In a world powered by advanced technology, crime and action unfold in the archipelagic nation of
Cremona. Koku, the protagonist. Keith, the legendary investigator of the royal police force RIS. A
mysterious criminal organization. A wide variety of characters race through the fortified city as it
is beset by the serial killer, Killer B, and a chain of crimes.
(Source: Netflix, edited)
__Story__: B the Beginning has a very messy and predictable narrative. It’s the equivalent of watching a whole bunch of tropes being thrown at a script to see which resonate with the audience. I can’t even begin to dive into just how generic this whole plot is. It couldn’t be more tired and stale if it tried. From the beginning the pacing felt completely off, the story coming at you all at once and then going at a snails pace to try and catch the audience up with its nonsense. Dialogue held your hand throughout the narrative. It felt as if the writers didn’t have the confidence that their audience would understand everything they were going for if it wasn’t spoon fed to them. Minutes would be spent on exposition dumps from characters about nonsensical details that the story would touch upon later on, making these monologues feel repetitive and unnecessary. None of the emotional reactions the writers may have been expecting were earned. Comedic scenes felt out of place and awkward, empathetic moments felt shallow, and reveals always fell flat due to a painfully predictable pattern in the writing of the twists and turns. __Sound/Music__: The OP is rather short but I have to say it worked for what it was. Simple, short and elegant. As for the ED it was honestly the highlight of my experience with this show. I never skipped listening to it since it matched so well with the visuals of the closing sequence. Feels far too good for a show like this. The music during the fighting sequences was alright, nothing too outstanding. The voice acting for the most part was adequate. __Animation__: Wasted. Production IG has talented staff but the direction of this show was uncoordinated and incompetent. I don’t know who thought the floating words indicating clues was a good idea. It’s distracting and stylistically unnecessary. We can hear the characters describing clues as words crowd the screen and is unappealing to look at. Character designs are generic, each character looking exactly as you’d expect their archetype to look. It’s boring. And these characters are just as forgettable in personality. It’s so frustrating because there are moments that the animation does shine through. Fighting sequences look nice, especially when they take the time to slow down the movements. There is some effort in bringing this world to life in the environments, with some nice details in some establishing shots. However, it’s not enough to carry this story and its characters. I don’t even recommend giving this show a passing glance. There are much better shows out there that are worth your time.
B: The Beginning feels like a show that's extremely promising in concept, but poor in execution. Almost everything in the show is a cool idea but put into motion poorly. I'll dive more deeply into those issues later on, but the most obvious thing you can point to is a simple question of who the main character actually is. We look at the cover and say Keith, but we start the show and think Koku, but they end up kind of sharing the main character role in what feels like two entirely different shows that only collide occasionally and make very little sense when they do. It's a bit of a shame, because I actually bought into the premise in the first three or so episodes, but quickly was let down by the poor direction the story took. The result of B: The Beginning is frustrating, because of how much promise so many of the themes show if they were properly fused together. It could have been this weird mix of Psycho Pass and Tokyo Ghoul, but instead, only mixed together the worst parts of each. As always, spoilers in the sections between favorite character and the last paragraph. B: The Beginning's soundtrack was actually really good. Most of the music choices were tasteful, especially the Koku scenes. The police music was mostly forgettable, but that isn't necessarily a knock, because it's not like the show would want you distracted by the music during those scenes anyway. I loved the short but impactful opening sequence's music and especially loved the ending "The Perfect World", which was quite the banger. The voice acting was excellent as well. I watched the English dub and was pretty impressed with it. Honestly, nothing to knock here, music and sound is one of the most solid things that B has going for it. Perhaps the greatest strength in B: The Beginning lies in its animation. The fights are an absolute treat to watch, especially the Izanami/Koku duel early on. Admittedly, this fight is also an early peak for B, as it never recreates something of that caliber again. That being said, the following fight scenes are still enjoyable, albeit not as impressive. Visually, B is beautiful. The backgrounds are stunning, the character designs are done really well, especially the Reggies and Koku. One small issue I had with B visually, however, is that the CGI blending wasn't done particularly well and it really breaks the mood of the story a lot of the time, but that's a fairly personal complaint. __Favorite Character: __ Izanami ~~~img(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fe/2a/e0/fe2ae08b3b6516b694f7b22a5a13ada8.jpg)~~~ As much as I desperately wanted to put Yuna here, I had to go with Izanami, who absolutely stole the show in her scarce screen time. I just simply couldn't get behind any other major characters enough to really support them more than Izanami. For instance, Koku is barely a character and has zero personality, Keith is rather unlikable, Lily is annoying, and everyone else is too minor to mean much (except for Kaela- what a champ). It's simply an issue with these characters: their lack of personality development. Lily has perhaps the most defined personality in B, and she just comes across as nosey and annoying most of the time. Koku is the biggest victim of this, as he gets no development until around episode 