Two couples reading in a narrow bookshop aisle, cover image for an article on the novels, manga and manhwa behind the catalogue

The Source Layer: Why Some of Our Records Are Books

Twenty six of the 170 records in this catalogue are books rather than shows, and all 26 have their screen version filed alongside them.

The web novel behind both is 113 main chapters plus 7 extras across 5 volumes, and the extras have no episode anywhere in the cluster.

Twenty six of the 170 records in the BLGLFLIX catalogue are not shows. They are web novels, novels, manga, a manhwa and a manhua, and each one carries the same 49 fields a drama carries. Every single one of the 26 also has its screen version filed in the same catalogue.

The count, and the rule that produced it

The rule is the content_type_text field and nothing else. Five values in that field describe a thing you read: Web Novel, Novel, Manga, Manhwa, Manhua. Everything else describes a thing you watch or attend. That split puts 26 records on the source side and 144 on the screen side.

The rule excludes three things worth naming. The Cherry Magic musical sits on the screen side because it is performed rather than read. Tie in books that exist only as a sentence inside another record’s adaptation_source field, such as the Nottakorn novel published alongside The Heart Killers, have no record of their own and do not count. Audio drama and drama CD releases are not filed as records at all.

Record types in the catalogue, split into the source layer and the screen layer, 170 records.
TypeLayerRecords
Web NovelSource12
NovelSource7
MangaSource5
ManhwaSource1
ManhuaSource1
TV SeriesScreen64
Web SeriesScreen20
AnimeScreen4
SpecialScreen2
MovieScreen2
Anime Movie, Series, MusicalScreen3

On the other side of the join, 34 of the 144 screen records share a franchise cluster with at least one source record. So a little over a third of the shows here can be read as well as watched without leaving the catalogue.

A Thai web novel and a Japanese manga reach print by routes that share almost no field values

The source layer is 16 Thai records, 6 Japanese, 2 Korean and 2 Chinese. The screen layer, counting every country a record names so that co-productions appear in each row, is Thailand 54, Japan 14, South Korea 11, China 10, Taiwan 6, Hong Kong 3, and one each for Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines contribute 12 screen records between them and no source records at all.

The magazine field is filled on 5 of the 26 source records, and all five are the Japanese manga: Kachi Comi, Gangan pixiv, Qpa, Dear+ and ComicFesta. That is the whole Japanese route in one field. A serial runs in a magazine, an imprint collects it into volumes, and the publisher field then names both the Japanese house and the English licensor, as with Takeshobo and Seven Seas Entertainment on Fake Fact Lips.

Not one Thai record carries a magazine. The Thai 16 run through publishers instead: Lavender holds 5, Deep Publishing and Satapornbooks hold 3, everY holds 2, and 4 are self published by the author, including GAP and Petrichor. Six of the 16 list a Thai reading platform, five of them MEB and one the MaReads and ReadAWrite pair. The Korean and Chinese records show a third shape again: Payback began as self published work by samK in 2010 and later moved to Pilyeon Management for a commercial digital edition, while the Mo Dao Zu Shi novel serialised on Jinjiang Literature City before Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House printed it.

Five franchises carry three formats or more, and the biggest carries six

Building clusters from the franchise_titles seam gives 27 groups of two records or more, covering 76 of the 170 records. Counting distinct content_type_text values inside each cluster ranks them.

Franchise clusters by number of distinct record types, from franchise_titles.
FranchiseFormatsRecordsSource records
Cherry Magic671
Mo Dao Zu Shi452
Fourever You3125
Payback332
Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami331

Cherry Magic runs manga, a Japanese drama, a Thai drama, an anime series, a live action film, an animated film and a stage musical across seven records. Mo Dao Zu Shi is the only cluster here with two source records of different kinds, a web novel and a manhua, feeding one live action series and two donghua. Fourever You is the largest cluster by record count at 12, and five of those twelve are the Lavender web novels.

Chapter counts against episode counts show exactly where the material goes

This is the part a reader can act on. Fifteen source records pair with exactly one screen record, and four of those pairs have a numeric chapter_count on one side and an episode count on the other.

