B: The Beginning

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.

Where to begin. Pretentious. Plain and simple.

This anime is awful. In all the anime I have seen I believe an overwhelming majority of them had something to say and left the viewer with at least one thought at its conclusion. This does not do that in the slightest. That is not without it trying to do so.

Story: Garbage confusing and says nothing. IN the end it left me feeling and asking for what reason was this made.

Art: The art was very impressive and fluid. I will without a doubt mention that merit which it indeed deserves. The action scenes are very well choreographed ... and in full attention as well as the character designs which were absolutely inspired... EXCEPT the annoying blushed cheeks on Lily which I hate to a point of rage but the annoyance of the cheeks is minor compared to my hatred of Lily as a character which ill discuss further down.

Sound: The sound was good i guess I don't really pay attention to that. I could probably watch any anime on sub on mute no issue. But the English voice actors were good fit the characters well again I don't really care much about the sound.

Characters: Lily.. Lily... Lily... Oh Lily another Nami-Sakura character. by that i mean loud aggressive overbearing piece of anime rubbish. In all honestly she did not do one single thing in the entire series of importance or added to the plot whatsoever. NOT ONE SINGLE THING. As i am typing this i feel so upset but i can say calmly i just want the people making anime to stop making characters ]like this. I know there supposed to be loud and scream at the protagonist in a loving jovial way that is supposed to be light-hearted but please STOP. Characters like this are the most annoying worthless upsetting part if the anime. Looking at the tone of this anime this character does not belong. even in a comedy anime. And I am not saying there shouldn't be lighthearted and funny moments but don't make everytime a character like this come on screen in ruins the whole atmosphere. And I want to make something clear I love over the top loud characters examples being Kamina from Gurren Lagann. But there is a point where it goes overboard./ I mean look at the way Lily talks to her superiors at work. SHe is a cop have some respect. Im gonna stop because I could do an essay on Nami-Sakura characters and i want to stop.

Otherwise the other characters were okay there was no development in characters at all. If you examine all the characters from beginning to end you notice that nothing changes AT ALL. Yes things happen there was a beginning middle and end in a story and characters received more information and did things as the story progressed. NOTHING CHANGES IN THE STORY AT ALL development wise.



Overall: I didn't like it. I want to say I DIDN"T LIKE IT AT ALL but i would be lying at the sole fact that I enjoyed the first fight on the train and the characters looked great apart from LIly's cheeks.


But i would be remiss if I didn't recommend an alternative to this waste of time so I will say that if you watched this for the same reason I did which is it looked cool and the trailers showed good action and an amazing story of mystery. You should and I say you should again. Make sure you watch Monster and Hunter X Hunter. Give monster 2 episode and I promise you will love it. and i dont really have to mention why you should watch HXH ask anybody who have seen it.

excuse grammer and punctuation mistakes just wanted to get my opions off directly and accurately while ignoring spelling and such

I love mystery anime genre so I was extremely happy to find this series is out. Felt that the beginning looks so much promising, I immediately knew that I am going to binge-watch this. Then, the downfall was imminent from the end of the first episode. From that point on, it bleeds the flaws and the story flops at times. Sadly and surprisingly it couldn't recover till the end.

Although it didn't take advantage of many chances of interluding motives between characters, I like some character compilations. But as many reviewers point out, I feel they are largely underdeveloped. AND there's an annoying shrewish female character ... (as always in any manga); why is this a norm in Japan?And the ending was so absurd. Everyone can tell Gilbert Ross character is a part of the bigger scheme. But it flops in delivering his true motivation; I know it's there but not convincing.

Only thing I give it a lot of credits is artfully crafted fighting scenes. Some are truly exhilarating and entertaining. However, using too many references makes those artful works look cheap and "half-hatched" job. I think all animator should know A Clockwork Orange reference is way overused in anime world. I can't understand why many animator try to regurgitate it in every possible ways.

I have never had a bigger disappointment than when I watched B: the beginning.