8, after which it's way too late, but that ties into another issue with B that I'll get to shortly. To put it simply, Izanami might just be the most developed character in the show's first half, which is incredible since she's in the show for all of three episodes. So what did I like about B? Well, I liked most of the concepts and ideas that B put forward. The supernatural/sci-fi blend with crime drama was a really cool idea that could have worked if it was more tightly woven together as a whole instead of feeling like two separate stories that somehow ended up in the same show, because let's face it, Koku had nothing to do with the ultimate resolution for Keith, despite the fact that they should have been a part of each other's stories. I actually really enjoyed the supernatural bits and wished that they had spent more time fleshing that side of the story out. As it stands now, the supernatural elements feel insanely hamfisted into the overall narrative. Again, there was absolutely no part of the supernatural storyline that affects the cop drama. The two storylines are sort of parallel at the beginning of B, but quickly separate and do not come close to connecting again. Lastly, I loved Gilbert, mostly because he gave me Shogo Makashima vibes, but he was a fantastic villain for the crime storyline. ~~~img(https://www.monstersandcritics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/B-The-Beginning-Season-2-release-date-2021-Sequel-Netflix-B-The-Beginning-Succession.jpg)~~~ I touched on most of the things that I thought were poorly done about B already, but I'll mention a few more here. I didn't like the writing too much, it felt too weak and a lot of the big shocks fell flat because the writers didn't want to kill anyone, for example, why didn't Brian actually die? What purpose does him living serve? There are a few more examples of this, but enough on that front. This is sort of a facet of a bigger problem that B has, which is a horrible lack of focus, as I've alluded to previously. There's so much reliance on info dumping and expecting watchers to simply follow along and suddenly understand what Reggies are and why 13 and 4 are different in addition to many other plot points. There's more nitpicking to be done, but I'll leave it at that. Despite tearing into B like this, I really enjoyed watching it, thus the higher score than you'd expect. I loved the themes and the suspense as you got jerked back and forth on the twists and turns the story took, even if they ultimately weren't the most effective twists and turns. This is definitely a show that shows more and more cracks the more critically you think on it, but as a simple one night binge, you could watch worse. I'm definitely interested to see where season 2 takes us, where it hopefully cleans up a lot of the mess that this season has left behind. I would hope that it makes this season seem more cohesive in retrospect, especially if they can drive home some of their concepts and such. Either way, I enjoyed B and will tune into the second season whenever that gets released due to simply being so entertained the first time around!
**Overview:** All 12 episodes cover 4 different party’s that are intertwined and at times working together with their stories overlapping. Lots of deceit and betrayal that falls in line with a prophecy/scripture. A lot of the characters can be described as used and abused. Not a lot more that can be said without spoiling. Most things are not supposed to be known and they slowly tell you throughout since it’s a softcore mystery. At the end of the last ep, ep 12, there is a few second scene that I’m guessing will be the setup for the next arc/season if and when they release it. **Visuals/Music:** All the visuals are clean and look very good from the scenery to the characters style and movement. Along with the darker color pallet used on most things it blended well with the rest of the world portrayed. Music was also very good. The ending theme song `The Perfect World by Marty Friedman` has the vocals from one of the members of `MAN WITH A MISSION` and just like their songs its hard to find something bad about it. The riffs and sync between the instruments are simply put another finely crafted song. While the OST was all great I don’t feel they used it to its fullest. At times the OST played in the background was not balanced out being too loud in some scenes (this problem could be the source I got it from where vocals were not balanced but it only happened in select scenes, so I doubt it a bit.). Something they didn’t use to the fullest is silence. At times there would be a scene that silence would suit the mood better to get the viewer more immersed, but they decided to try and amp it up with music. As to why they would do this, I’m not sure but it did break the immersion a bit towards the end. Placement is decent enough throughout though. **Final Thoughts:** It’s a good anime but lots of room for improvement from both a sound placement and story aspect. Those wanting to get into the mystery genre I think this would do well but don’t have expectations set too high. The mystery aspect by the end was a bit of a letdown, you think there is going to be a huge exposition and something major will happen but nope it stays pretty stagnant in its story telling and sense of tension throughout. Something I found a bit annoying was their use of blood. Sometimes the use of blood didn’t add any sense of tension but was more there to add shock value to the viewers. Also saw some people praising this as the best anime on Netflix… I would say no to that both objectively and subjectively. `Nanatsu no Taizai` has both a more impactful story and executes most of the things done wrong with better precision. The genre and sources are completely different, one being an original and the others source a manga. Due to being so different can’t directly compare but indirectly by breaking down each in how their music usage, characters, pacing ect. Some may consider this show their favorite which is fine, `Yu Yu Hakusho` is one of mine but I still recognize and can point out its flaws. Something that has flaws is still capable of being a top tier product, flaws does not equate to bad. ```Overall Rating: 3/5```