For Webtoon Creator Mongie, Let's Play is Personal

Leeanne M. Krecic has accomplished what many fans only dream about: a studio is adapting her original story into an anime series. Also known as "Mongie," Krecic first launched Let's Play online comic on the WEBTOON platform in 2016, where it grew to 7.5 million readers, earned an Eisner Award, and was optioned for a live-action series adaptation by Allnighter. Now, Krecic is moving the hit romantic comedy series to a new home in the fall (although she couldn't share where yet). The Let's Play anime series, helmed by Pokémon Sun & Moon director Daiki Tomiyasu at OLM, is set to launch on Crunchyroll in October.

We talked with Krecic about her emotional relationship to her characters, her early days as a Naruto doujin artist, and the Let's Play game, Everdate.

Can you talk to us about your journey as an artist? When did you first start creating comics, and what led you to create Let's Play?

Leeanne "Mongie" KRECIC: When I was 12, I wanted to be the youngest comic creator ever, and my mom said that wasn't going to happen, so I focused on other places. Then I got really super into doing fan art because I love supporting characters more than the main characters, and there wasn't enough fan art of my favorite supporting characters. I got really into trying to [draw] it legitimately in [the original creator's] style. And then I created fan characters like many often do, and I started doing doujinshi for [the] Naruto [series].

And then people were like, "This looks very similar to Kishimoto Masashi. Why don't you do your own?" And then it was like, "Why don't I do my own?" So I got to the point where I paid off my student loans, and I left my job as a program developer for a company. I couldn't go any higher in the company. And I just said, "Well, I'm not getting any younger. Let's pursue a dream."

Wow, that's great. So when you said you were creating a doujinshi, was that something you were publishing online or did you actually create print copies?

MONGIE: It was DeviantArt and Tumblr.

DeviantArt and Tumblr. Okay. I was gonna ask if you went to Comiket once or something like that.

MONGIE: No, no, no. It actually took me a long time to go to [San Diego] Comic-Con because I had social anxiety. Really, really bad.

Oh yeah?

MONGIE: And I always tell everybody that nobody is harsher on my art than I am. So it was very difficult for me to go to cons and be like, "Read that comic!" Now, I've learned to be a bigger advocate of myself since then and take pride in my book.

For those who haven't jumped into Let's Play yet, how would you describe your character, Sam Young?

MONGIE: Sam is highly intelligent and has crippling social anxiety. She has no experience in love, and she's classified as demisexual. She doesn't really have any romantic interest in somebody until she becomes emotionally connected to them. This has been an interesting exploration. I think a lot of people really appreciate that because it's kind of a different, you know, it's not the same story; straight, heterosexual type of story. Then she has a passion. Her struggle is like social media, social anxiety, no experience in romance. She wants to make games, but she has this opportunity to be the CEO of her father's company, which is a hugely successful company.

So she has this decision where we'll see more as the series goes on. It's like "Do I follow my passion or do I do what's comfortable and successful? So, is wealth better, or is my happiness better?" That was similar to my own experience.

I was gonna say this sounds like it's personal.

MONGIE: A lot of it's personal, and I was telling them last night that, in Let's Play, there are the Emoticons which are manifestations of different emotional states for the characters. The characters of Let's Play are my Emoticons. Sam is my anxiety, Monica's my sensuality, Charles is my injured trust and Marshall's my people pleasing side. You know, they're all different aspects of me. So it's like a reflection on me in a bunch of different ways.

How did you feel then when you were approached for this to become an anime series?

MONGIE: I didn't believe it at first. I was like, "No, really!?" It was shocking. I was shocked.

I just feel really fortunate and my flabbers are gasted. I'm grateful and I'm excited, but scared and nervous at the same time because I want it to do really well. And I also, especially in this day and age, I think putting smiles on other people's faces for just 10 minutes a day is worth it. That's all. That's worth it for me.

Tomiyasu-san, following your work on the Pokémon anime series, this is quite a different genre. What about the Let's Play series appealed to you?

Daiki Tomiyasu: Pokémon is heavily fantasy-based, and even the language used within Pokémon is make-believe. It's not a real language. But Let's Play, on the other hand, is based in a real place with real people, with real relationships. Being able to work on this project and discover new aspects of my work through challenges I've never experienced before has been very meaningful to me and a fun thing, personally.

