Published by Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group and available April 1, 2025, Viral Hit is a Korean webtoon now being published physically. I can't seem to get into webtoons/manwa but I look into them for work and these reviews. This series follows a bullied high schooler as he goes viral for fighting bullies on stream. The art is pretty good -- manwa tends to have pretty impressive realistic art and this is no exception. The premise will appeal to people interested in streaming culture and heroes starting from zero, but it just didn't interest me. The constant profanity, which is censored with asterisks, feels like they're trying too hard to be edgy and just looks dumb. It was funny seeing a kimchi slap right out of a K-drama though.

Thank you Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group and Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is a fun but predictable high school story, with all the typical cliches of the genre. However, the arts are very beautiful. But I don't know if I will pick up future volumes to be honest.

Thank you NetGalley and WEBTOONS for the ARC.

This might be closer to 3.5 stars, however I rounded up because I enjoyed it for the most part.

This is a fun comic, although it does have some issues. I loved how spot on the live streaming was, including the portrayal of the streamers/bullies being fake for their audience. I also enjoyed the little bit of romance that’s being sprinkled in.

Parts of the story are a bit predictable. Although the bullying and violence is harsh and hard to read at times, there were other parts of the comic that made me laugh. Unfortunately I got a little bored during some of the fighting scenes.

Besides a lot of violence, there is an excessive amount of cursing. For most of the volume, the curse words are censored (until near then end). I understand it being censored for WEBTOONS, but when put into a book, why censor them? Also, there are a few typos and syntax issues. I’m guessing WEBTOONS brought the rights to the comic and copied and pasted but didn’t bother to edit or correct errors. It should be edited because, for example, I don’t know if the head bully made “3000,000” won or “300,000” won. And I don’t know if that equates to $250 USD or $35 USD.

I do look forward to future volumes.

Thank you Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group for the eARC via NetGalley.

This is a filled with high school drama. Bullies, getting beat up, crushing on a girl. The art style is very good and clean. But it’s hard to see what major plot will befall Hobin (protagonist).

This webtoon could definitely be adapted to kdrama, but it needs higher stakes or a serious antagonist for Hobin - which maybe we don’t see yet in this first volume.

e-ARC from NetGalley.

If this turned into a K-drama, I think I'd like to watch it, but I probably wouldn't watch an anime version.

This is the story of a pushover who desperately needs money to pay his mom's hospital bills. When a video of him fighting with a classmate goes viral, he decides to capitalize on the views by filming more content.

This felt very introductory but lacking in real substance. I love a good underdog literally fighting the odds story, but this first volume isn't compelling enough to convince me to pick up the next one. If we'd gotten juuuuuuuuuust a little bit more of his MMA classmate, maybe I'd feel differently, but I didn't particularly care for the character or his story thus far.

Decent manhua, just not for me.

I received an eARC of this title through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This wasn't a bad read. I would say there is an audience for this title, it is just not exactly what I expected. The main character is interesting and their motivations are clear and understandable. It is easy to read and get into the story. The art is great.

I think this just was not for me.

This book offers an intriguing take on what it’s like to be a live streamer—though with a much more violent twist. The main character is bullied at school by a popular streamer who fakes laptop giveaways to boost his audience. But after a heated confrontation between them and the bully’s crew gets streamed live, things take an unexpected turn.

Instead of staying enemies, the two team up and begin calling out bullies live on their stream. Meanwhile, the main character is also learning how to take a punch and fight back, both physically and mentally.

It’s a really interesting concept, and the art style complements the tone of the story perfectly. A well-done and engaging read!

I’m looking into the medium of webtoons recently since I’ve been reading a few of Webtoon Unscrolled’s physical releases. It’s an interesting strategy, but also, it’s a testament to how much popular titles have grown in the past years. One such title, Viral Hit, just received a physical release collecting the first eight episodes of the popular title. It’s a rocky start, but I can see the appeal.

Hobin Yu is a high schooler that’s in an unfortunate situation. Stuck in a dead-end job with an absent father and hospitalized mother to take care of, he’s constantly bullied by his peers. More unfortunately, one of his bullies is the famous streamer Pakgo, who uses his influence to get his way. After Pakgo’s cameraman Snapper takes advantage of his situation a bit too far, Hobin ends up fighting Snapper in his house. The fight is inadvertently recorded, making Hobin into a viral sensation overnight.