I initially was exited to see it, the premise was promising, a somewhat supernatural mystery with a cool vigilante guy. In addition to the seemingly great fight scenes. However, this very quickly was dropped to focus an a half-assed story that had me checking every five minutes if I accidentally skipped to the second season. B: the beginning felt that a mystery means not letting the audience know anything about the world or the characters until the very end, having the reveal be incurably boring having me wish that they let me ... just imagine my own ending as any monkey with a keyboard can come up with a better one.

the show seemed like it couldn't decide to focus on the slightly better serial killer plot line or the brain dead secret soldier plot line. Not to mention that the only thing connecting them was a character tangentially relating them.

When writing the show someone accidentally picked up a book on creating the perfect blank slate character and made that the MC. I cannot for the life of me tell you one interesting detail about him other than his powers being a cool sword limb.

The only part I could enjoy was when Kokuu fought Izanami, I would not be surprised if the entire budget was sunk into that one scene and the janitor for the studio was left to finish this mess.

B: The Beginning is a complete mess. I couldn't get passed EP 2. I was totally into the tone it tried to convey at the beginning of the first episode. But then I got blue balled by the change in tone straight after the opening. This happened more than once. It kept pulling me right out of the moment far too many times, in just one episode. It's trying to be too many animes at once, and it's what kills it. The story doesn't help either. You got two or more different plot points going at the same time. It left me confused, and disinterested ... by the time I got to the end of EP 2.

Honestly guys, I got suckered in by the animation style. The animation style looked really good. But alas, I got fooled and now I feel betrayed. I hate getting catfished by an anime's animation style. Why does catfish anime exist? Like, seriously! I came here because the animation looked amazing! But no, it threw at me a shit storyline. On top that, the anime is having an identity crisis. What type of anime is B: The Beginning trying to be? Horror? Psychological Thriller? Mystery? Sci-Fi? Slice of Life? Fantasy??? Seriously though. I got catfished by an anime.

If you have the time to waste, give it a watch to see for yourself what kind of train wreck this is. But beware of the whiplash you're going to get from the constant 360s throughout the series. Also, be prepared for the sense of betrayal you'll feel. You too will feel catfished by this anime.

Actually. No. Don't bother with this one guys. Don't waste your time with B: The Beginning. Go watch a better anime. Just. Do it.


*0/10. Would Not Recommend.*

[ The following review previously contained spoilers. They have since been edited out. ]
The following is an excerpt from the Deep Dive project:
- B: The Beginning
- Completed December 2019
- ONA, 12 episodes, dubbed, only watched season 1
- Not Recommended

Terrible name, seriously. This is a netflix ‘original’ funded anime, which should be an early warning sign of its quality.

This particular studio did a good job with animation and shot composition, but everything else is ametuer at best. The plot is one of those B-grade anime you dream up at 2am. Pun intended.
...
B isn’t insultingly bad or anything; it’s just poorly written and has some weird pacing and transitions, especially shifting from the early phase into the meat of the show and then into the climax and ending. I’m gonna be blunt here and admit I called every turn at least two episodes in advance, probably more. The show is trying to be a thriller, but the experienced viewer already knows the generic story structure these twelve episode animu go for. Without spoiling anything just yet, you can’t even call this a thriller. The writers just pull a couple minor bait-and-switches then follow it up with one of the classic anime villain tropes. This writing bad. It don’t challenge ape brain at all.

Finally, we have made it to the biggest and most ludicrous issue with this anime original budget burner: the plot armor. I cannot hammer this home enough. The main character in particular survives absolutely ridiculous shit, to the point where the opponent should have won. There are also several weird plotholes regarding this survivability, the big ridiculous final fight, various characters not exploiting weaknesses they should already have been aware of, and to top it all off, those weaknesses being incredibly inconsistent. The actual flow of the fights ranges from average to decent, with a few off camera angles thrown in there. The entire action side of B can just be summed up as ‘big stupid fight.’