One of the series' elements is memes, and those can vary quite a lot from country to country. Was it challenging to incorporate memes into the anime series and hit the right comedic notes?

TOMIYASU: All the things that come up on the screen, whether it's TV or on the computer within Let's Play, we realized it has to feel real to both audiences. So for the American audience, Heather from Crunchyroll really helped by giving us a lot of advice on what resonated with the American viewers. And also in adapting it into Japanese, we had to think of how to translate these accordingly so it would hit the same. But a lot of the Japanese audience is used to watching American or English-language content with subtitles. So I think there was already a culture there, which made the transition a lot easier.

How would you describe the visual approach to Let's Play? What was the approach to the color palette and adapting the character designs?

TOMIYASU: The producers gave us a keyword when developing the series: retro pop. So we thought, "Okay, what is that? How do we make that come to life?" When we did some research, we realized a lot of the U.S. audience felt a connection and loved the art of '90s anime in Japan. We looked closely at the thickness of the outline, how it was drawn, the colors that were used back then when they used film, and chose the vibrant colors that invoked nostalgia from the '90s.

So a lot of experimenting there and researching on what kind of art and colors brought out that nostalgia.

Is that an influence for you as well, the '90s?

MONGIE: Yeah. If I could do Let's Play without putting smartphones in it, I totally would have. Flip phones at the most. But I was like, I need to. Because gaming and streamers went hand in hand [with that technology], it wouldn't make sense to put it in a much earlier era.

But, when we were talking about doing a city pop theme, I love city pop, right? And I got into [anime with] Slayers and Sailor Moon, that era. I'm Elder Millennial.

Right. We might be the same age.

MONGIE: We might very well be. The three of us are almost around the same age. I feel very nostalgic about all that stuff.

One of the things I wanted to expand on a little bit. You mentioned Naruto, but what were some of the other manga and webtoons that may have influenced you?

MONGIE: The first webtoon I read was Girls of the Wild's. It was a combat—kind of like a shonen, but they're all female fighters, with different forms. That was what introduced me to vertical scrolling media. And I was like, "This is awesome!" Even the effects you can do, and as you're reading and scrolling, and you're rotating your phone. I thought that was so cool. I read manga online for so long, where you like, you're zooming in [and pinching your screen].

But other influences are Naruto, Bleach. Oh, the Vagabond art style. Because I don't do as much hatching, I don't do any hatching really. But [Takehiko Inoue is ] such an amazing artist, it was really inspiring to put more of myself into it. And I think the art style of the Let's Play comic evolves so much over the three years. I can't even stand to look at the old stuff. I look at the newer stuff and think I've come a long way.

Another manga has a similar effect to that. If you read old versions of Oh My Goddess!, you'll see that the art changes quite a lot through the entire process.

MONGIE: The Naruto pilot was so different from the release, and then it changed again in Shippuden once the anime came out. But it improved. It just kept getting better.

Was Sam's career as a game developer something you were originally interested in pursuing?

MONGIE: Since I have a degree in computer science, I am constantly gaming. I always wanted to someday make a game. But we're making Everdate; I'm not programming the game. I'm doing the writing and the art, but I still have a hand in the development of it, and so I can kind of mark that off my bucket list.

Can you tell me a little bit about Everdate?

MONGIE: It's a part visual novel, part card game. There are 12 Let's Play characters in there. There are 35 pairings. If you want to explore relationships like Uma and Monica, you can do that through the visual novel story. Then the date itself is a card game, and you can build your own deck, but each character has their own ability and their own traits that they can build off of. Like, Uma has really high ingenuity and low sensuality. Then you go on this date, and you're overcoming the challenges of the date deck. So it might be like your cell phone dies, or it's bad music, or a bad food order, stuff like that. You're overcoming it together.

Oh, interesting.

MONGIE: I came up with the slogan. It's "Find Your Player Two."

Oh, that's cute. Did you say when the release window is for that?

MONGIE: We had the Kickstarter, I think it was a couple of years ago. We're going to do 0.1 release, I believe, at the end of this month. I think we're going to do early access on Steam.

Well, thank you both so much for your time. It was really great to speak with you.

BOTH:Thank you.