This review contains spoilers. 120295120277120276120295120280 120320120321120302120315120305120320 120307120316120319... Those of you who know mewhove read followed or God forbid enjoyed my awful ramblings over the yearsare likely familiar with my usual shtick where I kick things off with a laidback halfrelevant anecdote or a nonsensical setup before diving ballsdeep into a shows pros and cons. Well truth be told I cant be fucking arsed to do it in this case not for this mess. Im genuinely too tired too incensed and frankly too goddamn disgusted by this shameless godless adaptation of a seemingly beloved web novel to humour the idea of some quirky roundabout preamble or a silly little segue. Its been a long while since I came across an anime so aggressively shamelessly devoid of any merit one that not only shits the bed at every conceivable level and opportunity but seems hellbent on spitting in your face as it does so. And yet at the start of April The Beginning after the End swooped in like the threetime world champion of The Biggest Piece of Shit Around competition and managed to piss me off within minutes. Not episodes... minutes. From the opening scene alone I could already tell that I was about to witness a colossal fuckup and sure enough it delivered. It really does fucking blow and not in the ah well this is kinda rough around the edges and mid as fuck sort of way but in the this shouldve never been allowed to exist in this state kind of way which surely goes against the Geneva Conventions but oh well Now I know what you want. You want me to drag the nasty ghastly visuals through the mud beat them with a rusty pipe and chuck their bloody remains in the bin and believe me I will. Nevertheless before I give that one a go I have to get something out of the way first because its extremely easy to laugh rant and meme our way through disasters such as this one but it does raise a few questions and eyebrows in the process. We as viewers as fans as people who want to spend their free time on a hobby they love are allowed to be angry when were robbed of good shows. No were not owed masterpieces. No art doesnt exist to suck up to our sensibilities or contort itself to please every flavour of viewer under the sun. That said standards effort and respect for both the material and the audience still matter and somewhere along the line that respect got shat on. TBATE isnt just another failed adaptation that at least seemed to have tried its a soulless cynical insincere halfassed creatively bankrupt and barren pile of slop being peddled under the pretence of giving the viewers what theyve always wanted no matter the cost or lack of quality while actively exploiting and capitalising on the name the hype surrounding the title and the loyalty of fans who deserved much better than this. Bear in mind none of this is to say you should take your anger and disappointment out on the animators or the rest of the staff involved in the production. Its not their fault and so I dont want you to direct your outrage at these overworked folks. The only entity that deserves a visceral furyladen beatdown and scolding is the finished product because the people working themselves to the bone behind the scenes dont deserve your contempt. They deserve better and so do we for this isnt just a shitty adaptation. Its a cruel joke. Its a heartless cash grab. Its a festering flyinfested parasiteridden carcass of an anime and I refuse to sit here and call it mediocre because its far far worse than that. 600https://i.ur.com/yN7OdEo.gif sigh I can no longer ignore the giant sickly elephant sitting deadcentre in the fucking room. Yes youve seen them Ive seen them and your nans probably seen them as well but Im not sure were collectively appalled enough by the visuals hideousness. This isnt Uzumakihttps://anilist.co/anime/111314/Uzumaki/ which at the very least managed to cough up a single halfdecent episode before completely imploding this isnt Berserk 2016https://anilist.co/anime/21560/Berserk2016//2017https://anilist.co/anime/97643/Berserk2/ whose grotesque CGI 360 no scope camera spins and awful SouthParklike animation made it a generational comedy masterpiece this isnt one of those charmingly shitpostworthy OVAs from a bygone era like Mars of Destructionhttps://anilist.co/anime/413/MarsofDestruction/ Skelter+Heavenhttps://anilist.co/anime/3287/TenkuuDanzaiSkelterHeaven/ Garzeys Wingshttps://anilist.co/anime/1657/TalesofBystonWellGarzeysWing/ which you can gleefully binge while blackout drunk with your equally intoxicated mates and certainly this isnt EXARMhttps://anilist.co/anime/106503/EXARM/ which is in a league of its own when it comes to unintentional hilarity. No The Beginning after the End is on an entirely different level of garbage. Though you may disagree with me it might be and I say this with deadserious conviction and a depressed look the ugliest anime Ive ever laid my poor brown eyes on. Say what you will about other awful series but most of them no matter how inept cursed or ridiculous elicit some sort of reaction whether it be laughter disbelief morbid fascination or alcoholinduced excitement. But TBATE doesnt inspire mockery provoke outrage or anything in between it merely leaves you feeling empty insulted and physically unwell. Theres this palpable almost brutish absence of fucks given in every single episode and scene and not because of cornercutting or time constraints but rather a complete lack of passion that makes me want to vomit my intestines out and use them as a skipping rope. I absolutely despise the gross greasy and gnarly art style this show proudly parades around like some kind of badge of honour as if it wanted to announce to the whole wide world Yes I do look this shit on purpose. Think of the most