The Beginning After The End Web Comic's TurtleMe on His Upcoming Anime Adaptation

The Beginning After The End is a lot of things. It's a web novel, a webcomic and in 2025, it's going to be an anime directed by Keitarō Motonaga at Studio A-Cat. Written by TurtleMe, the story starts with King Grey, a powerful man of unrivaled strength, wealth, and prestige who finds himself feeling empty inside. After being killed, Grey finds himself reincarnated into a new world filled with magic and monsters. Now going by the name Arthur Leywin, Grey has a new chance at life and intends to live it to the fullest. Anime News Network had the opportunity to speak with TurtleMe at New York Comicon 2024 about what it was like writing his story, where he pulled inspiration from and what he hopes people take away from the highly anticipated anime adaptation.

The Beginning After The End is a unique story despite using some very familiar beats – the adult reborn in a child's body, the protagonist being the most gifted person around, the threat of slavery. How did you balance these elements to make the story feel fresh?

TurtleMe: So when I first started writing The Beginning After The End, it was ten years ago. Believe it or not, the whole “reborn isekai trope” wasn't as prevalent as it is today. It's, I admit, very saturated today and so stepping into the anime market at this time, it feels like I'm a little bit late. But when I first started writing The Beginning After The End, I always wanted to tell this story through the lens of this very powerful person being born into a world where everything is new and he has something that he didn't have in his previous life. So this very isolated, cold, calculating and powerful person is kind of navigating a new world with a new sort of lens.

That's the kind of premise I went with, and so every time I wrote the chapters, these arcs, I tried to really focus on the character instead of the power progression and the game level-ups. That's fun and important, too, but I tried to focus on the character development of Arthur as he matures and becomes more human in a way, because he is now receiving love from family and from friends, something that he didn't really have in his previous life

Since you do seem very familiar with these types of fantasies, even if they weren't as prevalent back then, were there any tropes you absolutely wanted to avoid?

TurtleMe: Right off the bat, I can tell you I didn't want a harem. Not that I have anything against harems, but I did want to really focus on the interpersonal relationship with one person and I think the more people that the main character has to juggle, the lesser those interactions feel. It's harder to kind of put as much focus on each interaction with a different love interest. So I tried to focus all my energy on one female lead. So yeah, a harem would be one thing that I did actively try to avoid.

Arthur's first life as King Grey seems to have taken place in a science fiction world, but he's reborn into a fantasy one. How did you decide that? Do you think there's more of a link between science fiction and fantasy genres than is typically assumed?

TurtleMe: That's a good question. To answer the second part of the question first, I don't think you see fantasy and science fiction intermingle that often. But, you know, I think the reader base is similar and I can attest to that because I love both myself! There are different parts of each genre that I really enjoy. So with King Grey coming from a more sci-fi world, I had a couple of check marks I wanted the character to have, with one of them being that he came from a more relatable world. It's futuristic, but it's not too out there. You can see more futuristic buildings and things are a little bit different, but you can also sympathize with that world and kind of relate it to our modern-day world, at least compared to the completely fantasy world of the beginning. I think what I mainly wanted to show was him using his knowledge of technology and bringing it into this fantasy world where it is a little bit less developed technologically. That's a trope that's been used before, but it's one that I really enjoy. I wanted to use it in a more mindful way where he's not just trying to gain riches and power by flaunting all of his knowledge.

Would you say the nature of his first world affects Arthur's view of his second?

TurtleMe: Yes, I would say so. I wrote The Beginning After The End at a time where I needed a bit of escapism. So I wanted to visit a new world alongside Arthur while also being the creator of this world. So while the sci-fi aspects had roots in King Gray, the fantasy was really the focus. Basically, I wanted things to be less technology focused, and more magic-focused.

Arthur is aware of his situation from the literal moment of birth, comes into his power at age three, and then there's a time skip until he's eight. What made you decide to follow this timeline? Were there particular challenges with opening the story in Art's infancy?

TurtleMe: I always wanted to keep things more upbeat. So there are moments where you have the contrast of a king soiling his pants upon birth. That is an image that I had immediately wanted to properly convey. It makes no sense, but it happens and it's humbling. I think, compared to a lot of other isekai stories where the main character gets born again, I do focus on Arthur's childhood quite a bit longer.

