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Will the Webtoon Original Syndrome Continue?

This fall, works based on popular webtoons are expected to fascinate small screen theaters.

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Recently, works that embody webtoons of the same name have become very popular in the broadcasting industry. The TVING original "Yumi's Cells - Season 2", which has been loved a lot since "Yumi's Cells" season 1, as well as Netflix's original "All of Us Are Dead" and KBS2's "Jinxed at First" caught viewers' eyes and ears at the same time. Attention is focusing on whether new works based on popular webtoons and web novels will continue to be successful in the second half.

The original wavve "Seasons of Blossom" which contains memories of first love at the age of eighteen, will be unveiled on the 21st. "Seasons of Blossom " is a 'growth pain romance' that intersects the stories of teenagers now and memories of teenagers in the past six years ago. In teenagers in the past, actors Seo Ji-hoon (Lee Ha-min) and So Ju-yeon (Han So-mang) show off their synchronization as if they come from a webtoon to reality. Actors Kim Min-kyu-V (Lee Jae-min), Kang Hye-won (Yoon Bo-mi), Yoon Hyun-soo (Choi Jin-yeong), and Oh Yu-jin-III (Kang Seon-hee) appear as the current teenagers and four members of Seoyeon High School.

Following MBC's Friday-Saturday drama "Big Mouse", which has been breaking its own highest ratings every week, "The Golden Spoon" starring Yook Sung-jae and Jung Chae-yeon, is also an original webtoon. "The Golden Spoon", which will air for the first time on the 23rd, depicts a life adventure story in which a baby born in a poor family becomes an acquired gold spoon after changing his fate with a friend born in a rich family through a gold spoon that was accidentally obtained. Song Hyeon-wook is expected to capture the complex psychology of the main characters traveling between gold and dirt spoons.

Kakao Entertainment, which led the success of the original webtoon drama with kakaoTV's web drama "No, Thank You" and SBS' Monday-Tuesday drama "Business Proposal", also introduced "Once Upon a Small Town" on the 5th. Based on a web novel, "Once Upon a Small Town" was also loved as a webtoon. It depicts a fresh rural romance between Ahn Ja-yeong (Red Velvet Joy), a native of Heedong-ri, a rural village, and Han Ji-yool (Choo Young-woo), a police officer who is a 'cool person' in the region, and a native veterinarian in Seoul who wants to escape Heedong-ri as soon as possible. On top of that, Lee Sang-hyeon (Baek Sung-chul), a 27-year-old male friend who wants to protect Ja-yeong by his side, decides to go straight ahead without hiding his feelings, building an exciting triangular romance.

The advantage of dramas based on popular webtoons is that they can draw already formed fandom to viewers. An official from Kakao said, "Based on the popularity factors of the original work, we can deliver another upgraded fun from the original by adding a lot of characters and stories. As another content IP, the drama produced in this way can evolve in various ways, such as adding a new worldview through the season system and spin-off, and strengthen its influence as a global super IP", he explained.

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