There is no official final episode total yet, but the comic currently sits at 268 episodes and, if it fully adapts the completed novel, a realistic projection is roughly 600–900 total episodes depending on pacing and season breaks. That range is why fans keep getting conflicting answers across forums.
To keep this estimate credible, we anchor everything to the official episode-based release model, then use adaptation math and production patterns the same way experienced readers do when cross-checking arc pacing on trackers like ComicK.
Next, we’ll break down the 7 critical numbers that actually determine the final count, so you can estimate it confidently without relying on Reddit guesses.
The Only Episode Count You Can Trust Right Now (And How To Verify It)
Before you predict a final total, lock in the present. On the official Tapas series page for The Beginning After the End comic, the library lists 268 episodes and states Updates every Thu. Tapas also shows a Wait Until Free window (3 hours) and notes that it excludes the latest 80 episodes, which matters for how “caught up” someone feels versus what actually exists.
This is Critical Number 1: 268 is the current baseline. Any projection that starts with a different baseline is already drifting into fan numbering.
It is also Critical Number 2: a weekly Thursday cadence implies a theoretical maximum of roughly 52 episodes per year if there are zero breaks. Realistically, long-running webtoons rarely hit that cap every year due to season breaks, production changes, special episodes, side stories, or health-related hiatuses. Still, the weekly cadence is your ceiling.
Finally, the “latest 80 episodes excluded” detail is a silent confusion engine. Many new readers see locked content and assume it does not exist yet. It does. It is just behind a paywall and release model. That is why a Reddit thread might claim “TBATE has 220” while another claims “TBATE has 268.” Often, they are describing different access states, not different realities.
If you want one clean rule: treat Tapas as the canonical comic episode counter, then build projections on top of that, not on fan repost labels or screenshot lists.
Why Nobody Can Give One Final Number Yet (And Why That’s Normal)
It is tempting to demand a single final episode count, but webtoon adaptations usually cannot promise it early, even when the source material is finished. The reason is production reality: episode totals depend on pacing decisions, art pipeline capacity, season planning, and whether the adaptation chooses to compress certain arcs or expand emotional beats into more episodes.
This is where fans get misled by the word “finished.” The web novel is complete, which makes readers assume the comic’s endpoint is fixed and measurable. In practice, a finished novel only tells you there is an endpoint available. It does not tell you how many episodes the webtoon will spend getting there. A single novel chapter can become half an episode, one full episode, or multiple episodes, depending on how action-heavy it is, how dialogue is staged, and how much visual reblocking the adaptation adds.
This is also why “season” labels matter. The Tapas page currently labels the comic as being in Season 6, which implies planned production blocks. Those blocks are not just marketing. They are scheduling tools. Webtoon seasons create natural pause points where episode counts can shift due to staffing, budgets, or pacing recalibration.
So if you want a high-confidence answer, stop asking for one magical total and start tracking the seven numbers that actually move the target:
- Current comic episode count
- Release cadence
- Source length (novel volumes and chapters)
- Adaptation ratio (novel chapters to comic episodes)
- Season structure and break frequency
- Print volume throughput (a pacing anchor)
- Numbering mismatches across platforms and fandom
Once you have those, you can build projections that stay sane even when the series takes a break.
Critical Numbers 3 And 4: Source Length Is Fixed, But It’s Easy To Misread
If you want to project the final comic episode count, you must anchor to the source length. The Beginning After the End originated as a web novel and later became a webtoon-style comic adaptation. The novel’s “length” is commonly discussed in volumes and chapters, and fans often swap those units casually, which is a mistake.
Critical Number 3 is the number of novel volumes. A finished volume list means the story has a defined endpoint. That is a big deal because ongoing novels create moving targets. TBATE’s novel is not a moving target anymore.
Critical Number 4 is the number of novel chapters (or equivalent story installments). This number matters more than volumes for episode projections because webtoon pacing often maps more cleanly to scene-level progression than to bookstore-style volume breaks. Action chapters with straightforward choreography may compress visually, while politics-heavy or training-heavy chapters can expand due to paneling, expressions, and environmental storytelling.
Here is the practical takeaway: you do not need perfect chapter-to-episode mapping to make a strong estimate. You need a credible range. If the source has “hundreds” of chapters, a 300-episode comic total may be unrealistic unless the adaptation is extremely compressed. If the source has a shorter chapter count, then 600 to 900 episodes may be inflated.
TBATE’s story is also structurally long. It includes reincarnation setup, early years growth, academy arcs, large-scale war escalation, continent-level politics, and high fantasy power scaling. That breadth tends to demand space in visual adaptation, which is why “episode totals” for webtoons often become bigger than casual readers expect.
