Review
Investigation tales have a hard time getting things right. You see, if they up the dose of realism, chances are the story will stretch beyond what is tolerable, possibly growing into a boring experience. However, if their characters are too smart or if they spice it up with fiction, the story ends up being a typical teenage wet dream where clairvoyance is a real thing. B: The Beginning is an example of the later. Well, at least while it still tries to be a tale about investigation during its first three or so episodes.
This is the tale of super-intelligent Keith Flick as he returns to the police to investigate the mysterious murders from Killer B. The conspiracy behind everything, however, is more akin to the tale about Kokuu, a teenager born with superpowers trying to find his beloved and exact vengeance upon a government that performs secrets experiments in search for god and the origins of mankind.
- ...what?
Yes. Superpowers, gods, ancients, secret experiments, and teenager. Holy sh*t, huh? At first this may look like a big stretch from "Killer B", but that's where the show falls very quickly as the idea of an investigation tale becomes clearly just a misleading attempt to make everything seem mature. In the end this is simply a shounen about a traditional young protagonist fighting evil guys while an older man with semi-clairvoyance tries to follow the murder of his sister.Killer B killed his sister, right?
Nope. Big no. Both Keith and Kokuu are on their quest for vengeance here. Kokuu wants to find his former childhood girlfriend while kicking the ass of clown-like superhumans. Keith rejoins the police simply because he sees an opportunity to find the real murder of his young sister, killed eight years ago and whose culprit was clearly just a diversion of something bigger. Of course, everything is conveniently linked together, but these two tales offer completely different experiences on their own and they simply don't work together at all.An adult cast at least
On Keith's side this is a tale of a group of adult investigators, although Lily is more akin to a dumb girl in a high-school environment whose purpose is simply being rescued. Anyway, being led by adults, this part of the tale manage to get interesting in its more realistic dangers and funny stereotypes. Many could see a bit of Psycho-Pass here or even Ghost in the Shell, and that is a good thing. Keith can be a bit of a supernatural guy whose smart is way too high, but the problem in this part lies more with the ridiculous conspiracy that keeps characters alive for no damn reason other than allowing them to win in the end.Ah, the villains...
Kokuu's side of things is with the villains. Yes, there IS a secret murder Keith is trying to unmask, but the other villains are a group of pyscho teenagers with no real agenda other than spread chaos, apparently under the command of the government or some big person. These psychos, however, are superhumans linked with Kokuu and, of course, our poor teenage guy has no memory of his past and his link to these freaks. This part of the tale can be summarized simply as "psycho guy X tries to kill Kokuu, Kokuu kills psycho guy X" repeated over and over. Not only does these bizarre guys have nothing to do with a detective tale, they are so one-sided they never really get interesting at all. By the end you simply wish they never existed and the show was just about Keith finding the murder of his sister and the guy behind the conspiracy.It's beautiful though
Yeah. I said it can remind you of Psycho-Pass with the police crew, but it goes beyond that. The guys in Production I.G did a pretty similar job here, although the setting this time is a fictional mediterranean town. The art is sharp, the show is colorful (perhaps too colorful for a crime show though), and animation is very interesting, being the sole saving part of Kokuu's side of the tale even. What is really interesting though, is the soundtrack, which is a blast for its investigative parts and remind us a bit of a classic piece of the last decade: Ergo Proxy.
Comments
I don't really know what they were trying with B: The Beginning. The tease was a detective show but the trailer already showed a dark-blue guy with one eye fighting someone with a something similar to a clown's makeup. It is sad though. The detective part suffers from a protagonist that is too smart but not funny at all, yet it had the atmosphere and some thrilling sequence of events to make it work. The superpower part, however, brings everything down, especially when the villains are so boringly one-liners as they are, simply working towards killing Kokuu. Kokuu, in fact, is another big mistake here, making everything around him look like a lame attempt at turning the show likeable by the typical otaku fanbase of shounens and teenage leads with amnesia.
It works as a entertainment because it is short and direct, but other than that it is all a big misleading tale which ends up being only a safe shounen experience.
