Saikyô no Ôsama, Nidome no Jinsei wa Nani wo Suru?

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.

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).

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.

The storyline and the development are going to be the only things keeping me around for this slideshow of an anime. You cannot and I mean CANNOT animate a manwha of this caliber and simply ruin it like that. Almost all of the action scenes are literally projected like a slideshow. The monsters and other animals are CGI. Animation is a key factor in keeping watchers around and making it look more pleasing to the eye while making the watcher feel more immersed. A-Cat is ruining an anime that could be so great. If only another studio got this it would be portrayed so much better than what they are doing with it.

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.