Abdiel7

What a surprise! Another rare Anime that blows the Manga out of the solar system.

Those opening 3 episodes were certainly a stroke of genius, lacking any OP what so ever and directed to capture the viewer into its den of amusement.

A breath of fresh air.

Space pirates, Isekai, Struggles between Nobles, Well thought out backstories? It's got a bonanza of pure bliss. It's smooth, oozing with sauce and super-bingeable to boot.

• Story

Fantasy lite, taking a few pages out of the 'Fantasy Encyclopedia' and whipping up a bit of Sci-fi and focusing their efforts there. A great choice by them. Not enough sci-fi to start wriggling around your brain centres for continuity notwithstanding us fantasy lovers would rather have a sea of our fan-favourite elements, but contentment still comes easy. The backstory behind this Isekai is extremely relevant becoming the driving force behind the plot. A Rare sighting, how brilliant! An author actually using the true purpose of the isekai theme. What a backstory it was! It's crazy but not unbelievable with ample time to take in the true emotion, and to empathize with the perils of the MC. The Manga attempted the same thing, but it felt like an amateur attempt, compared to this which was just short of excellent.

Once we enter back into it's main plot, we get back on track for most Isekai. It's still retains some charm and ingenuity but it does start to ride the same train tracks we are used to, but with a few jump switches, regarding the pacing which aren't so appreciated. The is plot somewhat acceptable, right up our alley, lacking tension and having our beloved MC mowing down his enemies in the classic Dynasty warriors esque fashion. I will say that what it does quite well is that you can genuinely hate every single opponent he mows down, the directors with the guidelines from the author expertly lay the foundation for each of the confrontational encounters making every fight meaningful and every defeat feel deserved. This is important, because, I cannot even begin to talk about the amount of isekai where I rooted for the bad guys. The authors of those poor shows were so incompetent that it was so easy to take off the wholly superficial plastic packaging of obtuseness forced on to these characters for the sake of plot. These villains were likes of rapists, thieves, demons, murderers corrupt in all kinds of ways but at the end of the day I preferred and could empathize with their characters more than the main ones. Here I hated every villain, and loved the main cast. There's real villains, scoundrels, scalywags, evildoers and they love it! The type of wicked people, the only thing you can sympathise with is how much they love their job. I can't stress that enough, i used to pray for times like these.

The conclusion was very satisfying, and was cleverly directed. The type of ending that you don't know whether a next season is needed. Naturally, a new installment is gladly welcome but I wouldn't be distraught if it never came. This studio isn't known for longer projects either.

• Characters

When time is put into them, it's extremely hard not to love them or appreciate them, they're written with understanding. They mostly play their roles but there's a richness to their interactions such that where you never feel that you need more of them, especially in these short 12 episodes. For most of them, don't expect any grandiose character development, the meat is for the main cast. The way they're written allows the viewer to understand them and empathize with them so barely any of their actions seemed out of place. There's lazy scumbags in this show that surpass the best characters in so many of the isekai released today. A few of them really gave me a good a chuckle, it's a bag of sweets, so enjoy.

• Sound

Oh boy did they do well here. From all your favourite sound effects to the soundtracks underscoring its heated moments their efforts shone through. The composer 'Ceo Yusuke' I've only heard his work from another underrated banger of a show 'Under Ninja'.

He was great there also. From those 2 it's evident that he's got a massive range breathing the life into these worlds, giving me goosebumps at the heights of the show. They were tactful with most of the material sounds and effects although some were a bit off. Comedic tones were clever and the more eerie tracks whilst simple outshone what was going on on-screen sometimes. If I had a critique it could definitely sound a bit more intergalactic, cosmic and celestial it certainly fits the theme, but sometimes you could definitely use it for a world devoid of these elements.

• Animation

Nothing too remarkable, for the most part a serviceable adventure. Ample detail where needed, various scenes showing good facial expression, minus the robots. If my favourite manga/LN was adapted with this level of animation, I'd have absolutely nothing to complain about, it more than does the job. With a space setting, spaceships, advanced technological weapons, 3D is just perfect for this scenario. It's ok, but as is standard with Japanese production it's never that good. The space fights, well everything is followable, but lets just say its the writing and characters carrying the experience. It is possible to get the feeling of grandiose intergalatic fights of sheer magnitude but i suppose the feeling is quite fleeting. They tried very hard with the visuals so the effort is evident and undeniably there though it lacks polish. You'll see all sorts of contraptions and ideas in this, some comes out quite well, some leave a lot to be desired, by all means it's appreciated.

