Bem

Young detective Sonia Summers has been transferred to the outskirts of the port city Libra after stirring up trouble with her superiors. Libra is separated into two sectors—"the Upper," the center of wealth and politics, and "the Outside." The Outside is home to crime, corruption, and curious incidents involving monstrosities or youkai. Each case that Sonia works on seems to implicate the involvement of these mysterious creatures.

Sonia crosses paths with three peculiar humanoid youkai—Bem, Bela and Belo—who seek to protect humans and fight against the evil youkai that terrorize them. Living as "Youkai-Ningen," they are excluded by other youkai for their human-like lifestyles, and rejected and hurt by humans when they reveal their true forms.

Despite the hardships they face, these three Youkai-Ningen secretly live among humans, continuing to pursue their dreams of one day becoming human as well.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Bem
Other:	Youkai Ningen Bem, Youkai Ningen Bem (2006)
Sequel:	Bem Movie: Become Human

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Belo

Main

Ono, Kensho
Japanese

Bela

Main

Ichimichi, Mao
Japanese

Main

Konishi, Katsuyuki
Japanese

Summers, Sonia

Supporting

Uchida, Maaya
Japanese

Walker, Roddy

Supporting

Nishiyama, Koutarou
Japanese

Bryson, Daryl

Supporting

Saitou, Souma
Japanese

Mysterious Lady

Supporting

Sakamoto, Maaya
Japanese

Chris

Supporting

Morishita, Yukiko
Japanese

Kevin

Supporting

Oda, Hisafumi
Japanese

Manager

Supporting

Kusunoki, Taiten
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Herek, Samantha

Assistant Producer

Isobe, Kenji

Director

Odaka, Yoshinori

Director

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Opening Theme

"Uchuu no Kioku (宇宙の記憶)" by Maaya Sakamoto

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Ending Theme

"Iru Imi (イルイミ)" by JUNNA

Reviews

Nov 9, 2021

ceroto60

Recommended

Bem is a remake of the original Youkai Ningen Bem series from the late 60s. I'm generally not a fan of remakes, but this was a very strong show. The world they created was really interesting. It had this film noir style, reminiscent of the Batman TAS from the 90s. I also really liked how they developed the characters throughout the series. They wanted you to become invested in the world, and I definitely felt it. Unfortunately, the story felt rushed because of the brevity of the series. The original series was 26 episodes long. I think this series should've mirrored that in order to ...

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Nov 5, 2019

grazr

Mixed Feelings

Bem is one of those shows that starts off with a lot of potential, but never really grows into its strengths. Instead meandering around semi-conscious before reaching a rushed conclusion that simply fails to satisfy.

The show begins in an unashamedly cliché American detective-cop story way, following a rogue hot head detective (Sonia) that gets themselves into trouble with their higher ups and gets sent to a dead end roll/position, but develops strongly afterwards following the main characters interactions and relationships over time as the cops try to figure out what is happening and the yokai and human-experiments are slowly revealed and explained. All very interesting ... stuff.

The most redeeming quality of the show are the characters, who show highly relatable strengths and weaknesses. The three protagonist yokai consist of an adult male (Bem), child male (Belo), and teenage girl (Bela). Though their age defies them as they're not actually human but immortal creatures that closely resemble vampire archetypes, their personalities do somewhat match their chosen avatars in maturity. This makes them easily accessible and provides variety in content.

Each yokai gets a mini story arc where they get to confirm their long unseen history of being betrayed by those humans with which they attempted to form relationship with using their counter-identities. Some of which go on to become major antagonists in the show later. Before meeting some unprejudiced humans who redeem the species when they discover the truth almost by accident. All while a plot unfolds where a hidden authority attempts to out the yokai as being evil and dangerous. This is where the show gets a little loose, because the show kinda forgets that actually most yokai are evil and dangerous and that it's only these 3 attempting to reach out to humans as friends. This comes across as a major oversight more than any attempt to play "grey area" with morals/ethics because no attempt is ever made to address the fact that technically, the baddies were actually right even though they were as morally bankrupt themselves as the yokai they were trying to condemn. Still, we root for these 3 yokai anyway.

Belo gets the classic "children are innocent and untainted" redemption story, Bela gets the "boy who loves beyond prejudice" redemption story and Bem gets the "ambitious adult who wants to unite the world" arc. Belo gets the most attention even though it was the most rudimentary of the three stories and Bela's friendship story gets half baked even though it was the most interesting and complex character relationship going. Bem's mysterious character is revealed towards the end right as the show begins to deteriorate and his potential deepness is never really expanded upon as the show rushes to a conclusion.

The show, in my opinion, would have had a lot more going for it if it had kept with the tone it set out in the opening episodes (semi-dark/serious). But the mid-level antagonist, the "mad scientist" who is as cartoonish as his name "Dr Recycle" suggests who makes a half man, half vacuum cleaner monster. From here-on it becomes hard to take the show seriously at all. Then there's the god awful finale.

