The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

The Beginning After The End

King Grey is a once-powerful ruler reborn as Arthur Leywin, a boy with untapped potential. He discovers that his new life is filled with danger and adventure at every turn. From mastering powerful spells to facing fierce enemies, Arthur must use his skills and wits to protect those he cares about and uncover the secrets of his mysterious reincarnation. Along the way, he finds friendship, challenges, and a destiny that could reshape the very world around him.

The Beginning After The End is based on a web novel by TurtleMe. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

ANN received a screener for the first episode of this anime and is publishing this review according to the agreed embargo time.

I've been very happily keeping up with the webtoon of The Beginning After The End as Yen Press publishes compiled volumes, so I feel very secure in making this statement: This first episode is not putting the series' best foot forward. Not that it has many options—it would be wrong to skip over Arthur's early childhood because it is central to his character. As the end of the episode shows, the contrast between his previous life as a king in a science fiction world did nothing to develop his emotional health or intelligence. There's a strong implication that he was an orphan who fought his way to the throne, and now that he's been reborn as an infant, he's not sure what to do with a set of loving parents. Learning that and appreciating it becomes a major factor in his development. It just…doesn't make for exciting viewing.

Also, an issue is that this episode attempts to cram in a lot of world-building. Some of that, it could be argued, is necessary. The “mana core” idea is different enough that I could see where someone thought it needed to be spelled out early on. But most of it feels like something that could have organically slipped in during a more exciting episode. Why tell us about the three kingdoms on the continent when it could be shown later? Do we need to spend precious minutes going over the types of magic when Arthur could extrapolate from observation? Although I suppose I ought to be grateful that they didn't feel the need to explain why he can read.

Those complaints aside, this is a perfectly passable introduction to TurtleMe's story. There's an entertaining aspect to hearing adult Arthur (or who he used to be) narrate about being itchy or lamenting his poopy diapers, and the episode is 100% creep-free—Arthur never makes gross comments about breastfeeding or anything similar; the closest we come is him being embarrassed that his mom is changing his diapers. (To this end, I am glad they decided to leave out Arthur's first glimpse of his new life, from the opening of his mom's vagina as he's being born.) The end of the episode, where Arthur fully begins to realize what it means to have a loving family, is easily the strongest part, and it's done well enough to make at least a small impact.

While the art does a nice job of adapting the webtoon's imagery, it's not all that exciting, and the animation isn't spectacular. But I think that fans of the comic (and probably the novels; I haven't had a chance to read them yet) will be able to stick with this because they know what's coming. And if you haven't read it? It does get better, but I wouldn't blame you if this episode had a hard time convincing you.

I consider it a victory whenever we get an isekai protagonist who isn't your average Japanese high schooler. The Beginning After The End takes it one step further with a protagonist, Arthur, who doesn't even come from our world. Rather, he is from a sci-fi world where he was trained to become a warrior king from a young age.

In general, this first episode shows us the difference between his first upbringing and his second. From the brief glimpses of his first life, Arthur was molded to become a heartless king. He and other orphans were forced to fight, and only one would eventually be able to seize the throne. We also see that he wasn't revered even as he led his kingdom to victory in battle. He constantly had to watch for assassins in the night—and given how young he still looked when he died, it seems like they got him in the end.

All this is to say, Arthur, in his first life, was raised without love. In his second life, it is the opposite. His parents are incredibly loving and supportive. They care for him and risk their lives for him. Their relief at seeing him safe at the end of the episode teaches Arthur the difference between duty and love. He had assumed they were raising him as their duty, but now he can see it was for love—and can even feel that love himself for the first time.

All in all, it's a decent start to the story—the focus on defining Arthur as a person sets the stage for his ongoing character growth. Spending the whole episode with him as an infant/toddler also allows for humor at the horror of a grown man being trapped in a body that can't move or communicate as he wants. Beyond that, we get just enough world-building to know about the setting and magic system. I'm interested in seeing where it goes from here.

The most interesting thing about The Beginning After The End is just how international its origins are. It started as a web novel with an American writer and an Indonesian artist, published on a Korean platform before being adapted into a Japanese production. How global! In the end, however, it only goes to show that various cultural influences do not automatically make something interesting. If anything, The Beginning After The End is a fine example of otaku media's mukokuseki, or “cultural odorless” as described by Koichi Iwabuchi.

The best way I can think of to describe the plot is “Mushoku Tensei without the creepiness.” Like Rudy, Arthur Leywin dies in a harsh world but is reborn in a land of magic to loving parents while retaining his memories. Their affection for him and for each other softens his heart and inspires him to build a better life for himself this time, while his adult intellect allows him to master magic at a much younger age than expected. However, while Rudy died after he was caught spying on his young niece in the bath, Arthur died a king. He focuses his energy on how his parents care for him, relearning to control his bodily functions, and sneaking into his family's library when he thinks his mother's back is turned.

Unfortunately, while The Beginning After The End lacks Mushoku Tensei's skeeze, it also lacks its sauce. I laughed out loud at an early frame when Arthur's mother holds him, fully dressed and presentable, minutes after giving birth. Arthur's head is 50% of his body; her legs, visible under the blanket, are twice as long as the rest of her. As Arthur bobbleheads his way around, I remembered toddler Rudy's realistic pudginess; it may sound petty, but as someone who is literally about to spend eight hours caring for a passel of one-year-olds, I can't help but notice these things. Arthur's outfit pre-reincarnation, consisting of pauldrons layered over a cape layered over a toga layered over full plate armor, had too many elements to the point of tackiness.

And it's just not an interesting story. Reincarnation isekai have to do something really special to catch my attention these days, and “baby who is really powerful because he has the mind of an adult” ain't it.

You know what's so frustrating about these “Reborn-sekais”? Even if the story does have potential, there's often hardly any way to know because they all insist on wasting their time with the same. Godforsaken. Story beats. Every. Single. Time. I hope you aren't tired of devoting an entire episode to seeing an adult man drolly narrate his way through the ups and downs of being reborn into a new life and forced to live as a baby, because that's what this premiere has to offer. Our hero cries. He poops. He laments the interminable suffering of his abominable existence. He learns about magic. He poops again.

If I could say anything positive about this premiere, it's that I liked how the episode placed some dramatic emphasis on Arthur's appreciation of his cozy family dynamics, what with the solitary and lonely existence he led in his previous life as a monarch. I would have appreciated even more contrasts between life as a monarch and life as a tiny tyke, both because they would offer a break from the overly cutesy tone of the episode and because it would have made for a more intriguing plot overall. There might just be an emotional core to uncover somewhere beneath all of that schmaltz and cliche.

Unfortunately, another major issue is preventing me from scoring this premiere any higher. The show's meager showing on the visual front. It wouldn't quite be fair to say that this premiere is barely even animated, but at the same time, I could practically hear the celluloid being stretched as far and as thin as it possibly could be to pad out the runtime. This simply isn't a very attractive cartoon to look at, which is a major problem for any anime. Incredible aesthetics can overcome a crappy script, and an incredible script can usually survive a sloppy adaptation. When the script and the animation are more or less equal in their sheer mediocrity, the negative consequences are exponential.

So, I'll have to give The Beginning After The End a hard pass. If, by some miracle, the show ends up being some kind of hidden gem by the time the whole season is finished, I might be persuaded to give it another shot. Still, there are far too many superior products out there just begging for our attention to waste time on an anime that is so subpar. It's not the worst thing you could waste a half-hour with, but you should still settle for something at least a skosh more interesting for even your most half-hearted attempts at killing time.