After a confrontation with Pakgo, Hobin reluctantly partners up with Snapper as the two try and figure out the Newtube game. After watching a mysterious video about how to get hit without getting hurt, Hobin decides to level up his fighting game while trying to impress Bomi, a girl at his job that takes a liking to him. This may be a hurdle, as Hobin’s MMA classmate Munseong Kim might also be eyeing her… or is he observing Hobin’s potential as a fighter?

I’m conflicted with my experience reading this series. On the one hand, I ate up the whole book in one sitting, but that was because I had a fascination for how amateurish the first few chapters are set up. I didn’t actually like any of the cast for most of the early episodes, and the initial incident just feels so slapstick and humorous compared to the rest of the volume.

It doesn’t help that the first few episodes have this weird censorship where more extreme expletives are bleeped out; it wouldn’t be an issue normally, but those words come up extremely often, which made me wonder if this was a problem in the original webtoon release.

Thankfully, the story gets out of this funk near the end, where the action gets wild and Hobin and Snapper’s partnership feels genuine. The bleeped expletives are gone too, with the swears uncensored, so it makes a bit more sense narratively. I think I’ll keep following this one if only because it’s got a lot of potential, but for now this was a very inconsistent opener.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a fun tale. I'm always a sucker for stories that have any sort of martial arts base. The fighting so far in this isn't that, with a lot of sloppy techniques from bully fighting, but it seems like it's going in the direction of learning how to legit fight, soooo, I'm counting it xD Admittedly, some bits of this had me cringing pretty hard. I think that was because of the art style that it would use for those times. Others may have found it funny. I just found it unpleasant to look at >_< Still, overall a fun webtoon, and I was definitely very grrrr with the ending because it left me on a scene I really wanted to see play out.

3.5 stars

Pretty interesting start! I can totally see this being adapted into a drama. It has the usual tenets: a nerdy kid getting bullied by popular kids, tough home life, has a crush on a really hot girl that (seemingly) won't give him the time of day. I was a bit worried the concept was going somewhere I wouldn't be interested in like a fight channel just to get views for fighting. Having the concept revolve around the MC taking on bullies and calling out bullies was a nice twist.

I found the date sequence pretty funny, <spoiler>especially when the MMA fighter showed up. I think his character is pretty interesting and I hope this signals he's going to help train the MC to get better at fighting. The daydream about being married with kids becoming him randomly in the other two's home was funny!</spoiler>

For a first volume, the art is pretty nice and I liked the memes. 90% of this took place in school though, so hopefully there's more of the outside world in the next volume.

Viral Hit is about a high schooler who's relentlessly bullied by a group of kids who are prank streamers and use his bullying as content. This was.. interesting. Didn't hate it, but didn't love it. I think for a wacky style comic I think it definitely could be enjoyable for some!

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this up. I do like fighting WebToons, but they aren’t my go to. Little did I know this was going to be funny as well as packed with action.

Hobin isn’t one of the popular kids. He isn’t an MMA star. He doesn’t have his life together and can barely afford his mother’s hospital bills. He’s bullied daily and with his poor grades, he isn’t going anywhere in life. But one fight ending up on the internet and going viral after he’s had enough from the “it” crowd would change his life forever.

I love Kim Junghyun’s art style, because the facial expressions of each of the characters really lends to the comedic parts. There is a lot of emotion that’s felt through the art that you don’t get just from the story (which is also really great).

I didn’t expect to enjoy this so much. We love an underdog story though!!!

Thanks to NetGalley and Webtoon Unscrolled for the ARC!

The plot seems a bit all over the place in the beginning, most likely to them trying to introduce the characters and their lives in a quick pace to get the story going. I wish we did have a bit more interaction of the MC with his sickly mother, to show just how far and how hard he works to take care of her. We get glimpses of it, but not many heart tender moments between the two. The premise is interesting and a bit absurd, goofy at times, from the things they do to the expressions they make. They do point out some stuff about how Youtube or how "Newstube" as they call it work. Nothing too in detail, but a few basic things are there from the Ad revenue to the censorship.

The fights are a bit silly, but they are still fun to see. And the humanistic aspects of wanting to get money for his sickly mother even if it means getting beaten up in Newstube videos seems realistic.

Overall it was a good read and I'm interested to see how the rest of the series pans out!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this volume.