Chapters against episodes for the four clean one to one pairs in the catalogue.
SourceChaptersScreen versionEpisodesChapters per episode
Until You #RiakDadSiThan12Your Dear Daddy81.5
Anata wo Korosu Tabi10The Journey to Killing You61.7
Chermchey28ChermChey102.8
Ton Som Yu Ban Khao41When Oranges Fall123.4

The median across those four is 2.2 chapters per episode. The larger properties sit far above it. The Mo Dao Zu Shi manhua runs 259 chapters over 8 volumes and The Untamed runs 50 episodes at 45 minutes, which is 37.5 hours of screen time and about 5.2 manhua chapters per episode. The web novel behind both is 113 main chapters plus 7 extras across 5 volumes, and the extras have no episode anywhere in the cluster.

The Cherry Magic manga is 69 chapters in 16 volumes. The Japanese series is 12 episodes at 23 minutes, 4.6 hours, which is 5.8 chapters an episode; the Thai series is 12 episodes at 49 minutes, 9.8 hours, from the same 69 chapters. Payback as manhwa is 95 main chapters plus a 14 chapter side story, filed against a 10 episode series of 7.2 hours. That side story is a whole reading arc the episode count has no room for, and the record says so in the chapter_count field rather than leaving a reader to guess.

The Fourever You case is the clearest. Five Lavender web novels hold 244 chapters across 9 volumes between them, and the seven screen records in the cluster hold 68 episodes. Because the novels are filed by direction rather than by season, a reader can tell from the record titles alone which book carries which pair.

How this was counted, and where it could be wrong

Sample: all 170 title records in the BLGLFLIX catalogue, read on 14 September 2026. Fields read: content_type_text, country_text, language, publisher, magazine, chapter_count, volume_count, episodes, episode_duration and the computed franchise_titles seam. Franchise clusters were built by union of the franchise_titles links, so two records connect if either one names the other.

Three limitations. First, chapter_count is filled on only 13 of the 26 source records and volume_count on 20, which is why the ratio table rests on four pairs rather than fifteen. Second, a chapter is not a fixed unit of anything; a 1,200 word web novel chapter and a 40 page manga chapter both count as one. Third, the finding that all 26 source records have a screen version in the catalogue is a selection effect rather than a discovery, because a source with no adaptation would not have been entered in the first place. It describes the catalogue’s shape, not the publishing world.

One check did not survive. Source records look far less distributed than screen records, with a median platform_count of 0.5 against 2. But 13 of the 26 source records have an empty network_text field, so that gap measures how completely the field has been filled, not where a book can actually be read. It is not reported as a distribution finding.

Sources

  • BLGLFLIX catalogue, 170 title records and the computed title packs, read 14 September 2026.
  • TMDB for screen record metadata, episode counts and runtimes.
  • Publisher and imprint names as recorded in each source record: Lavender, Deep Publishing and Satapornbooks, everY, LUCKPIM, T&M, Square Enix, Akita Shoten, Tokuma Shoten, Takeshobo, Shinshokan, Suiseisha, KADOKAWA, Kidari Studio, Pilyeon Management, Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, Pinsin Studio and Seven Seas Entertainment.
  • Serialisation platforms as recorded: Jinjiang Literature City, MEB, MaReads, ReadAWrite, Bomtoon, Lezhin Comics, Naver Series, Ridibooks, Gangan pixiv and ComicFesta.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How many records in the BLGLFLIX catalogue are books rather than shows?

26 of 170. Twelve web novels, seven novels, five manga, one manhwa and one manhua, counted from the content_type_text field.

Do all of those books have an adaptation on the site?

Yes. All 26 sit in a franchise cluster with at least one screen record. That is a property of how the catalogue was built rather than a fact about publishing in general.

How was the split counted?

One field, content_type_text, read across all 170 records on 14 September 2026. Five values count as source, everything else counts as screen.

Which franchise spans the most formats?

Cherry Magic, with six distinct record types across seven records: manga, two live action dramas, an anime series, a live action film, an animated film and a stage musical.

How much is compressed between chapters and episodes?

Across the four pairs where both numbers exist, the median is 2.2 chapters per episode. The Mo Dao Zu Shi manhua runs 259 chapters against 50 episodes of The Untamed, about 5.2 per episode.

Why do the Thai source records list no magazine?

The magazine field is filled on five records and all five are Japanese manga. Thai titles run through publishers such as Lavender, Deep Publishing and everY, or are self published, with e-book distribution through MEB.

What does this article not claim?

It does not rank a book against its adaptation and makes no judgment about either one. It also does not measure how widely a book can be bought, because 13 of the 26 source records leave the network field empty.

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