I do a couple of time skips, but I also want to really follow Arthur's psychological journey of becoming more human, becoming more loving of other people and not just being isolated as he was in his previous life. That's why I focused on moments when he was three, which is when he awakened, and then when he's a little bit older and became an adventurer. These are all beats that I used to emphasize what King Grey would do versus what Arthur would do.

You mentioned wanting to focus on just one relationship, so let's talk about Sylvia. The moment where Arthur says goodbye to Sylvia is almost more emotionally charged than when he's separated from his birth parents during the bandit attack. Was this intentional? What makes Arthur's relationship with Sylvia so special?

TurtleMe: When we first see Sylvia, she has the visual appearance of a monster, this very titanic beast with horns, black armor and red eyes, but we see very quickly that she's not just what she appears to be. I would say the difference between when you first see her and when you get to know her allows the readers to let their guards down. This was important to me because I wanted to create a really strong moment where these two very different beings, Sylvia and Arthur, are able to really just form a relationship. So Sylvia and Arthur's time together was very short, but I made sure to really keep it meaningful and bring it back to the story.

Did you adapt your novels into comic format (scripts) yourself? What concerns, if any, did you have about the shift from novels to webtoon?

TurtleMe: So regarding your first point, yes, I was the one that actually wrote the script for it while working with the art team in adapting it to the webcomic format. I would say the main challenge was the fact that I've never written a script before. You know, there are a lot of manga that I read when I was younger, as well as webcomics, but that's all just reading experience. I never had a formal education or any sort of reference material that I can go back to and be like “okay, this is how you create a webcomic!” Six years ago, webcomics were a lot newer and not very well established, so I really had to kind of jump into the fire and learn through trial and error. But I think that really helped me gain the skills and the nuances of what makes a webcomic great. That's what I continue to focus on, making sure that I can adapt my message into a more visual format.

Another concern was that there are parts of writing that are very hard to convey through visual means. So there were moments where my head was spinning, regarding things like, “how do I really make that transition? How do I showcase the emotions, the inner thoughts, the dialogue without just making it all text?” If we just have a person's face and all dialogue of what he's thinking, that's not as visually stimulating. So being able to adapt the emotions and thoughts into a more visual format, that was the hardest part of it. Even at the cost of the pace being a little bit slower, I really wanted to make sure readers got the mental state and the thoughts behind each character in a more visual way.

So just a quick example would be the spacing between each panel. How much space you put in between a panel can really set the tone and the pacing for when you read because readers scroll with their thumbs or with the mouse and they read through the panels. But how close they are or how far apart they are and what you add in between those panels really helps with the transitions and making sure that the mood is right. That's what I had to kind of learn on the fly. It was a lot of trial and error.

Do you have any concerns about the shift into anime?

TurtleMe: Well, I've never worked on anime before, so there's an inherent concern of not knowing what I am doing or what I am bringing to the table. I think, “is this part necessary? Does this work for the anime?” As much as the novel to webcomic transition was difficult, I would argue that the transition from webcomic to anime is even more difficult. With more people involved, with a bigger team and with more opinions being juggled around, I needed to make sure I remembered I'm the expert on The Beginning After The End. I'm not an expert on anime, but this is what I bring to the table. This is how I can help. I just make sure that they understand that and we compromise for the sake of the story, or for the sake of it being a smooth transition for readers from the web novel and the webcomic to the anime. That's what we're gonna do! So yeah, a lot of concerns, but a lot of excitement as well.

Arthur mentions that he's always wanted to be a big brother and that he was an orphan in his life as King Grey. How does this influence his relationship with his parents and the elves who take him in?

TurtleMe: Well, it really was a found family theme that I really wanted to build with Arthur. Unlike most found families, where the found families start from when the main characters are a bit older, the main character here has a whole life worth of experience behind him. But when he reincarnates, it's kind of back to ground zero, and he's very unaccustomed to that. When he just learns that he has a sister or when he forms found families with the elf king, those are going back to the found family idea that I really wanted to instill, so that it helps Arthur become a better person. It's not about physical strength, because he already has that, but more mentally and emotionally.

