular Korean and non-Korean webnovels, some even direct adaptations. On the Korean market, webnovels are as popular as webcomics but in the U.S., not so much, hence the lack of translated webnovels and availability compared to webtoons. However, Korean webnovels can be found on Korean websites such as Kakaopage.

The Setup

This theme found in these webtoons can be seen to follow a similar setup to each other. First, these webtoons’ protagonists are usually either 1. a person reborn into another world or 2. a person reborn again as themselves (the situation is more like a time rewind).

Webtoons with a person reborn into another world usually starts out in these ways:

1. The protagonist suffers a tragic death, is given another chance at life, her soul is placed into the body of another person’s on a different world.
2. The protagonist suffers a tragic death, is given another chance at life, is reborn as a baby in another world.
3. The protagonist is a normal person until they somehow regain memories of their past life from another world (tragic death included among regained memories).

Webtoons’ with a person reborn again as themselves usually start out with the protagonist having suffered an unfortunate death, is given another chance at life and is reborn as themselves again at a younger age.

In these types of webtoons, the protagonists will usually be reborn as a princess, duke’s daughter, or some other high ranking aristocrat. They will also have knowledge of future events because they were either based on games/novels from past lives or past experience. The future events will likely include misfortune coming their way. Therefore, a part of the plot and what the protagonist has to do is to avoid them.

The Popularity

By now, the pattern to such webtoon series can be considered overused and lacking in originality. There are dozens of English translated webtoon series that fall under this theme and even more that have yet to be translated. Even so, more just keep popping up. Why? Because despite the overused trope, readers love it.

Even though each webtoon follows a similar pattern to “being reborn”, each plot is different, each character is themselves, and each webtoon has its own unique twist.

The webcomic platform Tappytoon seems to be following closely with this trend. In the last few months, most of its newly added webtoons fall under this theme. Four out of the five top popular webtoons on the platform are these type webtoons.

Webtoon Series

For new readers or readers looking for more of these types of webtoons to read, compiled here is a list of comics that follow this trope:

• Daughter of the Emperor
• The Reason Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke’s Mansion
• Miss Not-So Sidekick
• Empress of Another World
• The Abandoned Empress
• Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp
• Who Made Me a Princess
• I Belong to House Castielo
• Adelaide
• Why Are You Doing This Duke?
• This Girl is a Little Wild
• Lady Baby
• Chitra
• What It Takes to be a Villainess
• Iris: The Lady and Her Smartphone
• Adonis
• They Say I Was Born a King’s Daughter
• Little Black Book vs Blue Blood
• Holy Chef, Crazy Empress
• Phoenix Nirvana

Feature image © Tappytoon

Bibliography

Tappytoon Comics. Contents First. tappytoon.com. Accessed 30 March 2019.

Tapas. Tapas Media. tapas.io. Accessed 26 March 2019

WebComics. SideWalk Group. webcomicsapp.com. Accessed 26 March 2019

Mangahasu. MangaHasu.se mangahasu.se. Accessed 27 March 2019