The Beginning After the End Volumes 4 and 5 Review
The time has finally arrived… After three years spent with the elves in their kingdom, 8-year-old Arthur can finally see his family again and meet his younger sister for the first time!
Everyone is overcome with joy, and Arthur’s father doesn’t hesitate to show his love by sparring with Arthur to check how much he’s grown in their time apart. But his son hasn’t stopped training while he was away. He honed as many of his skills as possible when he wasn’t training in assimilating the beast will left to him by the dragon who saved him, Sylvia. While Arthur kept that part a secret he can’t wait to test his new abilities, but his powers blow his father away (figuratively, of course).
The sparring session is also witnessed by the family his parents are working for, who are made speechless by Arthur’s skills. And they don’t hesitate to connect him with the dean of the best magic academy in the world, Xyrus Academy. But Arthur is not ready for that. He promised Sylvia he’d enjoy life as much as he can, and that’s what he plans to do for the moment.
However, as well as the beast will, Sylvia left Arthur her daughter, Sylvie, who has become Arthur’s mana beast. He needs to keep the fact that she’s a dragon a secret, but not everyone is clueless. Powerful men start eying Sylvie, and Arthur needs to deal with them without showing off his full power yet. Thankfully, he can count on his family to have his back.
Arthur’s not as strong as he’d like yet, so he needs to keep his cards close to his chest until he’s powerful enough to protect who’s dear to him. So the next step to becoming stronger is to set off as an adventurer!
Since Arthur was reborn, he was able to apply the skills he learned in his original world in this new life, and so he developed both his magic and sword abilities much faster than anyone else and at a much younger age. However, this made him gain the attention of powerful people, which Arthur doesn’t want. He needs to become even stronger to protect the people he cares about. And let’s not forget that Arthur is still only 8 years old. He has been through a lot for being just a kid. By how the story is going, it seems that he’ll go through a lot more before he becomes an adult.
His parents are also being quite lenient with him and with what he plans to do. They object when Arthur, nicknamed Art, claims he wants to become an adventurer. However, they soon understand his reasoning and let him proceed how he’d like with just a few conditions, since his mum can’t stop worrying. It is a fantasy story taking place in a fantasy world, but it seems a little bit weird that his parents are mostly ok with letting their young child travel as he pleases, away from them.
We can assume that this new turning point will make Art face more enemies and meet allies with whom he can grow. When he was in the elves’ kingdom, he was really close to Tessia, the elf princess, and I hope the two can be reunited soon as readers were given the impression that she was going to become an important character in Art’s life. While the author makes it clear that Art doesn’t have any interest in women (nor in men) at the moment, who knows what will happen when he’s all grown up.
Ize Press, the publisher, already released 5 volumes of the series, but I feel like we are still at the beginning of Arthur’s story. Each volume helps set up his background and show how he’s becoming stronger, which I think is for a specific reason. The web comic readers on Tapas will probably already know what’s going on, but for the print edition readers, it seems like we’ll need to wait a while longer to figure out the end game of why Arthur needs to become stronger and how his relationships with Sylvie and Sylvia relate to everything.
The illustrations for The Beginning After the End are quite simplistic, without much attention to the details. However, the story and Arthur’s development attract its readers because you can’t help but cheer for him and Sylvie. It makes you wonder what a young boy can achieve before he becomes an adult.
In my opinion, the downside of this series is the short length of the volumes (around 200 pages) compared to similar manhwa published by Yen Press and Ize Press, such as A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special and Solo Leveling (around 300 pages).
The Beginning After the End is written by TurtleMe and illustrated by Fuyuki23. It started as a novel, and then it was adapted as a web comic on Tapas. Yen Press publishes the English print edition, and Volume 6 is slated for release in August 2024.
Our review copies from Yen Press were supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