After finishing this season, if you hunger for more. Do not read the manga go straight to the LN.

Final Rankings.

Animation - 7 Sound - 8 Story/Plot - 7 Characters - 9 Enjoyment - 9 38/50 = 7.8

8/10 Bored?

Looking for something to watch right now?

Ready to have a space jam of intergalactic thoughts?

Look no further.

Hope this helps.

_I thought i had learned my lesson..._

The highest i've ever rated anything from this ominous theme was 6/10 and that being rounded up. The bar is low.

As a chair of the 'Isekai Binger Foundation', each season at least one of the shows from the worst subgenre of isekai piques my interest,

You can of course imagine why such a show beamed brightly on my radar, an elder bureaucrat man who apparently dies by the fan-favourite multi-dimenional agent/hit-man/assasin is then warped into in a new fantasy world into the body of the complete polar opposite type of indivdual; the spoiled rich girl. This girl's duty is to make everything she touches suffer, then we explore how the mind of this modern-day japanese senior man contrasts with the nefarious dealings of an uptown girl in mysterious world filled with magic. Doesn't such a depection just fire neurones rapidly into the curiousity centres of your cerebrum?

School setting and Isekai, in my opinion, the worst combination for isekai shows. However for the Otome-game route it isn't so bad and can work quite well as shown here.

You know what, __9 episodes in__, i was positively surprised. I thought, 'what a blast, what a refreshing take on this genre'. The author, the direction, the animation, the soundtrack it all weaved together such a stunning experience for me. It played like a parody of sorts but, instead of trashing the medium, they rather brought out the best i've seen so far for this subgenre. The strategies employed in the orchestration of its ideas allowed the viewer to engage into the world with the brain activated, aswell as providing a wealth of nuance and knowledge. What i found endearing was the added touch of immersive detail at every turn, a true rarity in this medium amongst the modern works.

I loved how much you could learn from the dialogue as well as the intelligent discourse on display. There was no 'Mary Sue' trash, every action the MC took eminated with such a charming and irresistable sense of humilty, selflessless and only served to edify the people around her. What was funny was the stark but very evident truth of how much better a woman would behave wired with the brain of a man. They demonstrated a part of the true purpose of women as a bridge between men, every problem required her inspiration of others to solve, diametrically opposed to many of the less captivating and sloppy Villainess stories which feature an MC which in effect does everyone's job for them and better than them. The character was overpowered but there was no immoderate use of power for superfical effect. Her new found powers were used when necessary consequently hammering home the idea of restraint and self-control the perfect way a woman that position should behave. Another very irratating thing i noticed about other Otome-game shows is this perpetual wholly excessive praise and glorifcation with shallow exposition of characters(primarily female) without showing anything on screen, on the contrary in this show, that kind of nonsense was absent. I would never recommend a single villainess show to anyone, but this show was becoming the exception.

I don't know what it was that made me enjoy the show, the fact that it went off the rails with the concept of the villainess or the production values, references, humor, and little details that spiced it up. Either way it's just different from the norm for this abstract but in a good way.

There is a major twist early on which accentuates its status as more of a parody, which to be honest, i wasn't too fond of and it basically made any meaningful romance utterly impossible socially.

There was of course a lack of tension, or a lack of some big, bad overarching threat, but let's be honest, is that even needed? I never missed anything like that. If you put yourselves in the shoes of a teenage rich girl, is there anything that can realistically adventitiously harm a person like that apart from God? Those people are so bored with safety and security that they surreptitiously invent their own problems and fantasize about precarious affairs they are involuntarily put in. Thankfully there was none of the classic obligatory, random-deranged-pervert-rapist, jobber rehashed subplot here to bore us, just a focus on simple but heartwarming dialogue based on everyday problems for teenagers from a high-class academy to deal with. There was minor character development and you wouldn't be wrong to critique many of the side characters as plot-devices or one-note, it did seem that way at times. As this is a dating game theme you probably expect a bit of romance, but you'll be looking for that like a needle in a haystack. Romance in this scenario/premise is always extremely awkward and once you find out the truth behind his isekai experience it becomes probably the most awkward thing imaginable, while it's a shame that there's barely any romance in a 'Otome-Game' show the argument against it, won't have too many supporters.

Let's picture the intial premise of a man's soul inside a woman's body. We have to understand that if that's the case, he will now have to think through a woman's brain, then experience hormones that are native to the female body, that (she) because he's a woman now, because souls don't have sexual character, (no such thing as soul-mate) etc. She will experience extrinsic(to his soul) attraction to the male sex completely out of her control if we are completely logical about it. However setting up any romance in such perilous waters requires a break of a social barrier which is far too great for most writers, and not many will chastise them for not going deeeper. It's quite the hopeless conundrum.

