B: The Beginning

On the islands of Cremona, a vigilante runs amok. Celebrated by some and hunted by others, the notorious "Killer B" takes justice into his own hands, armed with a sharp blade and superhuman abilities. Unable to apprehend this renegade, the Royal Investigation Service (RIS) calls upon the expertise of Keith Flick, a seasoned, yet eccentric detective who was relegated to the Archives Department following a personal loss. As crimes in Cremona begin to escalate, from stealthy executions of wrongdoers to sophisticated strikes on public figures, it soon becomes clear that there is more than one person responsible.

With the help of his impulsive sidekick Lily Hoshina, and unexpected aid from the elusive Killer B himself, Keith begins to unravel plots involving secret organizations, domestic terrorism, and human experiments. When the involvement of the RIS extends beyond the scope of justice, the extent of the government's corruption—as well as the trustworthiness of close allies—are thrown into question.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Other:	The Perfect World
Sequel:	B: The Beginning Succession

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Characters & Voice Actors

Kazama Flick, Keith

Main

Hirata, Hiroaki
Japanese

Kokuu

Main

Kaji, Yuuki
Japanese

Hoshina, Lily

Main

Seto, Asami
Japanese

Izanami

Supporting

Saiga, Mitsuki
Japanese

Yuna

Supporting

Satou, Satomi
Japanese

Ross, Gilbert

Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki
Japanese

Yoshinaga, Kaela

Supporting

Koshimizu, Ami
Japanese

Minatsuki

Supporting

Ishikawa, Kaito
Japanese

Kirisame

Supporting

Terashima, Takuma
Japanese

Laica

Supporting

Kitada, Yuu
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Kuroki, Rui

Producer

Yagi, Masako

Producer, Production Manager

Nakazawa, Kazuto

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Original Creator, Animation Director, Key Animation, Chief Animation Director, Character Design

Yamakawa, Yoshiki

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Animation Director, Key Animation

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Opening Theme

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Ending Theme

"The Perfect World" by Marty Friedman feat. Jean-Ken Johnny, KenKen

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Reviews

Mar 2, 2018

RebelPanda

Recommended

It’s so rare to see an anime of such high quality to take as many risks as B: The Beginning does. Sure it stumbles a bit along the way, but the final result is undeniably an ambitious and thoroughly entertaining ride worth watching.

The story is totally insane on paper but is somehow even more bewildering in action thanks to such lovingly crafted visuals by Production I.G. with a talented director at the helm. It is in one part a sci-fi police procedural similar to Psycho-Pass, but simultaneously a game of cat and mouse like Death Note. These wild ideas packed on top of each ...

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Mar 4, 2018

-Rainy-

Not Recommended

B: The Beginning combines two separate stories within each other, one of supernatural mystery and one with a detective searching for a murderer. The fundamental problem with the show is that both stories suck ass and don’t really connect together at all. You could rather easily cut out one of these plot lines from the entire narrative and not lose that much in terms of story quality in the other. Hell, the show may be better for it. So, don’t even read the rest of this review, just write the show off based on the word of one internet stranger alone. Trust me, I’m ... the only internet stranger that matters.

I hate when reviews talk about the meaty stuff first and then mention the audiovisuals at the end in much shorter detail, so we’re going to escalate in our meaty bonanza. The production values for this show are great. B: The Beginning does not have any dips in quality, it is consistently good looking and sometimes better than that for its entire run. While not specifically my aesthetic, the visuals are certainly strong, and the animation is quite good the entire show. Kazuto Nakazawa has many important seats visual wise, as the chief animation director, character designer, director in general, and original creator of the show. Other shows he’s had influence on visual wise that you may have heard of are Zankyou no Terror and Samurai Champloo, so if you loved the visuals in those shows, this may be worth a shot for you.

Sound wise, this show is pretty underwhelming. The soundtrack isn’t of poor quality but binging through the entire show it was easy to notice they were just playing the same couple of tracks over and over again per episode, which got grating. This show does have a cool ending theme song as well, though the visuals for it aren’t noteworthy.

