Billed as the first American webtoon to be adapted as a Japanese anime, "The Beginning After the End" is a fantasy adventure saga involving reincarnation, power games and mysterious creatures. The show debuts from April as an animated series on Fuji TV’s +Ultra programming block and on Crunchyroll.

Author Brandon Lee, better known under his pen name TurtleMe, told ContentAsia that despite starting with a two-season order, the new show barely scratches the surface of the massive universe he has created. “It is a drop in the ocean,” he says.

"The Beginning After the End" is about youngster Arthur Leywin, the reincarnation of a warrior king. In his new form, Arthur is able to call on magical powers, the wisdom and experience of the dead king and his own youthful ideals. But his quest to correct past mistakes and live a peaceable life among friends is deflected by war among the clans that forces Arthur to learn life lessons and become a more dominant leader.

California-based Lee says that instead of studying hard at school, he read dozens of comics, manga and graphic novels, including some written in Korean, and that The Beginning After the End was both an ode to his misspent youth and, initially, a hobby. 

Presented as a serialised novel with illustrations initially provided by Fuyuki23 that Lee uploaded weekly, the efforts were spotted by a producer at online publishing platform Tapas, which has been owned by Korean tech giant Kakao since 2021.

On Tapas since 2017, the franchise now runs to 11 online novels and made the transition to Korean-style webtoons in 2018, with some 200 episodes to date also on Tapas.

Available in seven languages, "The Beginning After the End" claims over 61 million online reads, of which 36 million are for the web comic. That makes it one of Tapas’ top titles and gives reported revenues of some US$500,000 a month. Six print volumes have been published by Kadokawa and Hachette’s Yen Press.

The step up to Japanese-language anime is driven by investment from Sony-owned Crunchyroll, which has employed Japan’s Studio A-Cat to handle series animation and production.

The show is directed by Motonaga Keitaro, scripted by Kono Takamitsu and has Fujiwara Natsumi confirmed as the voice of Arthur and Furukawa Makoto in the role of King Grey. No other cast has yet been disclosed.

Studio A-Cat has chosen to create 24 episodes, which it breaks down as two 12-episode cycles, and to leave most of Lee’s nearly two million words for future seasons.

“I was of the mindset that maybe we should go fast to reach the really juicy parts, grab the readers’ and viewers’ interest and get renewed,” says Lee. “But the studio wanted to delve into the characters and flesh out the early parts of the story.”

Lee has been consulted throughout on matters relating to the story and is credited as an executive producer. “I need to be careful of making sure that, while we try foreshadowing, we avoid spoilers for things that will be important later on.” 

In terms of visuals, Lee says that the studio has kept closely to the now-established style of the webcomic, but has amplified the character design. 

Tapas and Crunchyroll may be hoping for multiple impacts. Lee says that the core audience for the novels has always been young adult males. But he notes that his writing has matured over a decade of effort and that many of his readers have stuck with the property, thus naturally expanding the age range.

“Studio A-Cat is trying to further broaden the demographic, making it more accessible and more relatable to a wider array of ages and genders,” says Lee. 

And they are looking for a trickle-down effect for the Tapas-controlled source material too. 

“A lot more people watch anime than they read web comics. A percentage of those people will probably be interested enough to want to know more. That’ll lead them to reading the web comic,” Lee says. 

– By Patrick Frater