A revenge-fueled webtoon about a bullied teenager who livestreams his fights back at his tormentors has found a second life as a Japanese-language Netflix production — the latest sign that Naver Webtoon’s most popular titles are increasingly being remade for audiences far from Korea.
“Study of a Fighter” (싸움독학), created by writer Park Tae-joon and artist Kim Jung-hyun, follows a high school student who has endured years of bullying. After a chance encounter turns into an opportunity for payback, he begins broadcasting his confrontations with his abusers online while quietly training to become a formidable fighter — a premise that combines fast-paced action with an underdog’s satisfying comeback arc. The webtoon has racked up a cumulative 2.28 billion views worldwide, according to a press release from Naver Corp.
The title has had a particularly strong following in Japan, where it has been serialized on Naver’s Japanese-language platform Line Manga since 2020 and has surpassed 500 million cumulative local views. It was selected as a Jury Selection Recommended Work in the manga category at Japan’s 25th Japan Media Arts Festival, run by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and was adapted into a TV anime in 2024.
That local popularity laid the groundwork for a live-action Netflix series, which the streamer released as a global exclusive on May 28, 2026, according to Naver Corp’s announcement. The Japanese-language adaptation is directed by Hideki Takeuchi and written by Yuichi Tokunaga, with a cast led by Oji Suzuka alongside Ai Mikami and Araki Sugo, all described in the press release as accomplished Japanese screen actors.
The adaptation is part of a broader push by Line Digital Frontier, the company behind Line Manga, to turn its most-read Korean webtoons into Japanese-market IP beyond simple translation — including animation, merchandising and now live-action series. According to Naver Corp, Line Digital Frontier currently has roughly 20 animation projects in development based on Korean webtoons, including the popular titles “Study Group” and “Eleceed.”
Together with the domestic ratings success of other recent webtoon-to-screen adaptations, the Netflix release of “Study of a Fighter” points to a Naver Webtoon strategy that increasingly treats its top Korean titles as ready-made scripts for local-language remakes overseas, rather than simply exporting subtitled Korean-language versions.
Source: NAVER Corp. press release, January 27, 2026.
