New Crunchyroll anime Let’s Play has Missouri origins

“Not in my wildest dreams. If somebody told me, at 13, when I was watching Sailor Moon, that I was going to have a title that has an anime… I’d be floored,” says Kansas City-based author, creator, and illustrator, Leeanne M. Krecic.

Krecic, also known online as “Mongie,” created the Ringo Award-winning webtoon, Let’s Play. The romantic comedy follows independent game developer Sam Young as she navigates fulfilling her career and love life in Los Angeles. Complete with the adorable dog, daily coffee shop hangs, and a warm, comedic group of friends.

For those out of the loop, a webtoon is a vertical comic, designed to be easily scrolled and read on phones and laptops. “You can add sound effects, parallaxing, animation, all this stuff, and so that just completely titillated my ADHD brain. You can add so much and bring so much to the table with it,” says Krecic.

“Don’t get me wrong, I still love print comics, but the possibilities for a digital webtoon format are just endless.”

It’s written in a way that’s impossible to put down, and this is no mistake. “A lot of people will say that, for comics, I had some of the best cliffhangers of episodes,” says Krecic.

“I mean, humble brag, I guess, but that’s just what they’re saying!” Everyone loves and hates a good heartstopping “to be continued…,” but Mongie also specializes in foreshadowing. Krecic says, “I always love planting seeds in the comic as it’s going. I get absolutely delighted when readers are like. She said this in episode 27, and now, in episode 103, it comes up!”

Having an independently published work become world famous is already a massive accomplishment, but having it then catch the eye of OLM, the same company that brought Pokémon to the world? Next level.

It’s been a surreal experience for Krecic to see her creation brought to life by a major anime studio. “I’m a crier on my father’s side, so I have cried so much in this project,” says Krecic. “When I first heard the voice acting to the animatic, very late at night on a Zoom into Japan at the studio, that’s when it felt really real.”

Much like the tone and themes of Let’s Play, Krecic is unable to be anything but endearingly real. Recalling how many joyful tears were shed in the process, “It got to the point, they’d be like, ‘The creator’s crying again.’” Krecic says. “I know enough Japanese to be like, ‘So cool! So excited!”

Let’s Play offers something special both in the story and behind it. One of Krecic’s requests of OLM was to have as many women working on it as possible. “(The anime) has four female producers on it,” says Krecic. “And I’m really grateful the writer is female as well. There’s a lot of women working on this, and I’m grateful.”

It’s especially noticeable in the character design, which was done by a woman. “I think like a lot of anime viewers are kind of getting tired of the cliches of like harems and hyper sexualized stuff,” says Krecic. Though there’s no shortage of steamy content in her repertoire. It’s all about context and tact, which Krecic and her team seem to understand thoroughly.

The supporting characters really stand out in the anime and webtoon, especially the protagonist’s father, Krecic’s personal favorite. “His facial expressions are so over the top, he’s fun to draw,” says Krecic. “He’s the manifestation of every panicked father having a daughter.”

Krecic’s take on the father is that of a shonen anime lead: all grown up with a company, wife, and daughter. A personal favorite moment in the show is his character reveal, which is simultaneously endearing and hilarious.

“I was like, whoever’s going to voice that character needs to have like the strong CEO boss voice, but then also a be blubbering idiot at the drop of a coin,’ says Krecic. “And they picked the perfect person for it. He’s (Kenta Miyake) just been amazing.”

Krecic’s journey from Macon, Missouri, to Kansas City, and then to Tokyo didn’t happen overnight. Mongie’s rise came slowly, and yet, all at once. “So it started off very slow. When I was doing self-publishing on Webtoon and Tapas,” says Krecic. Recalling when she gained 20 readers at the Kansas City Comic Con. “And then it was every other day I’d get like 10,000 readers,” says Krecic.

Things really boomed when Webtoon, the website she was uploading to, featured it as one of their original comics. That’s when she’d see hundreds of thousands of readers biweekly. “You can see the likes, interactions, and comments just growing, growing, growing,” says Krecic. Let’s Play ended up winning a Ringo Award and was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2019.

Let’s Play just scratches the surface of the Mongie universe. She’s developing Everdate, a dating simulator game based on Let’s Play, that’s expected to be released soon. She’s got a few stories available on her Patreon, like The Dragon Oath.

“It’s about a princess who basically sacrifices herself to support her country and become the princess of a dragon,” says Krecic. “But the day she arrives, and the dragon is like, ‘No, thanks. Don’t let the door hit you.’” She’s also releasing the polar opposite of a rom-com, a psychological thriller, “The Charlatan.”

Krecic has “respawned” right here in Kansas City. Adding yet another cool person to our repertoire. Krecic brought Midwestern charm and heart all the way to Japan, and then the entire world—an international production, originating from KC.

The first string of episodes is now available to stream on Crunchyroll.

You can read the Let’s Play webtoon on Tapas, as they’re no longer available on the Webtoons website. Alternatively, you can purchase the books, if you’re a print person.