Kevin Kreider's Instagram / "Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal" by Kevin Kreider on WEBTOON
Webtoons, in recent years, have become an irreplaceable part of pop culture worldwide. The industry has shown burgeoning growth, especially in South Korea, which in turn has led to the global growth of webtoon IP at an unprecedented rate. The world’s largest digital comics platform today, WEBTOON, was born in South Korea, and now supports creators from all over the world. It is also empowering AAPI voices and giving them the platform to share their stories with a global audience.
One such story comes from Kevin Kreider. The actor and reality TV star who shot to fame with Netflix’s “Bling Empire”, has added another feather to his cap. He is now a webtoon creator with the launch of his debut webtoon “Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal” on WEBTOON. The story was conceptualized by Kevin and created in collaboration with Razz and Nina Gee, with assistance from Renato Ramos, Camila Marques, Jinglan, Pinga, and Austin Johnson.
“Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal” is an action webtoon based on the principles of Chinese metaphysics and Bazi. Chinese Bazi, also known as the Four Pillars of Destiny, is a traditional Chinese method of fortune-telling and astrology. It uses a person’s birth year, month, day, and hour to create a chart of eight characters (Ba Zi) that represent the elements and animals associated with their birth.
As you can tell from the title of the webtoon, our protagonist, Taejin, a Korean high schooler in Philadelphia, is destined to harness the power of Yang Metal as a Bazi user to protect not only his friends and family, but also his city. Once latent, his powers awaken when he sells off a family heirloom talisman to make ends meet. He meets other Bazi users, including a young girl named Suzy, and faces off against evil villains threatening to destroy the city. Taejin is based on Kevin’s own childhood as a Korean adoptee in Philadelphia.
With solid world building and characters you can easily root for, “Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal” is definitely a must-read. In celebration of the grand launch of “Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal”, we had the incredible opportunity of interviewing its creator, Kevin Kreider, who opened up about the creative process behind his webtoon, his dream cast in a potential adaptation, and more!
So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Kevin’s Instagram
Welcome to Kpopmap, Kevin! It’s great to meet you and congratulations on the success of “Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal”! As a multi-hyphenate, what made you add “webtoon creator” to your list of incredible and versatile titles?
I think part of the reason why I’m a multi-hyphenate is because I used a lot of my past interests and experiences into my new ventures. I don’t like to live my life looking back and wondering what would happen if I wouldn’t, if I would have pursued something, but didn’t. I know a lot of people just focus on one thing and just do one thing. I’m very jealous of the people who just want to be writers and only write or actors who only want to act but I like to do it all. I like to story tell, create, write, produce, act, all in the mediums of storytelling. So, I guess if you really looked at it, I am still focused on storytelling but just in a different medium. Now what made me add webtoon creator was that firstly I am Korean so I’m proud that this is a Korean based company or family company. And I loved comics and strips when I was younger and superheroes and I always never saw growing up anything that do it being Asian it was all American; rarely saw any Asian superheroes and if there were any, they didn’t look Asian, sound or have any type of resemblance of being Asian. So I wanted that to come to the forefront to the mainstream audience because I really want to normalize Asians especially Asian men as being heroic strong and a leading male just like any other race.
You describe “Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal” as autobiographical. Would you say the process of creation was cathartic in any way?
I’d say that any type of creation is cathartic to me because I don’t create things from things I don’t know which might not be the best strategy but at least for me it’s been working because it means that not many other people could really tell my story in such a specific and vivid way. I always use things that I wish I had seen in the world or wish was different from my life growing up as a child not seeing the same opportunities or people like me in the mainstream audience or mainstream world and so that’s why I think it’s always cathartic because I use stories that combine things. It’s kind of like knowing that there is no originality really in the world but we’ll mix things. Original is combining things and experiences.
“Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal” by Kevin Kreider on WEBTOON
Your webtoon focuses on Chinese metaphysics and Bazi for its power system. What about Bazi appealed to you enough to make a webtoon based on it?
