Why isn’t NO HOME out In English yet?

It’s an award-winning Webtoon with an animated adaptation and a passionate fanbase clamoring for more content every day. I am, of course, talking about Wanan’s webcomic Jibi Eopseo, usually referred to by English-speaking fans as No Home. I say “usually” because there is still no officially licensed English translation of this Webtoon.

So, why do people want one? And what’s preventing it from being released?

Wherefore art thou, WEBTOON?

First of all, No Home is not just a popular comic, but a critically acclaimed one, having been recognized at the Korea Content Awards in 2022 and receiving the grand prize at the 2023 Korea Cartoon Criticism Contest. On Webtoon’s Korean website, it boasts an average episode rating of 9.98. For comparison, Lore Olympus, the most popular webcomic of possibly all time, has a rating of 9.58.

No Home is a slice of life story, but it’s no schoolyard romance. No Home is a much more grounded meditation on grief, abuse, and adolescence.

The story explores the dynamics between a group of six teens at the same high school, two of whom wound up without housing at the start of the story and, after a rocky start, agree to live together in a possibly-haunted abandoned old dormitory. It zings back and forth between being hilarious and profoundly tragic. Its deceptively simple art style manages to convey a lot of emotions with minimal shapes and linework. And it is still not legally available in English.

An animated adaptation by Studio LICO started airing in South Korea on November 1 with simulcasting in France and Germany, but no other way to view it internationally. Webtoon licenses are notoriously complicated for American publishers, but Naver has their own international portal, that green app known in the US as simply WEBTOON.

Shouldn’t that make the licensing process easier? Are they waiting for the animation to get picked up by an international streaming service so they could drop the complete vertical scroll comic on Daily Pass at the same time as that, the way they have with other in-demand completed titles?

My fear is something I’ve heard echoed by publisher reps across the comics industry: that audiences will never want something too different from what they’re already used to getting. Marvel/DC readers will always want more superheroes punching bad guys, Shonen Jump subscribers will always want more 15-year-old boys with magic powers punching bad guys, and international WEBTOON readers will always want more ordinary girls reincarnated as romance novel villainesses. Or gamers punching bad guys. Maybe a high school romance, if the brown-haired heroine and black-haired male lead are drawn beautifully enough.

Anything that deviates from the popular-genre mold will just never do as well. So where does that leave the simply drawn teen drama friendship story No Home?

No home for No Home?

It’s not like there aren’t comparable titles already popular on WEBTOON. Odd Girl Out by Morangji is also a friendship-focused teen drama with over a million subscribers on WEBTOON English. But it doesn’t get anywhere near as dark as No Home does, and in the second season the friendships take a backseat to the main character’s love life.

Publishers, and companies in general, are often risk-averse. No one wants to lose money on a title, even if all signs point to it being a winner. But if that’s the reasoning keeping No Home from appearing on WEBTOON International, I think it’s a risk worth taking.