Even though Tessia is technically a year older than him, does he see her as a younger sibling because of his adult intellect?

TurtleMe: I would say so! I would even take that a step further where she almost feels like a niece to him. That's why I made very sure that their relationship was at a distance because the mental age of Arthur is so much older than Tessia. I had to kind of juggle that, but make sure that readers are still interested in Tessia being the heroine of the story. That's a great point you bring up and I think it's a great connection. I think the age difference mentally makes Arthur really kind of form a close bond with her. He wants to take care of her, but that doesn't look like that to others because he's a child, and that's why Tessia is so frustrated with Arthur, even as they grow up. Tessia is constantly frustrated, asking, “why don't you see me as someone older? You're eight! Why do you always see me as a kid?”

The Beginning After The End seems to draw from both Asian pop culture and western D&D fantasy. How did you decide what elements to use when building Art's world? Did you have any specific influences?

TurtleMe: So growing up, some of the influences that really helped shape my views and interests in fantasy were Aragon, Harry Potter, Gregor the Overlander and the Percy Jackson series. This is what I grew up with. So you have these epic fantasies of the New World, some hidden within our own world, but what I always felt the magic was a bit too intangible. We know it's there, but we don't know how it works. The Eastern influences came from them having a more hard take on a defined magic system. So that, along with more traditional epic fantasies and even D&D, those were all influences that I kind of took bits and pieces from to make sure that the pacing is both fast but also meaningful.

Are there any upcoming scenes in the novels that you're particularly excited to see adapted into comic form? Any you're concerned about?

TurtleMe: Well, again, I'll try not to spoil too much, but I would say, this war arc. I said this in a panel before, but this war arc is really important because it is when I truly focused on how I'm gonna finish this novel, how I'm gonna take it to the very end. Hopefully, now that I'm on my twelfth book, it's kind of all coming together. The war arc in general is when Arthur feels at his weakest, even though he's magically at his strongest. That is something that I look forward to alongside what happens at the almost climax of the war because I throw a really big curveball in there and I hope that comic readers will enjoy it just as novel readers have.

What do you see as the most appealing element of your series? Did you expect it to be so popular around the world?

TurtleMe: Well, what I find appealing about my story is the fact that it is a world that I created because I was often stressed out by the real world. So I wouldn't call this a self insert story as much as it's a love child of what I want to be. I want to be the strongest mage in this new land and I want to explore alongside the main character, and I want to kind of guide him on that journey. I showed that, not just through Arthur experiencing different moments in his life, but also by growing as a person through those experiences. While some people might say that the pacing is slow because of that, I really love the character interactions that I built and the effort I made to really make sure that each character feels alive.

Now did I expect the series to be this popular? Hell no, I did not! You know, The Beginning After The End is my first series and it's my first attempt at writing in general. Aside from high school and college essays, I have never written a fantasy or fiction story before this. So I obviously went in with the mentality of, “hey, this is gonna be almost like a journal. I'm just gonna write whatever I want. Just post it to get it out of the way. It's just on the Internet.” And to my surprise, it grew quite a bit. It attracted a lot more readers and so I definitely have to take it a bit more seriously. Which is why we're here now!

Why do you think so many people were drawn to it?

TurtleMe: I hope that it's the fact that they resonated with me during my time where I wanted to explore a new world, when I wanted to take a step back from our current world, my current life and current situation. I just wanted to forget everything for a brief moment and explore a new world without any stress. That is what I hope that readers resonated with and really liked about The Beginning After The End, and I hope it's why they continue to follow along Arthur's journey till today.

The novel series is quite long, although it is divided into arcs. Assuming that the upcoming anime can't adapt all of them, is there a specific place that you think would be a good point to end? Why?

TurtleMe: I would hope that it at least gets to the war arc I mentioned before. It's where the comic is at right now, just a little bit past when someone very important to Arthur passes away. I feel like that truly marks a moment that readers did not see coming at all. It's like, “okay, this normally does not happen. Why is it happening here? I can't trust anyone now. I don't know who's gonna stay alive or who's gonna die all of a sudden!” That is kind of how I would like to leave viewers. I just want to give them an idea that things are going to be different and the story is going to take you for a ride.

