Is On the Way to Meet Mom Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Webtoon, 53 chapters
Run	2024–2026 · ongoing
Community score	AniList 8.8 · MAL 8.8 · MangaUpdates 9.0
Content	Themes of grief and abandonment
Where to read	WEBTOON — official

Overview

On the Way to Meet Mom starts with a small, heavy image: a boy named Mori is found alone in an abandoned house and taken to a children's shelter. He's never had a family, and at first he doesn't even understand what he's missing. Then his closest friend at the shelter is reunited with her mother and leaves — and Mori realizes, for the first time, that every child is supposed to have a mom somewhere. So he sets out to find his. Gomyang's WEBTOON takes that premise and turns it into a short, fantasy-tinged journey that's less about the destination than about who Mori meets and who he becomes along the way.

What it does well

The art does an enormous amount of the work, and it's lovely. The full-color pages are soft and expressive, the character acting is warm, and a lot of the story's biggest emotional moments land on the strength of a single panel rather than a wall of dialogue. If you scroll through the first episode and feel something before you've even read much, that's the point.

What keeps it from being cloying is how honestly it treats its own subject. A story about an orphan looking for his mother could easily turn into pure manipulation, but this one plays it straight. Mori is a sweet kid without being a saint, the kindness he runs into feels earned, and the sadness underneath never fully lifts, which gives the warmth some real weight. It also understands restraint — it trusts you to feel things without underlining them twice.

Just as importantly, it respects your time. This is a short series with a clear shape, and it moves with purpose. There's no filler, no padding to hit a chapter count, no arc that overstays its welcome. You can read the core story in a single sitting, and it's built to be read that way — the momentum and the emotional build both benefit from it.

Where it falls short

The brevity that makes it so focused is also its main limitation. If you like to move into a series and live in a big, detailed world for a hundred chapters, you won't get that here; the world exists to serve Mori's journey and not much more. The story is also fairly upfront about where its feelings are headed. You can often sense a gut-punch coming a beat or two early, and while it still connects, it rarely surprises you on the way there. And because it leans so hard on mood and character, readers who want plot machinery or action will find long stretches that are simply quiet.

Verdict

Taken for what it is — a short, emotional fantasy about a child searching for a parent — this is a small gem. The art is gorgeous, the feeling is real, and it never wears out its welcome. Come to it for a beautiful, self-contained cry rather than a sprawling adventure, and it more than earns the hour or two it asks for.