Characters over Worldbuilding
Even though I don’t read Manhwas often. One thing I’ve often come to notice is how little world-building is done in them. At times the setting isn’t described at all. This is quite understandable considering manhwas are more often than not based on settings we all can relate to; Offices, high school, college life. Even if it’s based on a historical or a sci-fi world, settings we can’t fully relate to, the world-building can be abysmal.
This is especially true when it comes to romance titles. Usually, the settings can be explained in a single sentence, which is literally how they are presented as well. After an initial opening statement like, “Works at XX company as a manager for team AB” or “This is school AA, the most prestigious one in the city”. I’m not even kidding about the names. The authors don’t even bother to make up fake names. They just go with random assortments of Xs or alphabet letters.
If we assume the characters get the same treatment as the setting. We’d be dead wrong. Character building takes up a huge part of the story. Even more than character building is a character drama. That’s where the meat lies in Manhwas. More than anything, they focus on character interactions. Even a simple conversation with a coffee at hand might take almost half a dozen chapters. While the whole world is introduced in a single panel. The authors intentionally make the world bland to put as much emphasis on the characters as possible. They don’t want the readers to be distracted by the juicy drama.
Even though this is the case, I wonder. What would happen if the manhwa somehow had bad character development? Wouldn’t that mean it would flop on the fly? Without any worldbuilding to make the reader satisfied, any mistake or boring drama plot line could mean the end of the whole series.