The Beginning After The End (TBATE) creator TurtleMe spoke about the series’ polarizing anime adaptation in a new interview with The Seattle Times, published on July 14. The anime faced vocal criticism for its limited animation in particular, with TurtleMe (real name: Brandon Lee), saying:
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“While I feel there is always room for improvement, always things in hindsight I could have done better, in order to not stress myself out too much, the best way to think about it is I am focused on the novel and comic where I can do my part to make a good story. I have to trust my partners [in anime] to make the adaptations as good as they can.”
During its run, the backlash against the anime had gotten to the point where, ahead of TurtleMe’s appearance at SakuraCon in April, he addressed fans on the tbatenovel subreddit. “Things have gotten… loud, for lack of a better word,” he said, adding that everyone was coming with their best efforts. He also spoke about the experience of ceding control of some creative aspects despite previously having near-full control of the original web novel and webcomic adaptations. As of July 15, a petition to redo the anime has nearly 58k signatures.
“But as with anything you love–whether it’s your pet, your story, or even your child–when faced with challenges, you don’t wish for it to be gone and have a do-over. You support it through difficult times and push it up so that it can become something that you can cherish because of all of the trials and tribulations you’ve overcome together,” he added.
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The Beginning After The End was produced by a committee of anime companies, listed in order: Fuji Television, Crunchyroll, bilibili, AT-X, Movic, Hakuhodo, Kansai Television, Klockworx, and Slow Curve. Fuji Television was the most senior of the companies. In Anime Corner’s interview with TurtleMe before the anime’s premiere, he shared that Crunchyroll acted as a creative liaison between TurtleMe’s team and the anime studio, A-CAT. He also still retained a lot of say in the adaptation, providing notes for each draft script. “For the most part they’ve been very keen on listening to my concerns and notes,” he adds.
While the anime received vocal criticism online, it seems to have been popular on Crunchyroll. The number of ratings for an anime is only part of an indication of its popularity. Nevertheless, the final episode of Season 1 has over 32.6k likes, nearly 4x more than the season finale of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, and 2.5x more than The Shiunji Family Children‘s finale. It narrowly edges out Wind Breaker Season 2’s finale (31.3k).
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It should be noted that TBATE Season 1’s finale also has significantly more dislikes than all the listed examples’ finales combined, with 17x more dislikes (3.1k) than even our best-case comparison with The Shiunji Family Children (182). The anime also seemed to fare well on Japanese streaming services, with early episodes posting decent rankings on Hulu Japan, Netflix, U-NEXT, and many other platforms.
As for the writing progress of The Beginning After The End‘s novel series, TurtleMe says he’s on the “last leg of the last book of the series,” adding that he expects it to be released in the next few months. “Over 10 years I’ve written (more than) 2 million words. It’s time to let this baby go,” he said. The anime will return with a second season in the spring of 2026. Keitaro Motonaga directed the series at studio A-CAT. Crunchyroll describes it:
After a mysterious death, King Grey is reborn as Arthur Leywin on the magical continent of Dicathen. Although he enters his second life as a baby, his previous wisdom remains. He begins to master magic and forge his own path as the years go by, seeking to correct the mistakes of his past life.
Source: The Seattle Times
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