Isekai as a subgenre has several tropes that we have become familiar with. The heroine now reincarnated as a villain trying to change her predestined fate. The normal guy who is now the hero and has to find a way to become more than what he was in the past. Or the individual reborn as a child with all their memories of their previous life with them. All of these have been used and played around with in many different shows. The Beginning After the End is using the child reborn trope and sadly isn’t doing much beyond that.
We begin with King Grey who looks like a medieval monarch but he is ruling over what appears to be a very technologically advanced civilization with him having flying devices bombing a city as we hear the screams. Then we see him dying but how and why he dies is currently unclear. But he is reborn in a medieval fantasy world now named Arthur. His parents are loving people who seem to live modestly but were previously adventures, both with magic skills. He discovered, due to a similar skill from his past life, he also has a great affinity to magic in his new life.
In the two episodes I have seen, the biggest problem is that this all feels very familiar with little making it stand out. Arthur’s parents and their friends are just run of the mill good guys. They are just there because of Arthur’s story not because they seem to be adding anything to the story in and of themselves. Their past and what they think of the world they live in is nonexistent, not even a little hint of the world situation or even their interpretation of it.
All we know is that there are three kingdoms split by species- humans, dwarves and elves and that magic exists in all of them. Even the magic feels very basic right now with two kinds talked about augmenting and conjuring (though variants of that are starting to get fleshed out). Arthur’s values and thoughts are given more detail mainly in the flashbacks and inner thought about his past life, and how detached and ruthless we see him being is by far the most interesting aspect of the show. The mystery behind it is intriguing. He mentions becoming king by combat not being born into it and him killing as a form of mercy, as well as seeing some strange technology acting as advisors or judges of some sort commenting on the king’s justice. Being in his head about his previous life it seems that he had to be ruthless but that doesn’t mean he was “evil” In his new life Arthur seems to realize how cut off he was from human compassion he was during that time when he feels his parents genuinely caring for him and liking that sensation.
Yet those moments have been very scarce, seemingly being planned as a bigger reveal in later episodes. That makes sense from a story and character progression for Arthur but the problem is Arthur right now feels directionless. He is learning magic because he is good at it and acquiring power is what he knows and so he is doing it again. He loves his parents in an abstract way because they are his parents but we haven’t seen him bond with them or even what he thinks about them as individuals.
I normally do not do this, but I heard the comic this was based on was very well regarded so I did do a little research. There does seem to be a much deeper storyline both for Arthur and the world coming. That is encouraging for the long term, but the show really needs something to make us feel connected to either Arthur or the world he inhabits soon. Otherwise, even if we do get something deeper, the show will have lost its chance to get the audience invested.
The Beginning After the End airs Wednesday @ 10:25 AM PT on Crunchyroll
