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This is a supremely limited sample size, but between God of High School and Tower of God (along with a handful of non-adapted titles I& #39;ve tried) my impression of Webtoon& #39;s creator community is pretty similar to AO3 or Fanfic dot net.
Insomuch as it feels largely creator-driven, with little if any visible editorial guidance for even its biggest titles, combined with many works& #39; tendency to be baldly, even enthusiastically derivative.
GoHS in particular throws in nearly every martial arts tournament trope it can as quickly as possible through a visual medium. It& #39;s not subtle and the (decidedly less serious) manhwa actively calls attention to it a few times. This isn& #39;t, necessarily, at bad thing, ftr.
Part of the appeals feels similar to RWBY (again, not a diss) in that there& #39;s a sense of vicarious creative fantasy. Look, these creators are fans of manga and anime just like you, and now THEY get to create their own anime with cool powers and tournament arcs and secret tests!
In some way the paper thin plots and baldfaced influence from established titles is a feature, not a bug. You as a viewer recognize and enjoy the tropes being used, and the creator does too! So you& #39;re both having fun making up stories with your Naruto action figures.
To an extent I think I can get behind that kind of indulgence - lord knows I still like to play around with my idea for a magical girl anime when I have the free time to pretend I& #39;ll ever put it to paper - but it also makes for a serious disconnect with the uninitiated.
Which is how you get ToG fans who swear, SWEAR the series gets good after the first 100 chapters. They have that kind of parasocial relationship with the creator as a fellow fan, where people coming into the abbreviated anime just don& #39;t.
This also means that certain shorthand techniques just don& #39;t translate. Reading Tower of God when it& #39;s a plucky webcomic you just accept that its vaguely defined world operates on Chuunin Exam logic, but when presented as a professional piece of television that becomes way harder
Anyway this is all just a long way of saying God of High School episode 2 tries really hard to have that Rock Lee Taking Off The Weights energy but sorry son, you can& #39;t just Xerox a classic.