God, everything other than the original soundtrack for this show was either a waste of talent or budget. First of all, this anime is simultaneously garishly eye-catching and generic as hell. Most of these character designs are almost shockingly forgettable. I don’t know who did these designs but the obviously talented staff should have gotten someone better. I can just blast out character designs that are better than basically anything in this show, and you probably can, too. All the subtle, seinen-style characterization for many of these characters is soured by their forgettable designs causing you to get them mixed up in your head. I watched this show in like three days. You can’t make this shit up.

Part of me thinks this anime is actually supposed to appeal to women. There are a lot of moments where the guys are being incredibly vain or just are straight up put in shitty situations that force them to play the hero regardless of their personal feelings on the matter. It’s not obvious to anyone who hasn’t seen a hundred anime, but this style of writing and directing is common in shoujo anime, where the girl has to just stand there and watch the guy do something violent and usually brutal in her defense.

It could just be a perspective thing with the directing style - like I said, it’s a subtle directing choice, but I really get that impression. There’s just this handsome japanese boy running around getting f_cked up for his girl - [redacted spoiler] and it’s just empty heroism. News flash dibshit writers; it ain’t heroism if it’s empty. At that point the protag is just taking what he wants. Even if he’s destined to win, you gotta make that win have merit. Obvious enough, I know, but these writers just don’t get that.

[redacted paragraph] [To read the full unedited review, please visit my profile. Otherwise, just be aware that this version of the review is incomplete.]

The show can’t even be properly edgy; it only ever goes halfway with it. [redacted spoiler], none of which was necessary to the narrative. The superhero approach is far better for this stuff, where they’re either super tough or just straight up invulnerable to bullets. Then even though the hero is tough, they’re not invincible and can be taken down with persistence. Nah, we got a bunch of wolverine ninjas flying around making zero damn sense.

Finally, as a last lesson on bad sci-fi plot writing, the pseudo-science. What on earth do random math equations and theoretical physics or whatever have to do with anything that happens in this show? Something, apparently. I guess this was the best the writers could do in depicting a genius. They gotta make no sense or it doesn’t count, right???

And we’ve made it to the end. There you have it; an honest review of B: the Beginning. As if all of this isn’t bad enough, the previews I’ve seen of season 2 are even worse. Needless to say I won’t be covering that one. You probably shouldn’t watch this show. I’ll admit this was a decent palette cleanser when I watched it, since it looked good but was bad in every other way. I just sat there and vegged out for three evenings. Seven outta ten on MAL apparently. Cya in the next one.

B: The Beginning is one of those Netflix produced original anime. It came out in 2018 and the studio behind it is Production IG. Yes, the studio behind Psycho Pass, Ghost in the Shell and some significantly less impressive works like Robotics; Notes & Blood+.

Story:

There's a mysterious super-powered vigilante going after violent criminals called B after the mark he leaves at the scene. Meanwhile, Detective Keith Flick returns to active duty to pursue B and a case from years ago that he isn't satisfied with the outcome of.

Let's start with the big narrative problem with this series. The two story lines are connected ... very tenuously. To the point where you have to question why they're part of the same series. You basically have two stories here. One is about these kids who were genetically engineered and they're following this old prophecy. Another is about a genius detective trying to catch a serial killer who's used various resources to get away with his crimes for a long time. And they've been forced together with very little care or skill. And one of the problems that comes from that is that the pacing is pretty horrendous. In theory, either of these stories would work with twelve episodes to develop. The problem is that you can't flesh out and properly develop both of them combined in twelve episodes. So, everything ends up being very minimalistic and relying on over-used clichés.

Where I give the series credit is that the project is clearly very ambitious and there were some interesting ideas behind it all. I'd even go so far as to say if they'd had a lot more time to develop things, strengthen the connection betwixt the narratives and flesh everything out, they could have made something special. The problem is it needed at least thirty episodes to do all that effectively and it's twelve.

Characters:

Once again, the anime gets let down by its short length and trying to juggle two stories. The instrumental characters in each thread are a completely different cast that occasionally interact. And neither cast is small. There are at least nine major important characters in the serial killer story. The genetically engineered children story has its own cast that's every bit as big if not bigger. And in twelve episodes, we're supposed to develop some attachment to these people? And I do mean we're supposed to because there are several "emotional" moments that rely on us giving a shit about the well being of these characters we barely know anything about. Once again, the anime relies on clichés and archetypes in lieu of actual development or complexity. None of these characters in this massive cast are compelling or memorable.