Unfortunately I struggled with this one - there’s a huge watermark underneath every single page which makes reading it a jumbled mess. Characters are childish and pointless. The whole thing reads like a 13 year old wrote it.

Not for me.

Meek student Hobin Yu is targeted by bullies at his high school running popular "Newtube" accounts, until the day he goes viral on his mom's account when he gets into a fight with his bully's camera man after accidentally spilling a bowl of noodles on him. So begins Hobin's viral influencer career of calling out jerks and getting into (mostly losing) fights with them.

Viral Hit is at heart a black comedy, and a social satire of contemporary Korean influencer culture, where characters are in many ways unlikeable and watching them fail ridiculously is at least part of the charm. Hobin comes in with a great deal of built in sympathy, his single-parent mother is sick in the hospital and he's on the hook for the bill week-to-week, which he pays for with his crappy "McDonulds" job after school days of being bullied for user likes by influencers faking kindness for views. However, Hobin is also socially clueless, cowardly, more than a little sexist, and juvenile in his humor and attitudes, which eases the blow a bit when he takes harm or is humorously beat up for comedic effect. Other characters in his corner don't fair much better. This element, of somewhat unlikeable-but-relatable protagonists persevering through endless humiliation and physical, cartoonish levels of battery, is definitely the crux of the humor in the series and readers enjoyment may hinge on whether or not they find that funny.

Perhaps one of the most audacious parts of viral hit is that Hobin doesn't win in a traditional manner. He's not famous for winning the fights so much as calling out jerks pretending to be kind, and then surviving the beat-down that follows (increasing his viewership even more). Hobin begins to pick up some meager fighting skills in the second half of the book by watching Newtube videos by a foreigner wearing a chicken mask and a gi who's recorded himself teaching strategy and fighting techniques.

Above all, Viral Hit revels in absurdity, from the chicken-mask wearing fighting teacher, to Hobin's ridiculous facial expressions, to the absurd situations that Hobin and his cameraman (the same one he got into a fight with) find themselves in. An example: Hobin starts to learn to fight not for any practical or self protection purposes, but because the videos need to last three minutes to be able to justify ad revenue which means holding his own at least that long.

A strong start that could go in some really interesting directions.

Hobin Yu, a high school underdog, starts recording his fights against bullies, monetizing his videos to pay off his debt and using these encounters to gain internet fame. The protagonist is far from a typical hero—he’s weak, cowardly, and a pushover, which makes his initial struggles feel authentic. His growth throughout the first volume is both realistic and compelling, showing how he learns to build confidence and stand up for himself in a society that places a heavy emphasis on online validation. Interesting premise of school kids calling out their bullies and posting on YouTube with a good dose of action. Strong first volume. I’m hoping future volumes explore the issues of online culture and a society obsessed with the next viral sensation while continuing to provide fight breakdowns.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Webtoon Unscrolled for the advanced reader copy!

I know I'm not a fan of action without some type of romance involved but I wanted to check this out and overall it was entertaining and as always I liked the art but it wasn't for me.

Why did it grow on me ???

I don’t know how else to describe it other than a hot mess of a webtoon you want to hate but somehow keep reading—and then suddenly realize you’re kind of into it. It’s like the reality TV of webtoons: you watch it because it’s entertaining, but you can’t wrap your head around the fact that real people might actually act like that.

I’ll give this a solid three stars. Honestly, after the first few slides, I thought I was going to hate it, but I ended up being entertained. I especially liked how the MC fully leaned into ‘being a loser.’

This one also ended quite abruptly, which caught me by surprise.

&, the instant regret after buying a ‘luxury’ item like a ‘Kucchi’ tracksuit? So real. I own a single Chanel wallet I never use because, seriously, who actually uses such an expensive item? I’ll happily stick to being a bum, thank you.

TL;DR: Hated all the characters, the story was weird, but I was still entertained. 3/5.

*Blog post scheduled for March 19th, 2025

This just wasn’t for me. Very childish and sounded like they were trying way too hard to sound cool.

Viral Hit is about a high schooler that is bullied by popular kids who are also streamers. As a kid who's trying to support his mom while she's hospitalized, he realizes that inorder to make more money, he must also stream. So he starts streaming his fights.

This webtoon did not meet my expectations. Extremely unrealistic and odd, it missed its mark with me. The art style, while good, is extremely off-putting.

I do think there's an audience for this webtoon, I'm just not it.