With the recent announcement of the second season of Tower of God, the issue of manhwa (Korean comics) adaptation in anime has become even more serious. However, Netflix has almost presciently addressed the possibility of more adaptations of popular non-Japanese works in the anime market, including WEBTOON titles.
Park Tae-WEBTOON is now a reality. Netflix is producing an official anime adaptation of Joon’s LOOKISM, and it will arrive sooner than expected. On November 4th, Netflix will release LOOKISM.
LOOKISM is about Park Hyung-Suk, a 17-year-old who has always been at the bottom of the social pecking order. Hyung-Suk is not conventionally attractive and has been bullied his entire life for a variety of reasons, including his poverty, appearance, and weight; however, none of his previous bullies compare to Lee Tae Sung, who eventually prompts Hyung-Suk’s departure from their high school to Seoul’s Jae Won High, a prep school with an unconventional approach to education.
A few days before his transfer, Hyung-Suk awakens in a taller, slimmer, more conventionally handsome body; however, his old body is sleeping right next to him. Hyung-Suk realises he owns both bodies and that he sleeps in one and wakes up in the other.
Suk’s attractive appearance makes him popular at school; however, he must balance his new literal double-life with investigating how his new self came to be, which leads him down a rabbit hole he could never have predicted.
Unlike its predecessors Tower of God, Noblesse, and The God of High School, the teaser trailer for this series is entirely in Korean, which is unusual in anime adaptations of Korean comics. This is a refreshing change from the Japanese voice acting that typically accompanies anime works translated from manhwa, and it is a clear step toward the proliferation of many more WEBTOON adaptations and manhwa adaptations in general.
LOOKISM, the latest Netflix anime series, will be available on the service on Friday, November 4; however, no information about the territories where it will be available has been released as of yet.