YMMV / 5 Years Later

• Awesome Art: The Ink Tanks background work and character designs are very well illustrated and continue to improve as the comic goes on. Later chapters have plenty of details fitted into each scene, and the action scenes are more elaborate, with details to make them easier to follow.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: The webcomic and the accompanying series of videos 'And Beyond' are considered some of the best fan projects in the entire Ben 10 community. They also update at a slow pace and can be consumed rapidly, leaving many in a state of constant longing for more material from the Ink Tank.
• Broken Base:
  • The level of focus on either Ben or Danny can and does lead into debate which of them gets too much or too little focus among some fans. Others see this is as not a problem at all.
  • The choice to create and later feature alien form transformations from outside of the Ben 10 series, chief of them MonKi is either the most awesome thing ever or Kuro going completely nuts. Similarly the lack of reboot originating aliens is either fine and the reboot being a show in universe justifies it, or it misses out on some fun design possibilities that are as canon as many other aliens featured in the backstory via the Word of God that Classic Ben does have access to his reboot only aliens.
  • Danny being retired at the start of the story either is seen as in character, or as a weird and pointless plot point that fuels the first entry above.
  • The Powerhouse Playlist creates massive debates of every aspect of it ranging from what aliens should be in it that aren't to the idea of such a restricted playlist in the first place.
  • Several redesigns for existing aliens are heavily debated by fans as to their quality. Kuro himself noted the Atomix redesign specifically as an example of this as there is a divide between the skinnier Atomix in Five Years Later and the bulkier Atomix from Omniverse.
• Fanfic Fuel: The lore and set up of the universe of Ben 10 creates so many options for other stories with the pieces and elements the setting creates, such as the existence of other offshoot colonies of Kryptonians like the Saiyans and the wider worlds of the many original and commissioned aliens of the verse. Fortunately for those who are interested one can ask and usually get permission to use the original aliens of the verse.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Butch Hartman's cameo in the third issue comes across as less funny and more wince-worthy when Butch's actions in the following years (such as ableist comments and tracing art for commissions) would result in the man becoming a Broken Pedestal for Kuro, and the Butch cameo being excised from the motion comic adaptation in favor of "Phil Gacks".
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Doctor Animo's declaration of how Whoever said that man cannot create God has never paid a visit to this doctor! becomes this in regards to the Ink Tank video on the Ben 10 Iceberg where it is proven that he has created God before, in at least one continuity.
• I Knew It!: Many fans caught that 'Flame-boi', one of the aliens on the Powerhouse Playlist who had not been detailed yet, was a Naljian. Chapter 11 would confirm this and give him a name, Full Stop.
• It Was His Sled: The fact the story was a crossover for more shows than Ben 10 and Danny Phantom was once a well-guarded secret but has since become one of the story's selling points
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • There are those who are not fans of the comic that are quite interested and invested in 'And Beyond' episodes for a preference for world-building over the story itself.
  • There are fans who come for the Ben 10 part and fans who come for the Danny Phantom part, as much as there are fans who come for both. According to the Ink Tank there are more of the former than the latter. There tends to be a overlap between the Ben 10 preferring fans and the ones who watch only for And Beyond and other related videos, where the videos on the homeworlds of aliens vastly outperformed the one based on the Ghost Zone.
• Nightmare Fuel: Zs'Skayr returns in full at the end of the And Beyond on the Transyl system. What's worse, he takes advantage of Horas' bio-computer nature by possessing him with the intent of using him to launch a sneak attack on Ben.
  • Adding on to that, He addresses the viewers directly through Horas before pulling back into the darkness and then lunging directly at the camera to possess Horas.
  • The horror continues in the Ledgerdomain episode, where Zs'Skayr manipulates events to put Horas in position to be overshadowed and forced to open Ledgerdomain's gates... ...for Addwaitya. Worse, Zs'Skayr mentions Addwaitya having an end of their bargain to fulfill.
  • The episode on Arctiguana's homeworld amps up the horror even further as Addwaitya comes crashing down from space like a meteor expanded to the size of a Kaiju, uses magic to pluck the Manzardills' god out of the volcano he was slumbering in and drains his mana dry causing the Manzardill population to experience a collective crossing of the Despair Event Horizon.

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