Hero Killer Webtoon: Read This Before the Anime Arrives

The Hero Killer Webtoon opens with a hostage standoff where a hero walks in grinning, and by the end of the scene a hostage is dead and the hero is telling the criminals it was their doing. A warning card about violence comes first, and the series never lets you forget why. That scene is the pitch: if the people with the badges are the villains, who cleans them up?

Image: WEBTOON, Episode 1 of Hero Killer. The question the series is built on.

It has also become a bigger name this year. On June 24, 2026, Variety reported that Passion Paris and ADN had entered a co-production on an animated series of the webtoon, with "Moonlit Bamboo Forest" director David Pagaille at the helm, announced at the Annecy festival. The piece gives no release date, so the useful thing to do now is read the source.

What Variety says about the Hero Killer Webtoon, and what it leaves out

Variety describes Hero Killer as published by Jaedam Media, created by writer Kkulbeol and illustrator Beolkkul, and "one of the most successful action titles" on Naver Webtoon. It says the series is available "in 10 languages worldwide" and spans "more than 250 published episodes". Passion Paris's managing director Caroline Audebert calls it "a bold, emotionally charged story with a fascinating heroine at its centre". The article also says the production unveiled a new illustration and a teaser visual.

It does not say where the series will stream, how many episodes it will run for, or which part of the story it will cover. Ours is the English-language edition of the Hero Killer Webtoon, which shows 116.8M views and 1.1M subscribers on its series page. MangaUpdates gives the original publisher as Jaedam, lists Naver among the original-language publishers and rates the series 7.08 from 108 votes.

The Hero Killer Webtoon on WEBTOON: what to know first

The series page lists Episode 287, dated November 5, 2026 (Korea time), and says "EVERY THURSDAY". Recent episodes all land on Thursdays, as the label says. The banner at the top says "9 new episodes only on the app!", which means a reader on the website is nine episodes behind the app. Episode 1 is dated May 10, 2021, and so are Episodes 2 and 3, so the first three appear together.

The first three episodes carry 139,793, 132,120 and 127,515 likes, and Episode 287 has 4,383. We can't tell from counters alone how many readers that gap represents.

Don't mix it up with Kill the Hero, a different series we have a reading guide for. Hero Killer is the one with a silver-haired girl in a red hoodie.

Image: WEBTOON, Episode 3 of Hero Killer. The crest that introduces the organisation behind the heroes.

Hero Killer Episodes 1 to 3, read

Episode 1. After the warning card, the episode opens with sirens and a hostage situation: criminals shout at the police to put down their weapons, and a hero named Jade arrives. A hostage dies, and Jade, grinning, says "I can't believe you killed that innocent hostage..." to the criminals. Meanwhile the protagonist stands on a rooftop with a man in a long coat, who tells her that with Jade's death her training will be complete. She answers "I haven't needed your help for a while, now", then steps off the ledge. A narration box lays out the rule heroes follow, that "one must always choose to save the latter" when it is one life against many, and how that rule "became twisted". Then comes the line the series runs on: "If the heroes are here to clean up the evil and corrupt villains, whose job is it to clean up the corrupt heroes?" Her answer is "then I'll do it", and she goes after Jade.

Episode 2. The episode opens on a conversation: someone asks "Do you want revenge?" and she answers "If it's possible, yes". The other person asks how she intends to find the exact hero who killed her sister, and she answers "I'll kill them. One by one." Then comes the fight with Jade, "the mad dog". She takes a beating first, then says "I think I get how your gift works now" and turns the fight. Before the end she tells Jade "I hope that in your next life you come back as a decent human being", and she declares "I'm a hero killer". Two bystanders note that the heroes have "already chosen Jade's successor", before his body is even buried. The last scene is a red-haired man who finds Jade's body and swears "I'll avenge you". The point for a reader is the pattern: she loses the first round and wins by working out how the other person's power works.

Episode 3. The episode begins with a card on the Hero Clan, "most heroes are members of the Hero Clan" and carry out orders from it, and the line that after beating the villains in a war the heroes "slowly tightened their grip of power". In the present, the protagonist notes it has been over a week since she killed Jade and the media hasn't said a word. The scene then moves to a cafe, where the owner greets her with "You're pretty early today, Ihwa", which is the first time in these three episodes that anyone names her. She is the one who remarks that there are no customers again today, and he answers "Oh come now." A red-haired customer sits reading a newspaper, she pins him with a blade, and he says "Calm down! I just came to say hi!" He also works out that she has used Jade's gift: "So... her gift is stealing other people's gifts, eh...?" The episode ends in a restricted zone full of mines, with a sniper's shot, a steel ball and a closing line of "Go to hell."

Image: WEBTOON, Episode 3 of Hero Killer. The deduction that sets up the series' power rule.

What readers are saying about the anime

The Reddit thread on the announcement is mostly about the studio. On June 26, 2026, u/sakvv wrote in r/manhwa that the studio "seems promising but the problem is they've mostly worked on short animations so it raises a question mark whether they'll be able to handle a series this long". A day later u/bryrrr argued that "France has a huge track record of producing peak animation" and that people should "give them a chance instead of doubting them".

Both comments are about the studio and not about the story, and neither mentions a release date.

Our take

Read Episodes 1 to 3 of the Hero Killer Webtoon this week, and let Episode 3 decide, because it is where the series shows it is more than revenge: the Hero Clan, a protagonist with a copying power and a cafe job, and a stranger who already understands her. If the warning cards bother you, stop there. If you want more, the rest is a very long run, with nine more episodes in the app than on the website. For other revenge reads, best manhwa revenge ranks eight and best manhwa antiheroes ranks eight more, and where to read manhwa legally in 2026 compares the sites.

What we don't know about the Hero Killer Webtoon and its anime: when it will release, where it will stream, or whether it will follow the webtoon from Episode 1. We haven't read past Episode 3, so we can't say how the later arcs or the Hero Clan are handled, and we haven't seen the nine app-only episodes. We also can't say why the list dates fall a day before the "EVERY THURSDAY" label.

How we checked this: on November 8, 2026 we read Episodes 1 to 3 in full on the WEBTOON viewer, went through the first and last pages of the series list, read the MangaUpdates entry, read Variety's June 24, 2026 report and the r/manhwa thread quoted above.

References

• Hero Killer on WEBTOON: episode list, counters, synopsis
• Variety: Passion Paris, ADN Team Up on Hit Webtoon 'Hero Killer' Animated Series, Jun 24, 2026: announcement details
• MangaUpdates entry: credits, rating
• r/manhwa: "Hero Killer" animated series announced, Jun 26, 2026: reader replies

Related Reading

• Best Manhwa Revenge: eight stories that earn the payoff.
• Best Manhwa Antiheroes: eight morally grey picks.
• Kill the Hero Reading Guide: a different series.
• Where to Read Manhwa Legally: nine sites compared.