This review contains spoilers. 120295120277120276120295120280 120320120321120302120315120305120320 120307120316120319... Those of you who know mewho have 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 rambling setup before diving deep into a shows pros and cons. Well truth be told I cannot be fucking arsed to do it in this casenot for this mess. I am 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. It has been a long while since I came across an anime so aggressively shamelessly devoid of any meritone 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 winner of The Biggest Dickhead Around competition and managed to piss me off within minutes. Not episodesminutes. 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 sort of way but in the this should have never been allowed to exist in this state kind of way which surely goes against the Geneva Conventions. Now I know what you want. You want me to drag the nasty ghastly visuals through the mud beat them with a pipe and chuck their remains in the binand believe me I will. Nevertheless before I give that one a go I have to get something out of the way first because it is extremely easy to laugh rant and meme our way through disasters such as this one but it does raise a few questions and eyebrows. 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 we are robbed of good shows. No we are not owed masterpieces. No art does not 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 is not just another failed adaptation that at least seemed to have triedit is a soulless cynical insincere halfassed creatively bankrupt and barren pile of slop being peddled under the pretence of giving the viewers what they have 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. It is not their fault and so I do not 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 do not deserve your contempt. They deserve better and so do we for this is not just a shitty adaptation. It is a cruel joke. It is a heartless cash grab. It is a festering flyinfested parasiteridden carcass of an anime and I refuse to sit here and call it just another bad title oh well because it is 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 you have seen them I have seen them and your nan has probably seen them as well but I am not sure we are collectively appalled enough by the visuals hideousness. This is not Uzumakihttps://anilist.co/anime/111314/Uzumaki/ which at the very least managed to cough up a single halfdecent episode before completely imploding this is not Berserk 2016https://anilist.co/anime/21560/Berserk2016//2017https://anilist.co/anime/97643/Berserk2/ whose grotesque CGI 360 spins and awful SouthParklike animation made it a generational comedy masterpiece this is not 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 mates and certainly this is not 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 not agree with me it might be and I say this with deadserious conviction the ugliest anime I have 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 reactionwhether it be laughter disbelief morbid fascination or alcoholinduced excitement. But TBATE does not inspire mockery provoke outrage or anything in betweenit merely leaves you feeling empty insulted and physically unwell. There is 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. I absolutely despise the gross greasy and gnarly art style this show proudly parades around like some kind of badge of honouras if it wanted to announce to the whole wide world Yes I do look this bad on purpose. Think of the most genericlooking personalitydeprived anime you have 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 shitty DeviantArt projects. That is The Beginning After the End in a nutshell. It does not stop there as the entire screen is caked in this cheap oily glow that makes every single scene look overilluminated to the point where it is hard not to go blind during the many daytime scenes. Of course it is 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 might have had. The grass looks like it is made of bootleg LEGO rocks resemble crayon drawings trees feel like malformed broccoli and architecture appears to be made up of LED lights. And that is the thing that annoys me so much about themcolours should elevate everything else by adding vibrancy and atmosphere to every location. Here they are just loud abrasive and alienating. They remind you that this is not 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. The woodlands plains and nature itself seem sculpted from wet toilet paper while you could find all of the villages and buildings in one of those shitty mobile game ads. What makes this already insufferable visual mess even more aggravating is the complete lack of cohesion between the foreground and the backgroundthere is 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 they are constantly devoured by the environment around them and the result is a disjointed incomprehensible blight that is as confusing to look at as it is 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 you are left with is a presentation so bereft 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 strainit is 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 I will spell it out anyway: they are absolutely dogshit. They make the characters look like leftover presets from a dodgy MMO made in a smelly basement fifteen years agothe 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 modestybut you cannot find any of that here. I like my characters beautiful I like my characters uglybut 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 animationwell 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 intentionnothing 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 it is 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 do not even move. Bravo really. And whenever you think it cannot get worse the special effects and CGI shank you in the gut like a cartoonish goon. They are 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 who is hitting whom what is exploding in the background and why this anime was not cancelled during preproduction. Remember the quasidragon fight in episode three? Yeah I do tooand those horrid migraineinducing visual effects will continue to haunt me for the foreseeable future. It is 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 dishno thanks Oh right I almost forgot about the soundtrack. The opening sucks the ending sucks the insert songs suck and that is about the gist of it. When I called this series meritless I truly meant it. You would 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 that has got people enjoying it thoroughlysome signature flavour some amazing characters some witty plot developments some actual goddamn content that made it worth checking out. And while from what I have heard the source material does carry a soul of its ownI would not know since I have 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 shits on 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 could not care less about TBATEs story and charactersbut I will at least toss out a few examples to prove I am 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 instancehis 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 you have already seen enough of his training You have 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 could not 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 off the air for like almost a year? Even ifand that is 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 personality has expired. If you held a gun to my head and demanded I name five TBATE characters I would just pull the fucking trigger myself. 600https://i.ur.com/pPRUTXi.gif Ugh enough of this. While I would love to sit here and pretend that a month or two from now I will simply forget all about this shitfest and move on with my life the sad grim truth is that TBATE has 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 I have ever had the misfortune of watching. From soup to nuts it reeks with the kind of pungent stench you would expect to encounter in some ratfilled sewer system. And yes I am well aware of the old adage that all publicity is good publicity but I am not sure anyone wants their work to be remembered as that one adaptation so bad it became a punching bag. But alas after twelve long drawnout weeks of this seemingly endless torture session we are 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 masochistsenjoy your TBATEless days while you can breathe the fresh air while it lasts and brace yourselves for the shitstorm that is bound to come crashing down all over again. Godspeed brave soldiers.https://anilist.co/anime/194317/TheBeginningAftertheEndSeason2/ ...120295120309120306 120277120310120308120308120306120320120321 120276120315120310120314120306 120295120319120302120308120306120305120326 120280120323120306120319.