Oh boy, there are so many things wrong with the finale starting with the fact that its orchestrated by "final boss" characters we know nothing about, are discovered suddenly with no gradual build up and puppeteered by the author as if we're supposed to have some kind of investment with them. The ending is a needlessly high stakes affair where the whole city is doomed to blow up through a seemingly benign interaction between the yokai that is shown before and never fully explained; and ends with the final boss being "buried for eternity" in an actually rather shallow river that would have to get dredged anyway to fix the broken bridge they collapsed on top of her. I really want to nit pick more, but i'm 7 paragraphs in and i think the gist of it is here.

The show is generally ok. But it lets itself down when it grows and then doesn't deliver. I completed it because i wanted to know more about what happens with the characters that accept the yokai, but it just doesn't go anywhere. The character development is dropped for the sake of pushing through the plot.

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Oct 29, 2019

Carpal_Tunnel69

Not Recommended

I don't know how to put this one easy. This anime is the biggest dissapointment i have seen this year apart from my own actions. When i saw the cover i should have noticed something was off in that poster, that it was trying to imitate that edgy shading but not nailing it right, but I as a fool when i read the synopsis i had hopes for this anime. I felt so dissapointed that I made an account for this website just to make this shitty angry bwaaaa bwaaaa, I'm a cry baby bwaaah review

What a fool I was.

Animation: The animation is similar if ... not worse than Ben 10, Ben 10 had decent fight scenes and everything, but the animation only shined in the final episode, every other episode where just poor, uninteresting and forgetable, there where no moments when it could do anything risky or anything entertaining at all

Story: Pseudo intelectual would be a perfect way of describing it. It trys to be something it cannot acomplish because of the bad writting, the only characters with kinda decent writting are the 3 protagonist and maybe Summers. But the whole plot trys to do something similar to what Babylon acomplished on its first 3 eps, but that shock, surprice element, anything never comes, there is not even one big plot twist or anything that makes me want to care, the sub plot that goes in every ep till the end when it becomes the main plot its just plain bad, maybe someone else here can express how bad it is than i do, because i know nothing about writting. But one thing in specific that made me angry was how retarded all the politics are, one almost gets killed in his own house by a mercenary, so what is his next move, proceeds to do a conference and gets his friend killed by that same mercenary and also him at his house after knowing that mercenary can get in his house.

I think a way of describing it would be, it trys to pull out a The Mentalist plot (referencing non anime in a anime website you heretic) but its 12 eps and its target audience are people between 9 to 15 who would think this is a high iq anime becuase it has conspiracies and social issues, and a secret society 😎😎😎 and also human bad monster more human than human.

Characters: The characters that are not the 4 protagonists are just one dimensional, the 3 friends of Bella are close to be one character, the firends of Belo are just not really interesting at all even with thier back story of being kids living with terrible abusive parents or just homeless, this thing never actually adds a weight to them or anything.
Belo and Bella might be the characters with the most development alongside with officer Summers, I actually liked Bella a little becuase she really had a change, and she essentially by the end she is a human in the way she thinks, Belo kinda did the same, and Bem had a guy there too but was with Summers who is the lady in trouble in every episode.

The kid who becomes supreme leader of the undeground society thing also find him kinda dumb in the writing for letting him find everything his father couldn't and could and never get an actual death treat as his father had, unlike they just want to justify it by the woman wanted him to be alive or some shit like that.

The main villan, I don't remember shit, I only remember she was like, human bad, yokai good, why yokai want to be human? and then gets owned epic style and gets trapped in the bottom of the ocean even tho she has enough power to destroy and move the bridge if she wants.

The other bad guys be like a ghost from ghost stories literally, even those had more depht into them, except for the not really bad one russian man with the girl every other character was just really super basic, Russian Astronaut had a little more story but still some pseudo sad moment that didn't have enough serious build up to be taken seriously.

Sound: Sound effects and shit are forgetable but it has cool jazz music doe, the op music is good.

Overall: I'm still waiting for the good part. By ep 8 its enjoyable but the good part never really comes.

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Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for June Week 1: June 7 - 13 Anime Releases Bem (BEM: Become Human) Blu-ray Btooom! (incl. Bakusat...read more

Jun 7, 2022 10:13 AM by Aiimee | Discuss (2 comments)

New 'Bem' Anime Series Receives Film in Fall 2020

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Jun 1, 2020 11:46 PM by Vindstot | Discuss (10 comments)

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Poll: Bem Episode 12 Discussion Stark700 - Oct 13, 2019	31 replies	by iSoye »» Oct 13, 2023 12:30 AM
Why such the low score? DanLikesAnimu - Aug 31, 2019	20 replies	by Yonaga »» May 15, 2023 7:12 AM
Poll: Bem Episode 11 Discussion Stark700 - Oct 6, 2019	14 replies	by Stardew »» Apr 10, 2022 7:20 PM
Poll: Bem Episode 10 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 29, 2019	13 replies	by Vindicater »» Apr 9, 2022 8:02 PM
Poll: Bem Episode 9 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 22, 2019	19 replies	by Vindicater »» Apr 7, 2022 6:34 AM

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Bem

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