genericlooking personalitybereft anime youve ever come across and now imagine a version of that but stripped bare of all residual charm covered in the most plasticky pukehued paint imaginable generated by makeshift algorithms or lifted straight from some poor chaps sloppy DeviantArt projects. Thats The Beginning After the End in a nutshell. It doesnt stop there as the entire screens caked in this cheap oily glow that makes every single scene look overilluminated to the point where its hard not to go blind during the many daytime scenes. Of course its not just one or two aspects that falter here as every single visual component from colours to linework to composition is irrefutably irredeemably atrocious. The colour palette for one is a fullon gruesome assault on your retina. Every hue radiates this unnatural oversaturated rubbery artificiality that instantly butchers whatever immersion or interest you mightve had. The grass looks like its made of bootleg LEGO rocks resemble crayon drawings trees feel like malformed broccoli and architecture appears to be made up of broken LED lights. And thats the thing that annoys me so much about them colours should elevate everything else by adding vibrancy and atmosphere to every location. Here theyre just loud abrasive and alienating. They remind you that this isnt a labour of love but heartlessly manufactured disposable junk. The background art is equally horrible. Where most anime at least try to offer something picturesquedense forests lush meadows moody skies sprawling towns and whatnotTBATE instead presents us with an endless gallery of stockimagelevel backdrops that are reminiscent of sunmelted ice cream on a pigeonexcrementcovered pavement. The woodlands plains and nature itself seem sculpted from wet gas station toilet paper while you could find all of the villages and buildings in a pseudocinematic fantasy mobile game ad made in Windows Movie Maker. What makes this already insufferable visual mess even more aggravating is the complete lack of cohesion between the foreground and the background theres zero sense of spatial harmony blending or smooth integration of the characters with their surroundings which makes them come across as some poorly cropped stickers slapped atop a lifeless panorama. In a way theyre constantly devoured by the environment around them and the result is a disjointed incomprehensible blight thats as confusing to look at as its exhausting to endure. This is even further exacerbated by the utter dearth of shading and because of that every object on the screen whether organic or manmade ends up looking equally flat dead and indistinguishable from one another. Couple that with limp lopsided or straightup missing outlines and highlights and what youre left with is a presentation so robbed of dimension contrast or atmosphere that it becomes a challenge to keep your eyes open let alone stay focused. I wish I were exaggerating but staring at the screen for more than five consecutive minutes left me with genuine eye strain its painful to look at both literally and figuratively. Oh right speaking of painful I think you already know what I think about the character designs but Ill spell it out anyway for those in the back: theyre absolutely dogshit. They make the characters look like leftover presets from a dodgy MMO made in a smelly basement fifteen years ago: the clothes are uninspired and generic the facial expressions and overall structure of the faces are uncanny the models are clunky and stiff the proportions are hilarious you name it. A fantasy setting should ooze magic might majesty and modesty but you cannot find any of that here. I like my characters beautiful I like my characters ugly but above all else I like them human and nothing about these designs feels even remotely alive genuine or original. 600https://i.ur.com/o3PBVRL.gif However the icing on this turdshaped cake is undoubtedly the animation well if we can even call it that. From the very first episode onwards the show goes out of its way to constantly relentlessly brutally and viscerally bombard the viewer with some of the most nauseating scenes ever committed to digital media. Whether it be the agonisingly motionless fight scene between Arthurs familys friends and the goofy bandits in episode two the laughable scuffle with the elf girls kidnappers the tragically barren training montages in the elven kingdom or literally any of the dozens of throwaway sparring matches and silly clashes between fighters littered across the series none of them contain even a shred of energy clarity or intention... basically nothing fucking moves here. Every scene that requires impetus or displays characters not standing still looks like some sleepdeprived middle schoolers PowerPoint assignment rushed out the night before its due with shitty PNGs sliding across the screen like a bunch of leaden worms and bitterly amateurish speed lines occupying the corners of the screen desperately trying to manufacture some sense of momentum. Excuse me but what does anime actually mean? Animation right? How in the actual fuck am I supposed to take a show that fails to animate basic movement convincinglyif at allseriously? Hell even the talking scenes are so amazing that sometimes the mouths dont even move. Bravo really. And whenever you think it cant get worse the special effects and CGI shank you in the gut like a cartoonish goon. Theyre so loud obnoxiously inyourface and catastrophically cheap that they drown every moment in a slurry of radioactive blobs unholy lights and visual diarrhoea making it virtually impossible to discern whos hitting whom whats exploding in the background and why this anime wasnt cancelled during preproduction. Remember the quasidragon fight in episode three? Yeah I do too and those