WEBTOON's Studio White turns Japanese fantasy IP into a new K-webtoon lane

WEBTOON’s new Studio White is a joint production play built to turn Japanese fantasy franchises into Korean-style vertical webcomics, and the first release arrives fast. According to WEBTOON Entertainment’s official April 30 announcement, LINE Digital Frontier launched Studio White with REDICE STUDIO and KADOKAWA to adapt established Japanese IP into original scroll-first series for WEBTOON’s platform. The opening title is a new Record of Lodoss War webcomic that launches in Korean on May 9, with English, Japanese, French, Traditional Chinese, Thai, and Indonesian releases planned next. This is why the move matters beyond one nostalgia play. WEBTOON is not just licensing another title for a quick headline cycle. It is building a repeatable pipeline where Korean webcomic production muscle meets Japanese fantasy brands that already have decades of recognition and fandom memory behind them.

That combination gives the launch a cleaner business angle than the average adaptation headline. REDICE STUDIO already knows how to package spectacle for the vertical-scroll format, KADOKAWA controls one of Japan’s deepest genre catalogs, and LINE Digital Frontier brings a distribution lane that can push these titles through WEBTOON and Line Manga. We have already tracked how the wider sector is scaling in our earlier look at webtoons becoming Korea’s core adaptation engine. Studio White sharpens that trend into something even more specific. Korean production systems are now being used to reformat Japanese fantasy IP for mobile-native reading, which opens a fresh cross-border lane that could become a lot bigger if the first wave hits.

Studio White launches with a fast, multi-market Record of Lodoss War rollout

Studio White is launching with Record of Lodoss War, and the speed of that rollout says a lot about how serious the partners are. Anime News Network reported that the new webcomic will debut on May 9 in Korean first, with more language versions set to follow, while the official announcement says creator Ryo Mizuno supplied the original concept for an untold chapter of the war. That matters because this is not being framed as a basic remaster or archive drop. It is a new story built for the vertical-scroll format, using one of Japanese fantasy’s most recognizable names as the first test case. If WEBTOON wanted a safe proof-of-concept, it picked one with built-in lore, legacy, and international recognition. If it works, the company gets more than launch-week attention. It gets a blueprint for how to remake older franchise value into a modern reading habit.

REDICE and KADOKAWA make this more than a one-off webtoon experiment

Studio White looks bigger than a single launch because the partner list already points to scale. According to Animation World Network’s report on the announcement, additional KADOKAWA properties lined up for adaptation include Sword Art Online, Slayers, and The Familiar of Zero, while REDICE STUDIO is leading production across the slate. That lineup matters because it tells readers and rights holders exactly what this venture is chasing: known fantasy and light-novel IP with enough name value to travel across markets. REDICE is not a random production add-on here either. Its track record with large-format webcomic storytelling gives WEBTOON a studio that can deliver visual momentum instead of just relying on brand recognition. From a market perspective, this is one of the clearest signs yet that Korean webtoon production is now being exported as a service layer, not only as homegrown IP.

Why this matters for the next phase of the webtoon business

Studio White matters because it gives WEBTOON a more aggressive answer to the question of where future growth comes from. We have already seen platforms fight on product and monetization in our coverage of Korean webtoons entering the AI era, and we just saw audience-facing validation in Tappytoon’s Webby win. This new move pushes the battle toward franchise conversion. Instead of waiting for the next original hit to emerge, WEBTOON can reach into a famous Japanese catalog and rebuild those worlds for vertical reading from day one. That is smart because older IP carries lower awareness risk, while the webcomic format gives it a new monetization life. If Studio White lands, expect more Korean-produced adaptations of non-Korean franchises, and expect rivals to chase the same cross-border play very quickly.