Brandon Lee levels up from web novel, to comic, to anime

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Caroline Cao: Can you remember your first story you may have written or imagined when you were young?
Brandon Lee: TBATE was actually my first time writing. I would say that maybe my “story crafting” came about inadvertently when I was young and playing with Lego. I had this huge tub of Lego pieces, and I would just make whatever I can with them. And so that would extend anywhere from fantasy, monsters, robots—yes, all across genres.

CC: Talk about the comic influences you grew up with.
BL: It started off with American comics. I read a lot of Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Captain Underpants, in middle school. I had a whole bookshelf full of them because of every book fair. I would spend all my money on those books. So I got in a lot of trouble from my parents for buying comic books, but that's besides the point. I found out about manga and manhwa. My first manga were probably One Piece, Bleach, and Fist of the North Star, because that was just what was accessible at the time. We didn't have as many mangas out in bookstores, aside from those big three.

And so that's what really got me started. And then that opened up, “What other manga are out there?” It made me deep-dive into the world of scanlations—across all genres, right? I liked fantasy the most, but I also read a lot of slice-of-life. I actually enjoyed a lot of sports as well. Some of my favorites are Eyeshield 21. I really loved how they made a sports (story) into this action-packed kind of story. I found The Breaker, a Korean (comic), but the Korean artist (Park Jin-hwan) drew in a more manga page format, rather than a scroll format. From Japanese manga, to Korean manhwa, to Korean light novels, to Japanese light novels, and then Chinese web novels, it's just the whole timeline of all the things that I've consumed.

CC: What characters were probably direct or indirect inspirations for someone like King Grey?
BL: Whether it was subconscious or not, the idea of this cold king who was isolated and a figurehead, but also very strong—not politically—but in terms of individual strength, was something that I thought was a change from all of the books and comics that I read at the time. I read a lot of reincarnation at the time, the reincarnation theme trope (being) mostly isolated to Japan and Korea. And at that time, again, a lot of the protagonists were everyday, relatable characters that came to this fantasy world and struggled to survive. But I thought it'd be interesting if, “What if there was this very powerful person that reincarnated?” That's how I came up with King Grey.

King Grey of "The Beginning After the End."

Courtesy of Crunchyroll

CC: How did you decide “I really want to publish this story, The Beginning After the End” on an online platform?
BL: It really wasn't a hard decision because I didn't think that much of it. I never had any big dreams of making The Beginning After the End into this huge IP that would become a comic and then an anime. It was me having this premise and character in mind of Arthur, and being like, “Ooh, I want to see where I take this story.” And just I wrote it on a Google Doc, and then I published it onto a free-to-read platform. It was a way for me to see if there's any readers that would be interested in reading my stuff and getting their feedback. “Hey, I really like this world that I'm creating. I like this character. What do you guys think?” It would become a very organic sort of conversation where I would publish a chapter, I would get feedback, I would publish the next chapter, and so on and so forth. 

CC: Did the first chapter get a lot of feedback?
BL: It's hard to say off the top of my head exactly how many views I got from the first chapter, but I think within a couple of weeks of me just publishing, I was able to get a couple of thousand readers to tune in every time I published (a chapter). So it grew a lot more and a lot faster than I actually imagined. I thought I'll get a few views here and there. Posting was my way of “I can improve.” (Commenters) would point out typos or grammatical errors. “Oh, let me fix that real quick.” And it was an organic way to learn how to write better.

CC: How did you balance your day job with writing?
BL: At that time, writing was my way to unwind. I would finish around 6 p.m., and I would commute back home. I would stop by a cafe and just sit down, grab a cup of coffee and open up my laptop and start writing. Actually, I just started by reading at that time. I would just use that time to just grab a cup of coffee and read after work. But that sort of evolved into writing. After one day, I was like, “You know what? I read a lot of books. I want to try writing one.” So that became my sort of day-to-day ritual. It'd be working nine to five in finance, and then going to a cafe, and then going back home to sleep.

In "The Beginning After the End," King Grey is reincarnated as Arthur Leywin.