Art:

The art is pretty decent. There are some strong designs, detailed backgrounds and decent action sequences. On the downside, I will say that Kokuu's climactic battle is a little boring. It's one of those that uses a lot of blurring and sound effects with blood splatter instead of actually showing the blows and character movements. It's like they'd just stopped caring at that point and decided to take some old fashioned shortcuts.

Sound:

The acting is fine. Hirata Hiroaki, Kaji Yuki, Seto Asami and the rest of the cast all give passable performances. They'd probably give better if they had more to work with, but the character writing is what it is. The music isn't particularly good. I'm not a fan of what Ike Yoshihiro did with it. His compositions were better in Harmony, Dororo & FLAG.

Ho-yay:

There isn't really any.

Areas of Improvement:

1. If you're going to combine two disparate stories, you need to work harder to make them inter-connected. As is, it's an ambitious idea that's completely inept in its execution.

2. Character development needs to be present. Part of the problem here is that there are too many characters and too few episodes. But that doesn't change the fact that if you're going to have big, emotional character moments, you need characterisation to support them.

3. You need a longer series. A lot of the writing problems in this series come down to a simple issue. The series isn't long enough to give it enough care and development. Having multiple stories going doesn't work with twelve episodes. The character casts are too large for twelve episodes and the writing suffers both narratively and character-wise.

Final Thoughts:

While I give the writing staff credit for their lofty ambitions, they get no points for execution. The story is a poorly paced mess with insufficient justification for the two different threads both being present and entirely bland characters. My final rating is going to be a 4/10. It's a sub-par work.

I think that anime has a high score that doesn't deserve.

Besides the spectacular animation and the good soundtrack, the story of this anime sucks in every aspect. It's like a mix of a policial mystery that not have a real and sensate explanation. The story is full of pretentious characters that are cool and smart, but without doing anything interesting for the plot. The deductions are too complicated to think that is believable and the story of the gods its too rushed to understand well.

I know that the anime will have a 2nd season, but this season in their own is very weak.

This anime was confusing. There are two stories, and one is a mystery and the other is a shounen. I don't think they mesh very well and should have been made as two separate animes. I mostily finished it just to see how they would explain everything and in the end I just ended up confused and annoyed.

The power of friendship was at play and I don't like it. One caracter is very strong and powerful at one point and then she just ends up useless everywhere else.

The art however is beautiful but that isn't enough for me to want to watch the sequel.

This is actually so bad I'm writing my first ever review.

The show starts off intriguing but loses its footing very quickly. You would expect that two of the cover characters - Keith and Kokuu - are in the middle of the plot but there are episodes where they only appear for 5 minutes tops and the rest of the time is dedictaed to the Royal Police plot. Which may have been good but it has way too many characters that have way too little introduction. Lily arguably has the most screentime out of all of them but I feel like even that wasn't put ... to good use. She's quirky, sure, but has just about nothing else to her.

Same goes for the villians - I watched until episode 5 and I still have no idea what these guys are about. Indeed, it feels like show throws in too much and too little of exposition at the same time.

And, honestly, not like cover characters are even that good when they do get their screentime. Kokuu looks compelling but once you hear his actual motivation in ep 5 he lost just about all of his charm. Keith is your generic genius detective that goes on long rants about how he geniusely figured something out based on scant clues but they are often so long-winded the show puts me to sleep.

And don't get me started on the supernatural plot! I was watching this in Japanese and not getting what that was about so I decided to switch to English... Only to realise that the word salad makes little sense either way. It's complicated lexicon sprinlked over concepts so boring I regret stopping to try to understand it.

Art is great though. The only reason this isn't a 1 star review.

I'll be a better person for not finishing this.