You're thinking now, he's going to give this show at least an 7 or 8 possibly more. But here you're dead wrong!

Look back to my statement of '9 episodes', because after that we enter into 'the valley of the shadow of death'. Amongst the worst of the abominations, the sign of the end of any great civilization ever.

They had me hooked, baited me like no other i had already prepared a favorable review and an outstanding score(for this subgenre) then they ambushed me as i opened the door to episode 10.

I'm in total despondency; the plot-twist of doom...

__Cross-dressing.__

They even named the episode, "Cross-dressing" they're absolutely reveling in it.

The completely unnecessary, zero reason-to-occur, shoehorned, utter-shambles poppycock. If i told you that the next development would be they that they start crossdressing.,you wouldn't believe me. It never makes any sense and in this case even more so.

One of the greatest problems with this egregious development is the destruction of any and all captivation and immersion, it's unnatural and you don't really believe the characters anymore. It's a 'graceless' pivot that shatters the foundation of what made me like the show in the first place. There aren't any normal, mentally stable individuals that willingly randomly and elaborately dress-up as the other sex, it's an unorthodox roadblock that just erases characterization to fulfill a sinster mission that goes beyond the narrative.

I recall similar bait and switch tactics used with shows like;

• 'The Dungeon of Black Company'
• 'Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World'(E06)

and the worst examples;

• 'Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun'(E22)
• 'Spy X Family S1 part 2'(E04).

The worst part of those last 2 shows was that you were in so deep with male characters you could never expect to have such wicked tendencies, it just shows up out of nowhere, an insidious patttern.

Naturally i am unable to consume this revolting gruel, the mere sight of such a thing gives me instantaneous eruptions of hives and goosebumps akin to Trypophobia. I don't know what happens in any of those episodes nor did i sit around to consume it. But this stuff has to stop, how can we sit around in seemingly calm waters then get randomly attacked violently by a storm-typhoon-whirlpool of absolute degeneracy. It seems like an editor-inspired last minute paid addition to satisfy some grandiose executive request. If this was all part of the plan then i'm truly disappointed.

I suppose, the question might come up; what if a male soul was in a female body or vice versa like in situations like mind switching, isekai, reincarnation etc? The premise of this show?

First of all, there isn't a male soul, souls are sexless. Male soul defines the initial sex of the physical body that soul was attached to.

This doesn't happen in real life so fantasy is one of the few places we can excercise ideas like these. Circumstances like that are obviously nothing like cross-dressing, not even close. How you dress concerns your physical body and in which have the genetic makeup spearheaded by sexual chromosomes XY or XX. The rule must be immutably followed to allow us to appropriately engage seemelessly in these experiences, keeping us in peace without perverting the purpose of the narrative. These sex chromosones decide the entire make-up of your physical existence from brain to even single cells and there are massive differences between the two sexes. Specifically for this topic, these distinctions are very evident between the male and female brain. There's of course nothing wrong with the initial scenario. What's strange is how i've never seen the female mind/soul into a male body done before as a premise, it's not so desired, but that also illustrates the differences between the sexes.

It's barely acceptable narrative-wise for side characters to cross-dress as we can hopefully just ignore that and leave it to that individual being a depraved deviant. However if that side character takes too big a role in the story, essentially becoming a main character in the process, that can totally ruin the experience aswell.

According to my own standard of review, if the main character crossdresses even once, i will instantly drop the show and I am unable to score it above 50/1.

/The Beginning/

I've finished my binge and enough is enough, these arbitrary numbers they plaster next to these shows have truly become redundant. Yes I know, it's an average based on the general public but when these scores get so ludicrously out of whack, what does that say about the general public?

Yes you, you pathetic bumbling sheep just vacuuming up all the trends and mindlessly forming your opinions, convictions and lifestyles over the chaotic and degenerative ebb and flow of social media. I recall the absolute milking of those few but very memorable unsavoury clips. On the contrary my experience found that those clips are so utterly in the minority, the absolute bottom of the barrel worst parts(or should I say seconds) of the show, with the rest of it being more than palatable.

It's all in bad faith, many of you people set yourselves up from the beginning to hate this type of show. You loiter about waiting a entire week like an absolute weapon so you can comment about how "garbage" the animation is. They wail and bawl their eyes out trying to fool us into expecting A1 animation sequences out of A-CAT Studio. They've got the "A" studio mixed up, but that's probably not the only thing that's mixed up in their lives. After the end their resultant opinion is one they forcibly cultivated by their own actions and dispositions, it's a farce, and wholly unfair. I get it you've not got much going on so you're looking for the next Ex-Arm, Hand Shakers, King's Game, Big Order, Conception, Tesla Note, Stop! You're not going to find it here.