Critical Number 5: The Adaptation Ratio That Quietly Controls Everything
If you want to answer “how many episodes will the beginning after the end have” with something smarter than a guess, you need an adaptation ratio. That ratio is simply:
comic episodes per novel chapter
Even if you cannot calculate it perfectly, you can reason about it.
A fast adaptation ratio might look like 0.8 to 1.0 episodes per novel chapter. This typically happens when the novel chapters are short, action-driven, and the webtoon compresses dialogue. A medium ratio might look like 1.2 episodes per chapter, where the comic uses extra beats for expressions, reaction shots, and smoother scene transitions. A slow, expansive ratio could push 1.5 to 1.8 episodes per chapter if the comic consistently breaks one novel chapter into multiple episodes to preserve pacing and cliffhangers.
Why does this matter so much? Because small changes explode at scale. If the novel has 500-ish chapters, the difference between 1.0 and 1.6 is not “a little.” It is hundreds of episodes.
Also note what makes the ratio fluctuate:
- Training arcs often expand because progress is shown visually through repeated drills, mana manipulation, and incremental breakthroughs.
- War arcs can expand because the comic needs geography, troop movement clarity, and emotional aftermath.
- Dialogue-heavy politics can compress if the adaptation tightens speeches, or expand if it adds visual context and reactions.
- Cliffhanger optimization can add episode breaks that increase total count without adding story content.
This is the number fans overlook most because it is not a single “official stat.” It is the invisible lever behind every projection. If you want to track it yourself, sample a short stretch where you know the novel chapter boundaries, then compare to the comic’s episode boundaries. Even a rough sample tells you whether the adaptation is trending “tight” or “expansive.”
Critical Number 6: Season Structure, Breaks, And Why “Weekly” Does Not Mean 52 Forever
Tapas lists TBATE as updating weekly, but weekly does not guarantee 52 new episodes every year. Webtoon production is marathon-level work: storyboards, line art, color, lettering, quality control, revisions, and platform formatting. Even when the release cadence is steady, “season” breaks are normal.
This is why Critical Number 6 is season structure. The Tapas page explicitly labels the current block as Season 6, which signals that the comic is being managed in production arcs, not as one endless, uninterrupted run.
Season breaks matter for two reasons:
- They reduce annual output, which changes how quickly the series can reach its endpoint.
- They often come with pacing recalibration. After a break, some series return with slightly different episode lengths, different splitting patterns, or different cliffhanger rhythm.
In TBATE’s case, production history and staffing changes have been part of its public discourse. When teams shift, the adaptation ratio can shift too. Some seasons will be tighter. Some will breathe more.
Here is the practical math fans miss: if a series averages 40 to 45 new episodes per year after breaks, then “just 300 more episodes” is not a short runway. It is multiple years of publishing. That does not mean it is unlikely. It means you should stop treating the remaining count like a short sprint.
If you are trying to plan your binge strategy, season breaks are also why it is smart to track your progress by episode number and arc name, not by “I’m in Season 4” talk. Season labels are packaging. Episodes are the actual unit of completion.
Critical Number 7: Print Volumes Are A Pacing Anchor Fans Ignore
Digital episodes feel infinite. Print volumes force reality.
Yen Press publishes The Beginning After the End comic in English print volumes, and the catalog has reached double digits. This matters because print volumes tend to collect a consistent chunk of story, creating a secondary “chunking system” that can help you estimate how much material the comic produces per major arc.
Print volumes do not directly tell you the final episode count, but they help you answer two projection questions:
- How many episodes are being produced per “story chunk” that is publishable as a book?
- How fast is the franchise converting digital episodes into durable, compiled releases?
For example, if a typical print volume corresponds to roughly 20 to 30 webtoon episodes (this varies by publisher formatting, episode length, and page conversion), then 10 volumes might represent something like 200 to 300 episodes worth of adapted content. That aligns with where the digital library currently sits, which is exactly why print can serve as a sanity check. If someone claims the comic has “500 episodes” but print volumes have not caught up in a way that makes sense, the claim is probably fan-numbering noise.
Print also matters because it often lags behind digital. If the print line continues expanding, it implies the adaptation pipeline is still healthy and the story is still being packaged for long-term audiences, not just weekly readers. That is an indirect “longevity signal” when you are thinking about whether a full adaptation is plausible.
If you are the type of reader who tracks arcs on an index site like ComicK, print volume titles can also function as clean checkpoints for spoiler-free planning.
Where Reddit Goes Wrong: Episode Numbers, “Chapters,” And Platform Mismatches
Most confusion around TBATE totals comes from one thing: people use “episode” to mean four different things.