Disclaimer: I dropped this in the 7th episode, so if you don't value the opinion of someone who didn't bear something awful until the end, then read any of the other negative reviews because I'm sure our points will overlap anyway.

For the first four episodes, there was a feeling in the back of my head, a little bit of deja vu. After a bit of a shocking cliffhanger end to the fourth episode, I thought about it for a little bit and realized what it was: every single individual element was something I've already seen before. Every character archetype, interaction, plot thread, event ... scenario, everything was all derivative. Clearly inspired by something else, plucked out and thrown into a stew. But whatever, I thought to myself, as long as the ingredients come together to form something interesting, I don't mind. But it only got worse, first off because the stakes of that cliffhanger were IMMEDIATELY undone followed by several contrivances, but then in the sixth episode, the show peels back the curtain and lets you see just how truly contrived it is with the entire episode serving as an exposition dump for the backstory, and its full form is unveiled. This show is the scribblings of a chuuni 12yo making his own epic grimdark fantasy, but revisited in adulthood adapting all of the concepts with none of the passion, resulting in a mess of a story that is both outrageously idiotic and yet utterly bland. In episode 7, any reason to believe that it would ever be anything else was squashed, so I dropped it, and all I have to show for it is this review urging others not to waste their time.

There are good production values, the visuals are great, and its clear that time and effort went into the show to make it look good. On the sound front though, the same can't be said. The ending theme, while it does evoke a certain emotional response, is often utilized rather questionably, occasionally coming in while dialogue is still going on dulling the impact of both the ending and the dialogue, and I have to ask what the fuck they were thinking having it come in at times like that. There are also sound effects that actually made me pause and go back because they did not fit the action that was happening at all, to a confusing degree. The sound design is serviceable but I can't call it "good."

It's a shame the high quality visuals are in service to such a garbage narrative. This anime really doesn't have a redeeming factor outside of them.

After finishing this anime it had me scratching my head like what was the point. There were so many unresolved threads and while the premise was interesting (at least I think so) it was so horrendously convoluted. Had a similar feel to Psycho-pass (same studio), and tackled some issues of the human mind and corruption in police organizations, but all in all not much point or logic or any thread of coherency in the anime.

To me the villains were much more interesting than the main characters of this anime, I wish they were better developed. A lot of showing not telling, but I think ... they told too little couldn't tell the train of thought for most of the characters, or maybe the point was there wasn't one.

The B stands for Boring don't be fooled by whatever pretentious plot elements they come up with. I like the way it looks but other than that I literally could not care about any of the characters or the plot. I wanted to like it, I really did - but I could find nothing interesting about it. I don't know if it was too chaotic, or just missing character depth but after 6 episodes and still feeling like I knew absolutely nothing, I wasn't going to bother watching more. This anime feels like the existing elements of plot drive the characters, but where the characters ... are going, I have no clue. There are good things, I suppose. The character design is cool, and I thought the voice acting was fine - but overall I found everything completely nonsensical and dull. Disappointed that I thought it would be anywhere near as good as psycho-pass.

B: The Beginning is like mixing ice cream and hot sauce, someone out there likes it, and its not me. It might have fit with me better when I went through my days when I liked the story of Devil May Cry 4. The story has two different plots and while I found one of them enjoyable, mainly the one following the detective, the other made me want to tear off my ears. Why? Because it felt like another torture Mel Gibson film but you put the volume to Billy Mays heights and is the sole reason I rated the audio so horrendously. Although I ... do believe the ost repeats itself many times I couldn't tell because I had to turn the sound off to save going deaf. I rather wish they just left out that whole story because at so many points would contribute to a okay fight scene and they say, "oh this character can't possibly be alive at this point." but as it turns out he is. To give an analogy, to kill a person, you can cut off their head, but the villains here go that extra mile practically and carpet bomb them per say. Yet they survive because no reason. So what's good about it? Keith, Keith's arc, just Keith. Well Lily too but it sadly develops the predictable route for little reason but kinda contributes, though could easily be done without. Though if I were to tell someone to watch it or skip it, more than usual skip it unless you're out of things to do in which, just watch the parts about Keith.

