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Why manga is black & white and Webtoons are color
Zhena explains that it isn’t cost that stops manga from being in full color; it is how people read the different mediums.
NewsbyTrent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer
Published on Tue Sep 15 2026
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With the current rise of both manga and Webtoons, the comic book medium has never been more diverse. It isn’t just the variety of stories that are being shared or the different creators involved; it is also the contrasting styles. Manga remains a predominately black and white medium while Webtoons are typically published in full color. According to Webtoon hit Eleceed’s illustrator,there is a specific reason for this, and it has to do with how people are reading comics.
Zhena has been illustrating Eleceed since 2018, alongside writer Jeho Son. She recently visited Anime Expo 2026 and talked about the difference between Webtoons and manga on a more technical level than we’d considered before.She was asked whymost manga are black and white while Webtoons are typically in full color.
“I’ll explain. With comic books, people tend to read the text first and then look at the pictures. With Webtoon, people are viewing it on their phones. With phones as the medium, you see the drawing first. You want to heighten the optic senses, so color is important. Nowadays, some add music as well. For [manga], it is a different medium, so text comes first, and then the picture is in black and white.”
This is a very different answer to what we expected, which was that manga, which is generally printed as well as digitally distributed, would be too expensive to produce in full color, while Webtoons, being an almost entirely digital creation, don’t have that issue. So, thanks to the Eleceed illustrator’s insight, we learned something new today.
Each week, Popverse’s resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say “greatest,” in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included…
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Trent Cannon: Trent is a freelance writer who has been covering anime, video games, and pop culture for a decade. (He/Him)
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