The Beginning After the End

The animation for The Beginning After The End is honestly a massive disappointment. It barely qualifies as animation. It looks like they just took a still image from the manhwa, threw in some background movement, and called it a day. There's no real motion, no character fluidity and no emotion-just static scenes trying to pass as animation. It completely fails to capture the energy and emotion of the original story. Fans have been waiting a long time for a proper adaptation, and this half-hearted effort feels like a slap in the face. The source material deserves way better.

I AM JUST UTTERLY DISAPPOINTED!!!!!!

As a big fan of the original The Beginning After the End novel and webcomic, I went into the anime with sky-high hopes - only to come crashing down faster than Arthur in a bad mana training session.

First off, the pacing is a complete mess. They cram major life events - rebirth, childhood, training - into just a couple of episodes with almost no emotional weight. One moment baby Arthur is being adorable, the next he's somehow a mana prodigy, and you're left wondering if you accidentally skipped three episodes.

The animation quality is painfully average. For a series that's supposed to be filled with intense battles, beautiful magic, and rich worldbuilding, the visuals feel lifeless and rushed. Fight scenes lack the fluidity and impact needed to make them memorable, and sometimes characters look off-model mid-conversation - like they were drawn by two different teams.

Voice acting? Hit or miss. Arthur's voice actor tries, but some emotional scenes fall flat because the dialogue feels stiff or way too melodramatic. Also, the supporting cast sounds like they're reading a fantasy script for the first time in their lives.

Worst of all, they butchered some of the most important moments from the original story. Deep character development and world lore? Almost nonexistent. Instead, they favor tired isekai clichés and shallow action.

Honestly, it feels like a cash grab banking on the popularity of the novel and webcomic without respecting what made the original special.

Unless they turn things around drastically in future episodes, this anime adaptation might be the real "beginning of the end" for the franchise's reputation.

I think this is only my 2nd review of anything on here, and my 1st was to pillory a terrible anime many years ago, that had higher ratings than this one, it was just terrible.. (no spoilers in this review, this is a vague review, rather than a play by play)

With this one here, it's actually the opposite scenario.

I saw the bad ratings, and I prepared myself for a terrible experience.

But that is not what I got.

Yes, the animation is cheap, low budget, etc.

But as someone who really values the quality of the art in a project... the art itself, is fine. It's not 'bad'.

The Invicible cartoon recently had some low budget, cheap animation in it as well, and it even made jokes in the cartoon about the situation.

With this animation, it is only slightly worse than that, and that was produced by Amazon with I would assume, money behind it.

The reason for this review is because the story and characters are actually pretty solid, and to my tastes, great.

It's not a harem show. Which for these kinds of shows, seems rare, and I do not want harem shows.

I can understand that if someone came into this as a fan of the comic source material - and I can see that the story and characters are worthy of honour, then I can see how some of those fans could be disappointed.

I am a reader of Invincible, and I have found that... a little disappointing.

But truly, I have really enjoyed watching this, and I could watch 100 episodes of these characters and this story.

In terms of it's primary weakness, the animation, for me, it was at it's worst when it (a picture of a setting/ scene) scrolls down the screen and with my large screen, it juddered a bit, and was not good on the eyes.

If watched on a smaller display, that wouldn't be an issue, and those instances are... perhaps 20x in the show overall.

But those aren't action scenes. Not emotional scenes, just when basically going from one scene to another every now and then.

Aside from that, it is cheap, but when compared to experiencing a show with better animation, but an unappealing cast, and weak story - I was keen to watch this all in one go, and I was entertained.

Again, if this was 100 episodes I would watch them all.

And there are many higher rated shows where I do not feel that way.

I understand that the Isekai genre is overplayed, but not all telling's of stories are equal.

To me, the story and characters make this a stand out example of the genre.

Perhaps I am being too kind... but I really dislike harem shows. And most of them are harem shows... and here the story feels organic.

I have tried some shows from recent years where the animation was fine, but the art wasn't as good, and the characters were awful, the set up wasn't there, some just made no sense at all...

This is... fantasy in multiple sense's. It is easy watching fluff.

But IMO it is better than most Isekai's, and I've watched all the good ones.

I love Re:Zero for example. But I enjoyed this much more than Re:Zero's 2nd season.

Perhaps I just hate snow?!

What a problem with this series, for God's sake!

A super-famous mangwa, excessive expectations for the product to reach the "Solo Leveling" level, and the final result is far from what was desired.

What happened to TBATE deserves a profound analysis. How a series with so much lore, fandom, and history to tell ends up being animated by a studio like Studio A-Cat, which is only known for its cheap animation and its ability to quickly release series.

There was a fan movement to decanonize the series and have it canceled!

It sounds like a lot, but when you see the little or no love put into the series, you understand why the fans are so angry.

Beyond that, I want to analyze that the series clearly has potential, and I hope with hope that the improvement in the story in the last few chapters goes hand in hand with better animation.

It's not easy for a series to go from the pages to animation, but you can't look away if you only see a poorly animated PNG.

Hopefully we'll get to see Arthur's adventures the way they deserve, and that the sequel, due out in April 2026, will be infinitely better than what they showed us.

Horrible animations, stolen incipit (not all reincarnation stories copy each other, but here there are literally the exact same scenes from another series), absolutely uninteresting protagonist (usual manhwa character, very powerful for no reason, at the center of the universe, who relies more on this horrible "aura farming" stuff than on writing an interesting character), generic battle shonen narrative, in short at this point just watch leveling, which has the exact same problems but at least it is extremely well animated (personally I don't find it a great added value, but between a banal badly animated thing and a banal well animated thing I would choose the lesser worse).