I’ll be frank; the supernatural plot of B: The Beginning is a pile of cockshit, getting bad quickly and never recovering. The premise, is that we have “Killer B” who is a non human creature with insane powers. He has wings, his arm can turn into a sword, he has an edgy anime left eye, his skin turns black when he starts fighting people, and has regenerative powers. This part of the show is about him, and the mythos of his species. This isn’t a bad premise on its own although it isn’t especially unique, but fun things could be done with it! Sadly, B: The Beginning does not do anything fun with this. Instead it goes into the most basic direction imaginable in every shape and form. I felt like I had vietnam flashbacks to every anime I’ve ever watched while finding out about this character’s backstory. I don’t mind if a show isn’t unique as long as it is executed in an appealing way, and this show very much does not execute this aspect in an appealing way. In order to do that, I’d need to care about the characters, because every single character in the supernatural plot did not matter to me, including the most important character, Killer B a.k.a Koku. Koku’s entire character basically revolves around the “tragedy” of what happened to him when he was a child and his girlfriend Yuna. When bad things happen to Yuna, he gets mad and yells like the shounen boy he is. He has nothing else going on so his character gets incredibly annoying being on screen so much when he is so uninteresting. Speaking of Yuna, she is a prime example of how this show can not write female characters very well. She is just Koku’s girlfriend and the damsel in distress. She doesn’t have her own character, her own motivations, nor does she do anything of importance in the story. She is just a macguffin, that is her entire character. The other chucklefucks, are all completely inconquestial to everything that it is kinda laughable. Pretty much every single one of the supernatural characters in this show is a stereotypical edgy anime crazy person, and all of them get taken out with little fanfare. Even an antagonist that remained in the shadows and slowly had intrigue building up for his encounter with the main character, ended up not mattering at all. Only one of these characters is an actual threatening adversary to the main character, but he isn’t given enough time or personality to leave an impact on the viewer.

Now, the other half of B: The Beginning is a story about Keith Flick hunting down the criminal that murdered someone close to him, and the bonds he has with the people in his life. While this side of B: The Beginning is better than everything related to Koku, it isn’t good by any stretch. The police force have some fun personalities in them, most notably Hoshino Lily, but they don’t leave much of an impact at all. Keith himself is just an eccentric genius character and this is shown to the audience in a terrible way, because the show doesn’t actually know how to represent this so it just throws bullshit at you. Keith solves the answer to a certain problem in episode 1 after writing a bunch of mathematical gibberish on a board, which is not the only the time that the show attempts to make him look smart despite the staff having little idea on how to present a character that actually is as smart as Keith. I found him quite dull. The main villain of this story line isn’t very good either. The show takes too long to start delving into his mindset and motivations that by the time it even attempted to do any fleshing out of the character my patience had already been worn out. Kaela, a side character, is similar to Keith in that they are supposed to be crazy good at something, but the show doesn’t know how to show it. She is the classic hacker dude of the group. She has a bunch of monitors, four fucking keyboards, that's right, four keyboards, weird foot pedals for some reason, you get the gist. Again, it is all just bullshit. Lily is the single most engaging character in the show due to her spunky personality, but the show doesn’t use her as much as they should have. In the finale she is just a tool for the last section of this storyline instead of getting to do something on her own. Like I said earlier in the review, this show does not write its female characters very well. While I don’t think the male characters are any good either, the writing and presentation of the female characters is fairly sexist. It isn’t to an extreme amount, but it is still a detriment to the show.

B: The Beginning… is pretty bad. haHAA get it, cause of the letter B bayBEEEE. I honestly regret ever watching a single episode of anime in my life.

