The Beginning After the End

I've never seen animation this bad - if you can even call it animation. This anime is basically just a collection of slides. And on the rare occasion something is animated, it's worse than any fan animation I've ever come across. Is this supposed to be an anime or a PowerPoint presentation? I genuinely can't understand what the studio was thinking with this. It's a complete disservice to the source material and to the viewers.

What makes it even worse is that the story actually had potential. Fans were excited for this adaptation, but what we got is an insult to everyone who supported the series. The lack of effort is painful to watch, and the end result feels lazy, rushed, and soulless. Honestly, this should be used as a case study for how not to adapt a beloved web novel.

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.

Never seen a decent story like this, get done so dirty. The animation is more like putting a power point with one or two animated frames here and there, while leaving the rest with just images. At this point, just read the manhwa who is far better in quality compared to this. Overall the story is okay considering the hype it got before it's release. So if you are here for the story and not it's animation, feel free to give it the try and it won't disappoint. Still, I would highly recommend to just read the manwha instead. It's far better quality than this animation we got for such a good isekai.

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?!

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).