horrid migraineinducing visual effects will continue to haunt me for the foreseeable future. Its embarrassingly obvious that the show is dishonestly attempting to hide its many many many many many flaws beneath a mountain of pseudoflashy digital vomit but all it does is make the entire thing feel even more desperate directionless and drab than it already is. This is basically the anime equivalent of pissing into a bowl spraying it with glitter and trying to market it as a gourmet dish... no thanks Oh right I almost forgot about the soundtrack. The opening sucks the ending sucks the insert songs suck and thats about the gist of it. When I called this series ass I truly meant it. Youd think thatat the very fucking leastthe interior might try to compensate for the exteriors catastrophic properties. After all there must be something in the original web novel thats got people enjoying it thoroughly some signature flavour some amazing characters some witty plot developments some actual goddamn content that made it worth checking out. And while from what Ive heard the source material does carry a soul of its ownI wouldnt know since Ive not read a single sentence of it nor do I intend tothis anime adaptation not only spectacularly fails to translate that alleged personality but it violently grabs it sets it on fire and tosses the ashes into the nearest river. I have zero willingness to waste breath going scenebyscene through the narrative because frankly I couldnt care less about TBATEs story and characters but Ill at least toss out a few examples to prove Im not just whining about the visuals for six paragraphs straight. The gravest sin the show commits by far is its utter and unapologetic butchery of anything remotely resembling interesting character development competent writing tangible emotional weight or slowandsteady pacing. Rather than building upon its supposedly rich source material it slices it to smithereens skips numerous important moments and dumbs down every single relationship and motivation to the point where even the spark of sincerity that may have once existed is now buried under fifty kilos of sludge shortcuts and spedup content. Take Arthurs childhood for instance: his early years when he was meant to slowly grow accustomed to his new life grow fond of his parents and build some sort of emotional connection with the world. Nah who the fuck cares skip that shit says the anime reducing these four years into nothing more than a montage. What about that lengthy period he spends in a cave with that white dragonesque creature forming what is meant to be a touching bond? Too long dont care skip all of that grunts TBATE reducing a severalmonthlong stay into a oneweek vacation. Okay so what about Arthurs relationship with the elf princess the years he spends within the elven kingdom and the interspecies tension? Lmao no one wants to actually wait for stuff to develop naturally. Crank the playback speed to 8x Charlie. What about the moment when Artur finally reunites with his family friends and previously unseen younger sibling after literal years of separation? Booooring Here enjoy this yet another cacophonous action sequence straight from a PS1 game Right so what about Arthur sharpening his skills and transforming into your typical overpowered isekai protagonist? Pfft youve already seen enough of his training Youve already seen the 50 montages of PNGs sliding across the screen Stop being so demanding Why should I care about this characters growth when the anime itself couldnt be arsed to animate contextualise or emotionally frame it? Why should I be invested when the adaptation wants to wrap things up as soon as possible so that it can end and disappear from the air for like almost a year? Even ifand thats a very big ifthe original story had some potential the shows rendition of that tale is nothing short of lazy uninspired cookiecutter and empty. The same brutal treatment extends to the cast of characters who are just a bunch of cardboard cutouts designed to orbit around Arthur praise Arthur die for Arthur and disappear without a trace once their oneline personalitys expired. If you held a gun to my head and demanded I name five TBATE characters Id just pull the fucking trigger myself. 600https://i.ur.com/pPRUTXi.gif Ugh enough of this. While Id love to sit here and pretend that a month or two from now Ill simply forget all about this shitfest and move on with my life the sad grim truth is that TBATEs firmly settled in the deepest darkest recesses of my psyche and will continue to stay there for the years to come. Unless the universe conspires to conceive an even more offensively incompetent cynically produced artistically hollow abomination in the near future this will remain without question the worst anime Ive ever had the misfortune of watching. From soup to nuts it reeks with the kind of pungent stench youd expect to encounter in some ratfilled sewer system. And yes Im well aware of the old adage that all publicity is good publicity but Im not sure anyone wants their work to be remembered as that one adaptation so awful it became a meme. But alas after twelve long drawnout weeks of this seemingly endless torture session were finally free from TBATEs clutches. Not for long though. The second part is already looming on the horizon like a returning plague so to my fellow anime masochists: enjoy your TBATEless days while you can breathe the fresh air while it lasts and brace yourselves for the shitstorm thats bound to come crashing down all over again. Godspeed fellas.https://anilist.co/anime/194317/TheBeginningAftertheEndSeason2/ ...120295120309120306 120277120310120308120308120306120320120321 120276120315120310120314120306 120295120319120302120308120306120305120326 120280120323120306120319.