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Mar 2, 2018

ButadonMeitantei

Recommended

Have you ever thought to yourself: "Hey, I wonder what would it be like if someone combined Terror in Resonance with Tokyo Ghoul." ? or "What if someone combined Psycho Pass with Death Note?"
No? Well, me neither. However, it seems B: The Beginning is here to fulfil your non-existent needs...
But this isn't even exactly true either.

Story: Whilst the central story borrows many elements like that which I have mentioned, it is, with all elements combined, very different to most Anime of the genre. Although I have to say the synopsis given on MAL is very vague and misleading.

To start off with, Koku, the seemingly-angsty teen ... character, is not the protagonist, or at least, the only protagonist. The older, ragged Keith Flick, a smart but relatable detective in the Royal Police Force, is the other, and it's this combination of two intertwining plots that make the story so much different.

Without any spoilers, there are twists and turns at various points in the story. However, some twists fall in the 'predictable' category, some seem to come from nowhere, yet, the few twists other than those definitely make up for them. The pacing is also noticeably erratic, but I didn't notice that as much.

Don't come into this show expecting a drawn-out fight each episode, nor an entire gore-fest (although gore is prevalent), nor a 100%-realistic psychological battle of wits. But trust me, the story is mostly unpredictable, actually quite complicated too, and overall, that's a major advantage. 7/10

Art/Animation: There's not much to say here. As for the art, the characters are rarely off-model nor act unrealistically, although sometimes it's intentional and for comedic effect (I also have to give attention to the attention to detail for Keith's stubble).

The animation for the fight scenes is good when it's close-up, but may be seen as lacking in the long-shots, although very rarely, I do notice bad animation that make it look like a screenshot of a character is just being moved by an invisible mouse, but those scenes are few and far-between. CG is also used for animating the cars, although it's not too bad till too much of it is used, but then again, that is not often. 7/10

Sound: Although not as good nor unique as Netflix's Devilman Crybaby OST, the soundtrack is a lot better than standard TV anime. The soundtrack isn't especially jarring, but is most of the time woven well into every scene. Tense moment? Tense soundtrack. There's one fight scene in particular early on where they use a track very, very suitable to the setting, without spoilers, which I have to give props for.

The ED is nothing special, but I like the use of English lyrics sung actually well. 8/10

Characters: This is probably the weakest area of the show. Although each and every character's face, personality and body type is very different from each-other, as expected of the studio that did Attack on Titan... In comparison to other series? Not so much.

For example, one character has black hair, and one different-coloured eye. If I gave you that description alone, you could probably think of loads of characters. Another character is a short, bald fat guy. Another is a tall guy with long blonde hair. The list goes on. I don't expect every single character to look different to any other character that came before it, but it is noticeable.

Personalities mostly suffer from being 1-dimensional. One character just seems to just follow one or two particular motives, without any particular character flaws. Another character isn't even given a backstory and is killed off without really meaning anything. No characters particularly develop as the story goes on, yet some characters, important characters, DO have more complex and well-built personalities. In all, 6/10

Overall: B The Beginning is nothing amazing. But it is nothing terrible either, and for sure, it's entertaining, and kept me hooked for the entire time I was watching. There's probably a lot more religious and ideas about life and death and humanity sprinkled in the story than I found from my first viewing, and the ending of the series is actually relatively conclusive. Sometimes things aren't explained in the series, and a lot is left for the viewer to work out, but overall, I'd give B: The Beginning a 7/10. A B Grade. After all, this is just the beginning, right...?

(This is my first review so sorry if I made any mistakes, thanks for reading!)

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Poll: B: The Beginning Episode 9 Discussion Tyrel - Mar 2, 2018	28 replies	by brunoyilli »» May 9, 4:51 PM
Poll: B: The Beginning Episode 7 Discussion Tyrel - Mar 2, 2018	27 replies	by brunoyilli »» May 9, 9:26 AM
Poll: B: The Beginning Episode 4 Discussion Tyrel - Mar 2, 2018	32 replies	by Uneducated_Weeb »» Mar 9, 4:32 AM
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B: The Beginning

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B: The Beginning

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