7 Manhwa With Fantastic Visual Storytelling

Highlights

• Good visual storytelling in manhwa utilizes color, texture, and formatting to enhance immersion and convey emotions, themes, and story progression.
• SSS-Class Suicide Hunter uses vertical formatting for smoother transitions and immersion, while Secret Lady’s lighting and ethereal art convey emotions and story themes.
• Tower of God showcases continuous improvement in art and world-building, while Mother’s Contract Marriage uses pastel colors and watercolor style to accurately depict a child’s perspective.

The most important aspect of any visual medium is how accurately it can portray the author’s story and intent. In traditional books, words can be used to define and describe people, settings, and events as they appear, but in content like manhwa, those things must be portrayed in the short space of a few panels. Getting the most out of a few images is incredibly difficult.

Although all manhwa use illustrations to present their settings and characters, many don’t utilize them to their full extent, resulting in excessive exposition or stiff imagery. Good visual storytelling uses more than just figures and backgrounds to send a message. They utilize things like color, texture, and even formatting to create a more immersive and exciting experience.

1 SSS-Class Suicide Hunter

MyAnimelist Score: 8.23

• Published: Dec 31, 2020 to Present
• Genres/Themes: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Time Travel
• Authors: Sinnoa
• Illustrator: Bill K

There are an innumerable number of tower and dungeon manhwa with protagonists with unique skills, but SSS-Class Suicide Hunter stands out because of its well-developed protagonist and consistent themes throughout the story. Of course, the quality of art and production in this manhwa is incredibly high, which alone is noteworthy, but what’s more interesting is the use of formatting.

Many manhwa are published online with a vertical layout to scroll through, and the artist uses that to their advantage, spreading images vertically to follow the reader’s gaze. This makes transitions from scene to scene much smoother and increases the sense of immersion. Breaking through panels enhances that feeling even more.

2 Secret Lady

MyAnimelist Score: 7.96

• Published: May 4, 2021 to Present
• Genres/Themes: Fantasy, Romance
• Author: Anngato
• Illustrator: Banana

The first thing most people will point out in Secret Lady is the artwork. It’s a beautifully illustrated manhwa with an attention to detail, mostly focusing on a dreamlike elegance. This style is reminiscent of classic Shojo manga, which features an airy quality meant to represent love and romance.

What matters most in this manhwa is the lighting of each scene. The artist creates vast disparities in light and shadow to create a certain atmosphere for each scene, especially for the two leading characters, making their feelings and mental spaces obvious to the reader. The ethereal nature of the art also alludes to the story’s concepts of gods and ghosts.

3 A Stepmother’s Märchen

MyAnimelist Score: 8.19

• Published: Jul 4, 2019 to Present
• Genres/Themes: Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Time Travel
• Author: Nyangi-wa Hyangsinnyo
• Illustrator: ORKA

In the Shojo manhwa scene, the look and feel of each manhwa are usually very similar, using bright colors and a graphic style. A Stepmother’s Märchen steps away from that trend by using watermark patterns and desaturated colors to match the historical nature of the setting, usually to dramatize specific points in the story.

This often occurs in tonal shifts in the plot where the slice of life meets mystery, coating the page in a sepia veneer to enhance the shadows of the illustration. Symbolism is another key aspect of this manhwa, acting as a vehicle for the religious themes that are present in the story.

4 Superhuman Era

MyAnimelist Score: 7.89

• Published: Jul 12, 2019 to Present
• Genres/Themes: Action, Super Power
• Author: Seop-I
• Illustrator: Seop-I

Action manhwa are popular because of their exciting fight scenes, showing off incredible powers and skills. Superhuman Era is much the same and provides many battles that are expertly crafted. More importantly, there isn’t much dialogue in those sequences, leaving the art to stand on its own.

While the illustrator doesn’t do any complex choreography, the combat is still interesting because each character has their own style and design. This manhwa wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining if the fights didn’t feel powerful or had no sense of impact. The depiction of force is done very well.

5 Tower Of God

MyAnimelist Score: 8.38

• Published: Jul 5, 2010 to Present
• Genres/Themes: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
• Author: SIU
• Illustrator: SIU

As one of the longest-running manhwa, readers have the pleasure of seeing the creators’ work continuously improve each season. The simple scenes and characters become more developed and detailed, expanding on the world and its inhabitants. The creator and his subject were able to grow alongside each other.

What’s most impressive is how battles have changed throughout the series’ lifespan. Simple fights have become large spectacles with beams, flames, and missiles, but the readability remains the same. It’s very easy for images of this nature to feel cluttered and confusing, but the bright colors and clear line work are able to maintain the story’s readability.

6 Mother’s Contract Marriage

MyAnimelist Score: 7.86

• Published: Dec 23, 2022 to ?
• Genres/Themes: Fantasy, Time Travel
• Author: Siya
• Illustrator: Hae-Yun Choo

There are many manhwa that include child protagonists, but none can portray an actual child the way Mother’s Contract Marriage can. That’s largely due to the illustrator’s ability to accurately depict the mind of a child through color and texture. Using various pastel colors and a watercolor style reflects the innocent nature of the story.

The protagonist, Lyrica, is an empathetic young child, and the colors of each panel are meant to represent her emotions as they change throughout the story. The use of colored shadows and highlights serves to create more complex feelings even if Lyrica isn’t aware of them herself.

7 The Horizon

MyAnimelist Score: 8.70

• Chapters: 21
• Published: Mar 30, 2016 to Jul 21, 2016
• Genres/Themes: Adventure, Drama, Psychological
• Author: Ji-Hoon Jeong
• Illustration: Ji-Hoon Jeong

The Horizon is one of the best manhwa to exist, even though its entire story is only 21 chapters. That’s due to the brilliant visual storytelling of Ji-Hoon Jeong. Relying on scant dialogue and extremely brief narration, the story of a young boy’s journey is told only in pictures.

The key to this manhwa’s success is in its simplicity. Stripped to black and white with a handful of details, even the smallest changes to a face or the setting have a big impact and affect the course of the story. It creates an unmatched sense of intensity that is only defined by the tragic events that occur, resulting in a heart-wrenching tale.