[i]B: The Beginning[/i] is a unsuccessful mishmash of ideas loosely tied together by an overarching plot that is almost amusing in its nonsense. [i]Psycho-Pass[/i] is probably the most helpful source of comparison here. The police procedural framework, setting, art, animation, characters, villains and their activities, and (rather tasteless) violence all seem to come straight out of Production I.G.'s 2012 hit. Cliches and esoteric puzzle plots abound.

Our deuteragonists, Keith Flick and Koku, navigate a complex web of mystery and conspiracy in interrelated but parallel sets of goals and actions. The former is the eccentric detective-genius who's backstory intersects with multiple different aspects of the larger ... story in ways that become apparent as it progresses, while the latter is a mystery unto himself for reasons that are (un)convenient for the plot. If you are coming into this show expecting some kind of game of cat and mouse between Keith and Killer B, prepared to be disappointed. The alleged serial killer's crimes are virtually never established from the outset, leaving me confused as to why the Royal Investigation Service is so intent on stopping him in the first place. It would have been helpful for the show to have started with a more typical episodic/procedural structure, giving us some time to understand the characters, how they think, and what is so apparently dangerous about Killer B.

Instead, we are immediately thrown headlong into a ridiculous sci-fi fantasy plot about demigods, super soldiers, prophecies, and a mysterious organization run by freaks in clown makeup. Add in some underdeveloped romance, and what you are left with is something that is unmistakably "anime." It's pretty goofy. [i]B[/i] tries to accomplish too much within a single cour, leaving little time to thoroughly explain the mechanics of the story, give major turning points time to leave an impact, or flesh out the characters and their relationships with each other so any of this can have an impact. The setting itself, a fictional island nation dubbed Cremona, is vaguely defined and a source of confusion in terms of geography, technology, and politics. One can only hope that the inevitable season 2 will actually make sense of these bigger picture details rather than leaving them as mere window dressing.

The rest of the cast is populated by ostensibly relevant but ultimately tertiary characters who are more or less only along for the ride. Lily Hoshina serves as an audience surrogate, yet doesn't have much in the way of personal stakes or involvement in the story. She's intelligent and endearing, but becomes increasingly sidelined as the story progresses. The same can be said for the rest of the RIS. A series of plot twists midway through the season puts particular stress on the team, yet the lack of context and screen time related to these individuals renders the whole thing ineffective.

Animation wise, the show is solid. Production values meet the expectation of a product being distributed by Netflix. The people at I.G. are hardly known for being slackers in this regard. The actions scenes in particular are smooth and well choreographed. An illuminated dual on the water is especially a highlight. There's nothing too noteworthy about the style or direction though. The demands of the story leave little time for such frills. It's a shame such budget and talent was wasted on a story more interested in a hodgepodge of various neat ideas than weaving them all together into a coherent and impactful story.

I've never seen such a pretentious story and fail in developing on his point of view. The buffoonery of the villains and their all charaterisation is has to be one the worst I've seen, ever. That and the alleged "genius" definitely where a drew the line as far as character development . From that moment on i couldn't take the story line. I finished the whole series to see if I was wrong at some point and see if i could appreciate other angle and I found out that the animation is all that saves this anime from being and absolute dread.

I can already tell this anime isn't going to get any better. There's no potential. It just incorporates the ingredients from several other anime, the lowest quality they can find, then butchers them, tossing them together into a disparate and unappetizing salad. Just from reading other reviews and watching the first two episodes, we have a copy-cat Shion from Psycho-Pass that also hacks with her feet and would put any bad hacking movie sequence to shame while she magically commandeers an entire hotel's security network and a separate system plugged in by terrorists. Shion was a whiz at research and analysis and had clearance to ... highly confidential information, but she can't top the super-Shion we have here. People are comparing this to Death Note. Now imagine L if he had absolutely no personality, looked like a cardboard middle-aged man, and all his assumptions were 100% correct and infallible. Super-L doesn't need pesky things like evidence or data. His super-L intuition is always correct, even when hundreds of people's lives are at stake! It's like Zankyou no Terror, if you leave out the terror part and focused only on the silly, self-absorbed bombing or gassing of things to get attention. At least there is no cringe-inducing Engrish. Toss in a nonsensical Naruto fight, I'm just gonna say Sasuke with wings versus some no-name Akatsuki member preaching incessantly in riddles, and we have the utter mess that is B the Killer B-eginning. Even the criminal nickname is criminally awful. And let's end this bad review by talking about the poor art and animation. Colorless, bland cardboard characters with all the charm of cel-shaded 3D models from the PS2. Choppy, low-frame animation because it's preferable to smooth, robotic CG animation. They even have that same problem with other 3D anime where the face is smaller than the head it's pasted on.