Courtesy of Crunchyroll

CC: By what chapter, by what stage of popularity did you realize it was time to quit your day job and commit full-time to TBATE?
BL: I think it was around the second or third book. It was really when there were quite a bit of readers signing on to read my stuff. They were supporting Patreon, and it felt like I had a responsibility to really see it through. Because back then again, there were a lot of people trying out indie writing or self-publishing. As easy as it is to start writing and publishing on that platform, it is also easy to just drop off. So there were a lot of writers that came on and readers would get excited, “Oh, this is a cool story.” And then suddenly the writer is like, “I'm gonna quit.” So I didn't want to be someone like that, because I was one of those readers that was like, “This story by this amateur author is really good,” and then suddenly they would disappear, and, “What happens to the rest of the story?” It just never gets finished. I hated that feeling. I thought it was my responsibility to, “Let me commit to this. I want to be true to my readers and see to it to the very end.”

CC: How did you come to collaborate with artist Fuyuki23 for the webcomic?
BL: After publishing on the Tapas platform for about a year, the novel did also very well on that platform. And Tapas being a platform that houses both novels and comics, they were rolling out something they were trying their hands on: adapting some of their original novels into comics at that time, and TBATE was selected to be one of them. So after some discussion, I wanted to go through with it, and that opened up the entire process of trying to find the right artist for me. It was a process where I would write the script, and I would have these sort of metrics that I would use to be testing them. And Tapas would go out and find these artists. They would look at the script and all the other information that I sent them. And the artists would turn in their sample work. And I would go through all of them and see which style would best fit. And that's how I came across Fuyuki23.

And it's cool to see that he is taking his skills and working on another project that is in publishing as well. I still keep in touch with Fuyuki, and we still have a really great relationship where we kind of keep tabs on each other. It's cool that we started this project together six years ago. I'm doing my own stuff. He's doing his own stuff. We're both doing really well in the industry. I'm very lucky to have found Fuyuki23, just because I was still an amateur author at the time. Fuyuki had a few works under, but he was still in the stage of growth, so we really helped each other develop our skills.

CC: What critiques, positive or negative, have you dealt with?
BL: A lot of the critique was around just basic stuff, typos and grammatical errors. I didn't have an editor at the time, so it was me editing it, but by the time I wrote it, I'm going back and trying to proofread it. It's kind of glazing over me. So a lot of basic errors at that time that I got critiques for were with a good intention. The readers were like, “Hey, you missed this. You missed this typo,” and I would fix it. It would help you really grow nowadays.

I think I tried to stay a little bit away from criticism online (lately), so it's always in hindsight that I look back at the critiques and feedback. But for the most part what I've noticed is readers getting invested into the story.

A young Arthur Leywin.

Courtesy of Crunchyroll

CC: What was it like working with the 2025 anime adaptation?
BL: There was a lot of back and forth, from what I hear, between Crunchyroll and Tapas in solidifying the (anime) deal. I'm not aware of the nitty gritty, but both Tapas and Crunchyroll have been very attentive to my recommendations on the anime adaptation. Obviously not everything that I say can be the final answer. There's other things to take into account, but they are very respectful. They listen to any concerns, critiques or feedback, “Let's make this a little bit more aligned with the rest of the story. Because there're 10 other books out there after this, and we need to make it seamless.” Overall, it was a very good experience.

CC: I imagine it must have been complex to process the reactions to the anime adaptation too (alluding to the viewers’ criticism over the anime and Lee’s Seattle Times response “always room for improvement”).
BL: So I saw my novel getting turned into a web comic to the anime. I had concerns about certain parts of the web comic, but ultimately it was for the better. And for the anime as well, that's what I'm learning. I think there's nothing that I can do that will make everyone happy and everything perfect. But I think it was a good experience to learn from so many people, so many different teams, from the anime side, from the Crunchyroll side, from Tapas side, from my side, all coming together and trying just to make a really good product that people will hopefully enjoy because no one's out there trying to make something bad, and it shows everyone was enthusiastic and passionate about what we can do to make sure the readers really like it—make sure that new fans will also really like it.