This review contains spoilers.

Those of you who know me—who've read, followed, or, God forbid, enjoyed my awful ramblings over the years—are likely familiar with my usual shtick, where I kick things off with a laid-back, half-relevant anecdote or a nonsensical setup before diving balls-deep into a show's pros and cons. Well, truth be told, I can't be fucking arsed to do it in this case; not for this mess. I'm 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's 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 hell-bent 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 three-time 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 fuck-up, 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 should've 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 it's 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 we're robbed of good shows. No, we're not owed masterpieces. No, art doesn't 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 isn't just another failed adaptation that at least seemed to have tried; it's a soulless, cynical, insincere, half-assed, creatively bankrupt, and barren pile of slop being peddled under the pretence of giving the viewers what they've 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's not their fault, and so I don't want you to direct your outrage at these overworked folks. The only entity that deserves a visceral, fury-laden beatdown and scolding is the finished product because the people working themselves to the bone behind the scenes don't deserve your contempt. They deserve better, and so do we, for this isn't just a shitty adaptation. It's a cruel joke. It's a heartless cash grab. It's a festering, fly-infested, parasite-ridden carcass of an anime, and I refuse to sit here and call it "mediocre" because it's far, far worse than that.

sigh

I can no longer ignore the giant, sickly elephant sitting dead-centre in the fucking room. Yes, you've seen them, I've seen them, and your nan's probably seen them as well, but I'm not sure we're collectively appalled enough by the visuals' hideousness. This isn't Uzumaki, which, at the very least, managed to cough up a single half-decent episode before completely imploding; this isn't Berserk 2016/2017, whose grotesque CGI, 360 no scope camera spins, and awful South-Park-like animation made it a generational comedy masterpiece; this isn't one of those charmingly shitpost-worthy OVAs from a bygone era like Mars of Destruction, Skelter+Heaven, Garzey's Wings, which you can gleefully binge while blackout drunk with your equally intoxicated mates; and, certainly, this isn't EX-ARM, 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 dead-serious conviction and a depressed look, the ugliest anime I've 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 alcohol-induced excitement. But TBATE doesn't inspire mockery, provoke outrage, or anything in between; it merely leaves you feeling empty, insulted, and physically unwell. There's this palpable, almost brutish absence of fucks given in every single episode and scene, and not because of corner-cutting 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 generic-looking, personality-bereft anime you've ever come across, and now imagine a version of that, but stripped bare of all residual charm, covered in the most plasticky, puke-hued paint imaginable, generated by makeshift algorithms, or lifted straight from some poor chap's sloppy DeviantArt projects. That's The Beginning After the End in a nutshell. It doesn't stop there, as the entire screen's caked in this cheap, oily glow that makes every single scene look over-illuminated to the point where it's hard not to go blind during the many daytime scenes. Of course, it's 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 full-on, gruesome assault on your retina. Every hue radiates this unnatural, oversaturated, rubbery artificiality that instantly butchers whatever immersion or interest you might've had. The grass looks like it's 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 that's the thing that annoys me so much about them; colours should elevate everything else by adding vibrancy and atmosphere to every location. Here, they're just loud, abrasive, and alienating. They remind you that this isn't a labour of love but heartlessly manufactured, disposable junk. The background art is equally horrible. Where most anime at least try to offer something picturesque—dense forests, lush meadows, moody skies, sprawling towns, and whatnot—TBATE instead presents us with an endless gallery of stock-image-level backdrops that are reminiscent of sun-melted ice cream on a pigeon-excrement-covered 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 pseudo-cinematic 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; there's 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're constantly devoured by the environment around them, and the result is a disjointed, incomprehensible blight that's as confusing to look at as it's 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 man-made, ends up looking equally flat, dead, and indistinguishable from one another. Couple that with limp, lopsided, or straight-up missing outlines and highlights, and what you're 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; it's 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'll spell it out anyway for those in the back: they're 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.

However, the icing on this turd-shaped 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 motion-less fight scene between Arthur's family's friends and the goofy bandits in episode two, the laughable scuffle with the elf girl's 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 sleep-deprived middle schooler's PowerPoint assignment rushed out the night before it's 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 convincingly—if at all—seriously? Hell, even the talking scenes are so "amazing" that sometimes the mouths don't even move. Bravo, really. And whenever you think it can't get worse, the special effects and CGI shank you in the gut like a cartoonish goon. They're so loud, obnoxiously in-your-face, 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's hitting whom, what's exploding in the background, and why this anime wasn't cancelled during pre-production. Remember the quasi-dragon fight in episode three? Yeah, I do too, and those horrid, migraine-inducing visual effects will continue to haunt me for the foreseeable future. It's embarrassingly obvious that the show is dishonestly attempting to hide its many, many, many, many, many flaws beneath a mountain of pseudo-flashy, 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 that's about the gist of it. When I called this series ass, I truly meant it.

You'd think that—at the very fucking least—the interior might try to compensate for the exterior's catastrophic properties. After all, there must be something in the original web novel that's 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 I've heard, the source material does carry a soul of its own—I wouldn't know since I've not read a single sentence of it, nor do I intend to—this 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 scene-by-scene through the narrative because, frankly, I couldn't care less about TBATE's story and characters, but I'll at least toss out a few examples to prove I'm 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 slow-and-steady 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 sped-up content. Take Arthur's 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 dragon-esque creature, forming what is meant to be a touching bond? "Too long, don't care; skip all of that," grunts TBATE, reducing a several-month-long stay into a one-week vacation. Okay, so what about Arthur's relationship with the elf princess, the years he spends within the elven kingdom, and the inter-species 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've already seen enough of his training! You've already seen the 50 montages of PNGs sliding across the screen! Stop being so demanding!" Why should I care about this character's growth when the anime itself couldn't 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 if—and that's a very big if—the original story had some potential, the show's rendition of that tale is nothing short of lazy, uninspired, cookie-cutter, 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 one-line personality's expired. If you held a gun to my head and demanded I name five TBATE characters, I'd just pull the fucking trigger myself.

Ugh, enough of this. While I'd love to sit here and pretend that, a month or two from now, I'll simply forget all about this shitfest and move on with my life, the sad, grim truth is that TBATE's 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've ever had the misfortune of watching. From soup to nuts, it reeks with the kind of pungent stench you'd expect to encounter in some rat-filled sewer system. And yes, I'm well aware of the old adage that "all publicity is good publicity," but I'm not sure anyone wants their work to be remembered as "that one adaptation so awful it became a meme."

But alas, after twelve long, drawn-out weeks of this seemingly endless torture session, we're finally free from TBATE's 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 TBATE-less days while you can, breathe the fresh air while it lasts, and brace yourselves for the shitstorm that's bound to come crashing down all over again.

Godspeed, fellas.