A webtoon can be any sort of vertical-scroll comic. It’s a format, not a style or genre. Still, there are certain kinds of stories that tend to be popular both on webtoon platforms and in print. Here’s a look at the most popular genres and some smaller categories that are worth a look.

Leveling Up: In a world filled with dungeons, towers, and assorted monsters, a young man of modest abilities battles his way through a series of challenges, gaining stronger powers as he goes. Solo Leveling, the most popular adult webtoon in print, falls into this category, but there are lots more, including Tomb Raider King, Tower of God, Doom Breaker, and The World After the Fall. SSS-Class Revival Hunter puts a slightly different spin on the genre: Every time the hero is killed, he gains a skill from his killer and is reincarnated 24 hours earlier, meaning he knows what will happen in the immediate future.

Romantasy: Royal courts have always been a popular setting for romances, and webtoons do not disappoint. The Remarried Empress is a delightful soap opera about an empress who marries for love, is abandoned when her husband takes a mistress, and then finds love with another, enigmatic nobleman. Men of the Harem, by the same creator, features a female emperor who takes five consorts as revenge on the lover who betrayed her. Rivals switch bodies in Your Throne. Under the Oak Tree starts with an unhappy bride and groom and ends with true love. These are all manhwa and have a similar look and feel. Independent creators outside Korea put their own spin on the genre: The best-selling Lore Olympus has a modern setting but a cast of Greek gods, while Suitor Armor is brings magic and action to the palace romance genre with a lady-in-waiting who falls in love with a living suit of armor.

Second Chances: Some stories start with the main character dying and being reborn in a fantasy world, the genre known as isekai in Japanese. In romances, this often offers the heroine a second chance at love. In A Stepmother’s Marchen (called The Fantasie of a Stepmother on Tapas), a young woman marries into a noble family who all turn against her when her husband dies. Just when things are at their worst, she dies and wakes up on the day of her husband’s funeral, with the chance to do it all over again. Similar stories include The Villainess Turns the Hourglass, Daughter of the Emperor, I Tamed My Husband’s Mad Dog, and The Abandoned Empress. A twist on this genre is to transport the main character into a book or a game that they already know, so they know more about the world of the story than the other characters. In Who Made Me a Princess and Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke’s Mansion, the heroine is transported into a novel and has to change the ending to avoid a terrible fate. Villains Are Destined to Die has a similar plot but with a romance game.

As with manga, isekai isn’t limited to romances: In Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, the lead character has just finished reading a webnovel so obscure that he is literally the only reader, so when the world starts coming to an end, he recognizes that the novel is coming true and that he has the knowledge to stop it. The Beginning After the End follows a king who is reborn as a baby, but with his memories and knowledge intact.

Contemporary Romance: One of the smaller slices of the romance category is contemporary romances with adult characters. A Business Proposal updates a classic romance plot with a young woman who is a CEO’s pretend girlfriend. Age Matters features a 29-year-old woman and a younger, wealthier man. Mafia Nanny is, just as the title indicates, about a nanny whose charge is the son of a gangster. In Love 4 a Walk, which comes to print in November 2025, a woman with an unruly dog bonds with her neighbor, who is a dog trainer. Boyfriends is a lighthearted series about four teenage boys who form a polycule.

Boys Love: Just as in manga, BL is a popular genre for manhwa and other webtoons. The best selling title in this genre is The Dangerous Convenience Store, a mature-rated manhwa about a guy who works behind the counter in a convenience store in a rough neighborhood and the hunky gangster who watches out for him. Another popular title is Semantic Error, an enemies-to-lovers story about two intense computer science majors.

Danmei: Chinese Boys Love webtoons have a small but ardent fandom in the U.S., and several danmei prose novels by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (popularly known as MXTX) have made the New York Times paperback fiction best-seller list. Two of MXTX’s novel series have been adapted into manhua: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, currently the best selling danmei, and Heaven Official’s Blessing (see “Inklore to Publish STARember’s Adaptation of ‘Heaven Official’s Blessing’”). These are high fantasy BL titles, with gods and magic and lots of long, flowing hair and robes. Denghai Fusheng Records has a similar vibe. I Ship My Rival x Me is a contemporary danmei story about two actors, one handsome and talented and the other merely handsome, whose relationship is egged on by online shippers.

Supernatural Adventures: In Third Shift Society a young woman with newly discovered psychic powers goes to work for a paranormal detective with a pumpkin for a head, fighting monsters in a world where magic is real. The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn features a paranormal investigator who appears to consist only of a skull and a trenchcoat. In Lumine, a werewolf who can’t control his transformations, and sometimes defaults to a cute puppy instead of a bloodthirsty beast, becomes the bodyguard to a troubled witch boy. Dark Moon: The Blood Altar is set at a boarding school that strictly forbids vampires, which means that of course the place is lousy with them. The seven lead male characters are loosely based on the boy band Enhypen, and the girl is the point-of-view character that they are all in love with, in one way or another, when they’re not busy fighting werewolves. An anime is in the works. And in Freaking Romance, the main character’s new apartment is haunted by a hunky ghost, and the chief obstacles to their love are the facts he can’t see her and she can’t touch him.

Horror: Webtoons have a dark side, and that shows up in titles like the best-selling Killing Stalking, the violent tale of a mentally ill man and a serial killer, and Hellbound, a dark fantasy manhwa that was adapted into a series that runs on Netflix.

Tweens and Teens: One of the most popular webtoons of all is Heartstopper, a teen romance, and there are plenty of other YA stories. Morgana and Oz is a romance about a witch and a vampire from opposing clans. Cursed Princess Club is a comedy about misfit princesses who band together. Nothing Special follows two teens and a radish ghost through a series of rollicking fantasy adventures. Space Boy mixes sci-fi and school drama in a tale of a girl who is displaced in time and a boy who seems to be missing something.

One of the top webtoon properties in ComicHub is Hooky, a middle-grade story about twin witches, a boy and a girl, who miss the bus to magic school. Other middle-grade webtoons include Saphie the One-Eyed Cat and Scurry.

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