Studio A-CAT did an adequate job here, apart from the animation there's not really any glaring errors in their efforts.

Thankfully those ghastly tweets, shorts and memes you saw are the end of "The Beginning After the End's" sorrows in animation. It doesn't get any where near as miserable than that and if you're not actively looking to get disappointed then it only gets better from there. The still pictures and drawings are quite good, and in the second half there's a conscious effort made to enhance the transition and flow of the animation. What's quite fitting or ironic is that there is truly "a beginning after the end" in respect to their animation efforts during the course of the show.

The soundtrack and sound direction played a good supporting role to the overall experience they really kept the show immersive whilst being quite tame and breeding good atmosphere packed with emotion. Unfortunately none of the tracks stood out particularly to me which is quite on brand for the Composer "Keiji Inai" who's done a bunch of these fantasy shows, to name a few "Dan Machi","Btoom!" and "The Misfit of Demon King Academy". This composer has also produced a swell score on a the particular "A Nobody's Way Up to an Exploration Hero" another criminally underrated show with a splendid story with down-to-earth characters. Sound Design was acceptable however it did feel too aggressive at times with explosions. Banger OP "KINGSBLOOD" by "KALA" does justice in brightening up the beginning after the end of the previous episode, on the other hand the ED by "seiza" wasn't quite so effective.

Voice acting pretty fair for the most part. The beginning of my binge was in English after the end of the available dubbed episodes(10 as of 6/19) I continued in Japanese. Both felt right at home and frankly I rarely cringed at anything the voices, particularly they gave the Main character was pivotal in preserving the soul of the manhwa.

There's always the same conflict with this type of show, The story/characters vs the animation/production. Which is the correct choice?

It must be the story and the characters. Here we go again, the fan favourite combo, Isekai-reincarnation. It's right up our alley with tropes and subplots we've burned into our brains. This time we're blessed with an author who actually understands life and incorporates a very healthy level of maturity to the various interactions and events playing out. We've got characters that you feel you could know. Character convictions that show through testing. Traditions, obligations and cultures that refuse to crumble under the pressure of modern sensibilities. These characters have their own vocations that transcend the MC's aura. Barely any of these characters succumbed to casualties of the plot, they felt like a useful cog in the wheel which work together in tandem to actually maintain the world. It's a rare thing in isekai fantasy that you get it done well, I'm always here, by God's grace to praise these works. The only thing that detracted from the experience was the pacing which for the most part was up to par but sometimes it felt that it needed more substance or character interactions to make a smooth changeover before the next time-skip or plot point. Obviously they felt they had to end it on a exciting note to entice us to come next season, but if they had lingered on and finished each event properly it would have brought it to greater heights. World-building is no exposition dump either it slowly unfolds as you learn alongside the MC, i think it was an excellent decision to write it like this as the elements stay consistent. It was rather pleasant that they kept the magical system fairly simple and easy for the audience to understand. Not only did it bolster the believability of the world in general it helped piece together the power system in a way that becomes more intuitive as each episode goes by.

If you're looking for fanservice I guess this is probably the end before the beginning of your enjoyment of this show unless you like faces of smiling cute little girls and to be honest, there's not a single man on the planet who doesn't. But the usual barrage of foreplay-esque, gigantic breasts, out of place, desperate, fanservice is just no where to be found here which does wonders for immersion in the narrative of the story.

/After/

Final Rankings

Animation 6/10

Sound 7/10

Plot 8/10

Characters 9/10

Enjoyment 10/10 - Had exams coming up and told my self I could only watch a few, ended up 1-12ing the whole thing and now writing a review on top.

40/50 - 8/10 Solid Show.

Yeah, the manhwa guys were spot on the story is so unbelievably enjoyable for anyone with a brain that it doesn't matter that Mappa, Ufo, David, A-1 didn't animate it.

Can't wait for the Second Season and hopefully Studio A-CAT does it again for us, of course improvements are welcome.

What are you babbling about? The Author "TurtleMe" is pleased with their work, and they've tried diligently to mend their efforts, with the show becoming better and better each episode.

Hurry and binge, power through the beginning, ignore the loud majority, they are wrong as is commonly the case now on MAL., After the end of this show, It might be the beginning of my journey into the manhwa. A second season confirmed for 2026 might be too far out for me.

/The end/

Hope this helps.