- Tapas comic episodes (the webtoon-style comic you are reading)
- Tapas novel episodes (the novel is split into parts that are also labeled as episodes)
- Print volume chapters (book segmentation)
- Anime episodes (a completely different adaptation with a completely different count)
Reddit threads often collapse these into one number. That is why you will see wildly different “current counts” and even wilder predictions for the final count.
If your keyword is “how many episodes will the beginning after the end have,” you must decide which medium you mean. The most common interpretation is the comic on Tapas, because that is where “episode” is literally the platform label.
Here is the safest way to use Reddit without getting misled:
- If someone says “chapter,” ask: comic chapter or novel chapter?
- If someone says “episode,” ask: Tapas comic episode or anime episode?
- If someone drops a number with no platform reference, treat it as a guess.
This is also where brand-name confusion happens. Readers might reference “Comick,” “ComicK,” or other indexing sites when they really mean “a place where I track series.” Using ComicK as a tracker or arc index can be convenient, but it should not replace official counting when you are discussing totals. The official Tapas library count is the baseline. Everything else is commentary.
Once you control the unit, the debate gets dramatically simpler.
So How Many Episodes Will The Beginning After The End Have? Three Realistic Scenarios
Now we can answer the main question cleanly, without pretending we have an official final number.
You already have the current count: 268 comic episodes.
The unknown is the final total. The best way to project is to use the adaptation ratio framework and present scenario ranges. Here are three scenarios, assuming the webtoon fully adapts the complete novel and the adaptation ratio falls into one of these bands:
Scenario A: Compressed Adaptation
- Ratio: ~0.8 episodes per novel chapter
- Result: If the novel is roughly in the 500-ish chapter range, total comic episodes land around 400 to 500.
- What it feels like: faster pacing, fewer cliffhanger splits, more novel content per episode.
Scenario B: Balanced Adaptation
- Ratio: ~1.2 episodes per novel chapter
- Result: total comic episodes land around 600 to 750.
- What it feels like: steady cliffhangers, room for training beats, clean emotional aftermath.
Scenario C: Expansive Adaptation
- Ratio: ~1.6 episodes per novel chapter
- Result: total comic episodes land around 800 to 900 plus.
- What it feels like: frequent split episodes, more cinematic fight staging, more reaction and downtime panels.
Why does the balanced band usually win? Because TBATE’s appeal is not just plot. It is character growth, mana progression, academy dynamics, war stakes, and payoff arcs. Visual adaptations often need breathing room to make those payoffs land.
So the honest answer to how many episodes will the beginning after the end have is: it depends on pacing, but if the adaptation goes all the way, 600 to 900 is a defensible expectation, not an exaggeration. You can watch which scenario is becoming true by tracking whether the adaptation is trending toward compressed storytelling or toward frequent episode splitting.
FAQ
1) How many TBATE comic episodes are there right now?
There are 268 episodes on the Tapas comic listing.
2) Does TBATE update weekly?
Yes, the comic’s official listing shows Thursday updates.
3) Is there an official final episode count announced?
No. There is no confirmed final number for the comic yet.
4) Why do Reddit numbers not match the official count?
Because people mix comic episodes, novel parts, print volume segmentation, and anime episode counts.
5) What is the most realistic total episode range if the comic adapts everything?
A practical projection is 600 to 900 total comic episodes, depending on adaptation pacing.
6) What number matters most for predicting the total?
The adaptation ratio (comic episodes per novel chapter) is the biggest lever.
7) Do print volumes help estimate the total?
They help as a pacing anchor, but they do not reveal a final total on their own.
8) Is “episode” the same as “chapter” for TBATE?
Not always. The comic uses episodes on Tapas, while the novel uses chapters and also platform “episode” parts.
9) Can I use ComicK for tracking TBATE?
Yes, many readers use ComicK as a lightweight tracker or arc index, but use official sources for the canonical episode count.
10) Will the total change if the adaptation pace changes?
Yes. Small pacing changes across hundreds of chapters can add or subtract hundreds of comic episodes.
If you came here for one clean number, here is the clean truth: TBATE’s comic has 268 episodes right now, but there is no official final total yet. The best answer to how many episodes will the beginning after the end have is a projection range, and the most defensible range for a full adaptation is roughly 600 to 900 total comic episodes, driven mainly by the adaptation ratio, season breaks, and how aggressively the comic splits chapters for cliffhangers.
Track the seven critical numbers, and you will stop getting whiplash from Reddit guesses. Start with the official Tapas episode count, watch how pacing behaves across seasons, use print volumes as a reality check. If you like an external progress index, tools like ComicK can help you stay organized while you follow the official episode numbering.
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