Do you think that seeing your characters move and hearing them speak will change the way you think about your story? What do you think will change for your readers by seeing (and hearing) Arthur and the others on the screen?

TurtleMe: I would hope, you know, whenever you read a novel or a comic, that you don't read it out loud. You read it in your head and you kind of give each character a little bit of a different voice. So seeing that come to life, my hope is that the expectation is met that what they sound like in the anime is close to what they envisioned in their head. That is what I hope that they get out of the anime, first of all. But personally, I think that just being able to see my characters come alive will make me more attached to them and will make me hope that there will be other avenues where I can see them come to life, whether it's through merch or through whatever else happens.

Do you think there's a double-edged sword there where you grow more attached to them because you can see them and hear them, but then when the tragedy hits, it's like, “oh, this feels more real now.”?

TurtleMe: Yeah, exactly! There's a weird part of me that's looking forward to those moments just because I saw the voice recordings of the voice actors, and they are phenomenal. They put so much emotion into the scenes. So seeing it animated and seeing those kinds of scenes come to life, not only as a webcomic or words in a novel, but in moving pictures as anime, I hope that resonates even more. So, yeah, I am somewhat scared that I might cry, but that just means I wrote something good.

In your opinion, what changes between reading a novel, reading a webtoon, listening to an audiobook, and watching an anime of the same story? Do you think that each version brings something new to people?

TurtleMe: I would say it really has an almost seesaw effect on your level of attention; how much active attention you need to give it alongside how much information is already provided to you. What I mean by that is, starting from the novel side of things, you have to be the one to imagine how the characters look, how the characters are moving, the voices that they're speaking in, the emotions that they have. That's all up to your interpretation and how you imagine that in your head. So you can create this vivid world in your head alongside the story and that can be the most attractive part to a person.

On the other hand, anime has a lot of spoon feeding, right? The characters are shown and the voices are heard. It's a lot more sensory because you're receiving information as a viewer. So it leaves less to your interpretation. On the one hand, that can lead to moments where you think, “oh this is really cool!” love seeing how immersive the world is. But on the other hand, it can be risky because some people might think it was cooler in their head when they read the novel. So I hope that I'm able to somehow meet both expectations or at least come to a place where everyone is satisfied. I'm asking for a lot, but that is my hope.

So would you say that maybe the difference is a difference of imagination in a way? In a novel form, you can, like you said, give the characters your own voice. You can imagine how a scene plays out. With a comic, you can still kind of give everyone a voice, but now you're seeing how the actions play out. Then in something like an anime or cartoon, everything is voiced, everything is shown, everything is presented to you, but that's out of the audience's control.

TurtleMe: No, you're perfectly right. It's a level of imagination that gauges the difference between novels all the way up to the anime. I feel like I've resonated with my novel audience.It got decently popular to get to this point, so I'm fairly confident that it resonated. Now the next hurdle is resonating with the anime viewers, who have a different mindset because they're not worried about imagining the world, imagining the characters and imagining the voices. That's all done for them. What are they focusing on? What is important to them and so how can we appease them? I think that is my next hurdle, but I hope that I can succeed.

Do you think that the anime will encourage more people to read your original work?

TurtleMe: I would say so, because that's what the webcomic did for the novel. While the webcomic is visual, you still have to read it. But with anime, now it's both visual and auditory as well. So the more sensory you give to your fans, the more people it attracts, I think. So I hope that a lot more fans are more inclined to just give The Beginning After The End a try. Even if it's just a fraction of them that are interested enough to check out the webcomic and web novel, I think I'll be happy.

Finally, do you have anything you want to say to your readers?

TurtleMe: Honestly, this is a big moment for all of us. Not just me as a creator, but also for my readers who have been with me since the beginning. You know, ever since I first posted my story online, there have been people wanting an anime for so long, and actually being able to celebrate with them, being able to tell them, “we finally did it” is a very exciting and even humbling experience. So what I would like to say to them is thank you. Honestly, as much as a lot of creators say this, I wholeheartedly believe that The Beginning After The End couldn't have come this far without my readers' encouragement and support. This is a new step in our journey. So I hope you stick around for me with this.

Yeah, I think we're in it for the long haul. Thank you so much for your time.