What really appealed to me about Chinese Bazi is that it’s older than any other type of astrology really out there and thousands and thousands of years of studying people and I just think it was a great way that was already laid out that you could see your own powers come to life. I was using it for my own self-awareness and found it very useful so I thought why can’t I do this for superheroes in a different storyline?
The main characters in “Taejin” are all young people. You said it is based on your childhood but it is also resonating very well with today’s youth – Gen Z and Gen Alpha. How did you create this universality in the story? Was this something you paid special attention to or did it happen naturally?
This really just happened naturally to be real. The first iteration of “Taejin”, the main character Taejin, is supposed to be my age in the mid-thirties till late 30s trying to find himself. I guess you would call it a late coming-of-age but then as we were going through the story more and having more iterations of Taejin, we realized that we made a decision that it would be a teenager to hit the younger audience and also to relate more to webtoon audience.
Your MC, Taejin, grows curious about his roots in the webtoon. Was this also something you borrowed from your own personal experience as a Korean adoptee? We saw a glimpse of it in “Bling Empire” but I’m curious about what it was like for young Kevin and if creating this webtoon felt like healing the inner child.
I think everybody is looking for their identity in the world and those who have one eventually end up wanting to reinvent their own identity. I was actually really happy just being a Korean adoptee for a while but then I started to realize there were more people out there like me and that also there was no reason to be ashamed of being Asian when I moved to a more diverse city. And so that’s when I started to really look for my roots and also to just to know genetically what I’m predisposed to disease wise.
In addition to the superpower aspect, there’s an endearing coming of age angle to this webtoon, which makes it so relatable to a wide audience. There’s already a lot of “shipping” happening in the community too! Do you see “Taejin” going the romance way any time soon?
I would love to teach him to have romance. Actually I would prefer if he had it sooner and right away because obviously romantic leads are a very big part of my storytelling and mission. It’s part of the collaboration I have with WEBTOON where we work on things together and stories and with the writers and so, yes, working with other collaborators is compromise but part of my mission is to make Asian men sexy leading role model symbols in the western world and the eastern world, bridging them both together, not having just one way of seeing Asian men. And so, I’d like to have Taejin not be neutered and have a romantic lead and not follow the things that Hollywood does to Asian men which is they don’t make them Asian leads with desirable traits or be desired in their narratives.
Film and TV adaptations of webtoons are all the rage these days, especially in the K-Drama world. If you had to cast actors for playing Taejin and Suzy in a screen adaptation of “Taejin”, who would you cast? Are there any K-Pop idols in your dream cast? And is there a character (existing or upcoming) that you would want to play yourself?
I don’t know if I really want it. I originally, to be real, I wanted to cast myself as myself. That’s the first reason why I even created “Taejin” to begin with and now there’s other characters that will come in later in the series that I could play. So I’d want to cast myself as the future characters selfishly. I didn’t know much about webcomics and Hollywood and all these things. I thought if you created something, you could always play in it. So now what I realize is I have to produce so I can have more control, so I can be in the things that I created. Originally I really didn’t create it for other people to play the main characters in to begin with OR at least that wasn’t my intention so I hope that people love my first series and other actors will see themselves in it and can message me because truly I can’t see a single person playing the main role at this point ‘cause it was really individually made for myself in the beginning.
Could you possibly give our readers any tiny spoilers for the story ahead or tell us what we can expect next?
I couldn’t give two spoilers but just know that there’s going to be other elements showing up and other badasses to either help the main characters grow or try to stop them.
Finally, do you have anything you would like to say to all your fans who are reading and enjoying “Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal”?
Yes I’d like to have a word with my fans and audience out there who enjoy “Taejin”. Especially if you’re men, I noticed that females are actually more interactive and supportive of fan being fans. Men seem to be a little bit more not as generous. I’d really appreciate if the guys out there who want to see more men out there who look like themselves too or the females who have other men who have no men, who want more representation of themselves out there, to share this too. Also going to the web comic to like every episode, to engage with it, to pay to see more episodes coming out faster, and also to subscribe to it because every engagement is a metric for us to get a another season and a step closer for a live action or a cartoon series.
New episodes of “Taejin: Legend of the Yang Metal” release every Friday! The webtoon is in English and you can read it here.
