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        "The New Employee" The Most Loyal BL Drama Based On A Webtoon

        Adaptations usually requires changes that can modify the pace or feeling of a story. But some works are being incredibly similar to their sources, see how loyal "The New Employee" BL drama is to its webtoon version.

        Ash, Kpopmap Editor
        5 min to read  ·  Published : Nov 20, 2023 · Updated : Dec 7, 2023
        "The New Employee" The Most Loyal BL Drama Based On A Webtoon

        Watcha

        Adaptations of a work always require modifications based on the new media it will be adapted in. Yet, some adaptations stays very loyal and are almost the exact same as the original work, except for the new media it uses. Usually, from page to screen, a lot of changes are necessary in order to make a story worth seeing. A book or webtoon can hold much more information than a drama episode for example, due to the page length. But again, some adaptations came as good surprises and were very similar to their original work.

        It was the case for the BL drama "The New Employee" (2022), which was based on a webtoon of the same name. While other drama of the genre, also mostly based on webtoon, always went through great changes for their drama adaptation, it was not the case for "The New Employee". Of course, a few changes were required, but they seem so small compared to the similarities visible with the webtoon. So let's see how loyal "The New Employee" drama is to its webtoon inspiration.

         

        1. The storyline and timeline

        "The New Employee" The Most Loyal BL Drama Based On A Webtoon

        Watcha

        Usually, because dramas requires a budget and a lot of staff, many parts of a story are being skipped, whether they're not so useful to the development of the plot or just too expensive to be realized. You'll be glad to hear that it was not the case for this BL drama. The webtoon and drama have the same pace in terms of storyline, no scene was skipped, meaning it also kept the exact same timeline as the webtoon. This way if you've read the webtoon before seeing the drama, no risk of getting confused as to what happens when.

         

        2. The unique locations

        "The New Employee" The Most Loyal BL Drama Based On A Webtoon

        "The New Employee" by MOSCARETO on Manta / Watcha

        There are a few details about the locations present in "The New Employee" that we can see both in the webtoon and the drama. In other word, some props were probably made especially for the drama in order to replicate the exact sceneries of the webtoon. May it be the weirdly shaped desk at the company office or Kim JongChan's (Kwon Hyuk) apartment, everything looks exactly like drawn in the webtoon. This is very rare as usually the teams working on the drama just adapts with already existing props and locations. This shows how much efforts the production team put in this drama.

         

        3. The characters

        "The New Employee" The Most Loyal BL Drama Based On A Webtoon

        Watcha / "The New Employee" by MOSCARETO on Manta

        While the characters may have some little variations, such as Woo SeungHyun's (Moon JiYong) hair color for example, the characters are really alike in the drama and webtoon version of the story. Meaning that the personality of the characters were not modify to fit any kind of broadcasting standards and such. Plus, the characters also physically look alike the ones from the webtoon, if we forget about the hair color of the main character. The only big difference would be the addition of a character in the drama version, Seo JiYeon (Baek JiHye), who is an intern in the same company as SeungHyun. And because she isn't present in the webtoon version, the production and directing team were very thoughtful and hid a detail about that character in the drama. She only appears when SeungHyun is in need of help, and she helps him move on, so she helps develop the story silently, and she also belongs to no exact team in the company. She is almost like a ghost character, which was a clever way to implicit that she does not exist in the webtoon version.

         

        4. The dialogues

        "The New Employee" The Most Loyal BL Drama Based On A Webtoon

        "The New Employee" by MOSCARETO on Manta

        This has to be the most surprising similarity between the two versions. Usually when a work goes through an adaptation, one of the first thing that is being changed is the script. Due to the difference between the length of a chapter and the length of an episode, it is not uncommon to have some parts of a dialogue being cut off and rearranged to fit a new format. But in "The New Employee", the dialogues remains almost the same for every scene. as mentioned before, almost no scenes were cut off from the webtoon, adding on to the fact that almost all dialogues remained. And among those very little modification has been made, making it feel like the webtoon truly has been brought to life through the drama. That is very impressive and quite cool for those who've read the webtoon beforehand.

         

        5. The Love Story

        "The New Employee" The Most Loyal BL Drama Based On A Webtoon

        Watcha

        Last but not least, the love story remains untouched in the drama version. Since no scene was deleted and the dialogues and timeline remained the same, the evolution and background stories of the characters are identical in the webtoon and in the drama, which is quite new. In other BL drama, the love story evolves pretty fast compared to their webtoon version due to the short amount of episodes being produced and released, but it's not the case for "The New Employee". Here you can really enjoy a slow burn with some deep characterization and interesting background stories. Nothing is rushed, and it feels just right, it feels just like the original, and we really enjoy it.

         

        If you hadn't read the webtoon before seeing the drama, you can try reading it here (subscription needed to unlock all chapters), and you can try to spot the similarities and differences between the two versions. And if you had read the webtoon beforehand, what did you think of the drama adaptation? Let us hear your feedbacks in the comment section!

         

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        Moon JiYong

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