After completing B: The Beginning... I regretted wasting my time. You watch something hoping the characters will be great, the story will be great, the art will be great and the ending will be great. But sadly this anime was complete trash. There are 2 protagonist in the anime that barely correlate to one another. It is extremely rediciulous because you are left with tons of unanswered questions. There are several loop holes to the storyline. Characters are very flawed, for example the greatest detective of all time barely figures out who murders his sister, then there is the strongest character in the anime but ... he gets beaten up to a pulp. My suggestion to everyone is DONT WASTE YOUR TIME, not even one episode. It is super slow, horrible story, unanswered questions even when the anime is over, the characters have so many flaws and overall; it just doesn't make sense.

BAD. This was just mediocre at best. This show presents itself as a mystery thriller that questions the philosophy of killing and whether the end justifies the means (or something like that. The plot was such a jumbled mess that I could hardly decipher anything). But instead of showing the strategies that the characters take to uncover the plot, it instead jumps to scene after scene of BORING EXPOSITION.

I don't give a damn about any of the characters because none of them are given enough scene time to show that they are anything more than devices used to spout a predictable plot. The characters ... are so single minded in their train of thought that they feel like cardboard. Despite the grisly deaths and crimes that they have to witness, they appear to be entirely unaffected by it. They're not human but simply caricatures of roles that they're supposed to play. Side characters are definitely just side characters...I don't remember the name of a single person outside of Boris.

The only reason I watched it was because of the art - not that it's anything unique. However, I liked the character designs and I feel like it gave the characters more personality than they actually had. It didn't help that the soundtrack was unmemorable.

Anyways, I DON'T RECOMMEND THIS ANIME AT ALL.

This looked promising, but turned out to be mediocre, time-wasting doodoo. I watched this, because I saw the synopsis and thought, why not, like fantasy anime with an OP protagonist. Then I regretted it. HOW do you make a fantasy/thriller boring??

When the protagonist showed up, I thought that this was gonna be similar to Tokyo Ghoul, and because I have a soft spot for Tokyo Ghoul, I thought that I'd at least enjoy this. Nope, this was BOOOORING. Every 2 episodes, I find myself going "Can you mOVE ON". The pacing was dreadful. Things that are supposed to be developed properly, such as THE ... MAIN CHARACTERS aren't. Instead, they slow scenes down for things you don't give a shit about and feel nothing for, and they try to give you context through flashbacks, which did not put any emotional weight onto the story.

This is supposed to be a mystery, fantasy and thriller, where we get curious and are supposed to be excited when we solve the mystery because the MAIN CHARACTER IS A DETECTIVE. What happens instead? Everytime something interesting comes up and I go "Ooh I wonder who's behind th-" They tell me the culprit. How am I supposed to have suspense or curiosity when I already know who the culprit is. This is a thriller. I felt nothing. Even the fight scenes between a main character who is this godly being felt bland and boring.

When the characters are in danger, I feel nothing. They did not develop them enough so I could not feel Aaaaanything for them. Not even for the main characters. The only things I felt watching this was frustration. There are two plots in this anime and not one of them are interesting. Characters did not wow me, they bored me. I don't even remember their names. All that I was left with was a generic anime, trying to feel deep and make you feel emotion, with surface-level characters and a badly written story.

TLDR, don't watch this generic cliched mess.