Common Name: B: The Beginning
Score: 7/10, 5/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Action, Drama, Mystery, Supernatural, Super Powers, Shounen, Comedy, Romance
Summary: On the island nation of Cremona, there has been a rash of murders that have only one thing in common: the letter "B" carved somewhere at the scene of the crime. The royal police service has searched long and hard for this serial killer, known only as Killer B, but they haven't come close to catching him just yet. This kind of incompetence is due mainly to the rash of terror attacks that have been plaguing the small nation lately, tying the hands of the RIS, a skilled and efficient branch of the police force. Luckily for them, the top brass have seen fit to drag Keith Flick, a former RIS member and genius savant, out of exile just to assist the team fight this new rash of attacks and, hopefully, track down Killer B. Perhaps "B" isn't the person the RIS should have in their sights though. Killer B has only killed criminals who show no remorse for their vile actions, leaving his call sign in the hope that it will eventually reach the eyes of his long lost love.
Review: I don't think it's any great secret that I love to sit back and enjoy some junk food every now and then; let's be honest, who doesn't enjoy some meaningless schlock from time to time. Luckily for me, B: The Beginning came to my attention just as that urge was starting to kick in. To be clear, though, this isn't your average junk food anime; this is of a different class entirely. Where shows like Eromanga-sensei and High School DxD can be acquainted to a bland and morally bankrupt franchise like McDonald's, B: The Beginning is like Olive Garden by comparison, in that it's far more cultured but lacks the character and originality to make it an actually high-class restaurant. Originality is the key issue with this show, in fact. Borrowing from series like Psycho-Pass, Darker Than Black, and Terror in Resonance (thanks to the shows sharing the same character designer), this show is cobbled together from all the things that make your average Action/Mystery Thriller and Shounen anime great without having any way to bring those ideas together in a cohesive fashion. Yet, it's specifically because it borrows from these great shows to make it's own idiotic and half-baked plot that I found this show as enjoyable as I did. It's fun. It's compelling. It's stupid beyond belief. Yet it knows just how to grab my attention and hold it for a whole 6 hours.
I mean, let's be totally honest, staring at a screen for hours on end with a lifeless expression
on your face is the only real way to watch a Netflix series.
To reiterate, though, this show is neither a good crime drama nor is it a particularly good shounen action series. It might have all the hallmarks (aka tropes) of both genres, but it fails utterly to make those two, distinct concepts meld together in any sensible manner. To make that very point clear, I'll try to analyze both of the main plotlines of the show as well as all the tertiary subplots as they crop up along the way.
So, without further adieu, let's get this shitfest underway.
First and foremost, I'll address the aspect of this show that actually got me invested in this mess from the word go--the Crime Drama/Thriller aspect. Centered around the RIS (Royal Intelligence Service...probably. I don't think they ever actually spell what RIS stands for.) branch of Cremona's royal police force, this aspect mainly dances around the RIS solving the surface layer crimes of the deeper conspiracies that fuel the more Shounen aspects of the show. Over the course of the show, the RIS agents solve things ranging from murders to military convoy heists to nerve gas attacks on the general populous with the assistance of Keith Flick, the team's genius savant. When I say "genius savant," though, I mainly mean he has the ability to perform predictive mathematics that happen to make sense only to him and happen to always point in the direction he needs to go. I've seen a couple comparisons between him and the BBC's recent interpretation of Sherlock Homes since my watching the show and I do see the similarities. Short of having a literal "mind palace," Keith is presented as this ace detective that stands head and shoulders above everyone around him but can't be bothered to actually do something with that intelligence. Where Sherlock just gives in to boredom, Keith falls into the brand of melancholy detectives get when they've screwed up and lost someone because of it. Though it takes some time to get the whole story out of him, his depression and subsequent single-minded pursuit for revenge centers around the unsolved and brutal murder of his younger sister. So, go figure that his mental calculations somehow point to the enigmatic Killer B being the key to solving that, now several years old, cold case. Luckily for Keith, he basically has carte blanche to pursue this investigation on his own terms since the head of RIS is basically just Keith's personal Watson.
As if the Sherlock parallels weren't blatant enough, the guy even shares that gimmick where his
voluminous thoughts are displayed on screen to showcase just how smart he really is.
As a side note: It was hilarious watching Netflix just give up
on translating all this halfway through the scene.
As tired as savant trope is in most media today, the puck doesn't stop with Keith though. To say the RIS is full to bursting with savants wouldn't be much of an overstatement. On top of Keith, the RIS has at least two other characters the plot can lean on to make the mystery charge forward when it starts to drag. As the team's resident computer wiz, Kaela Yoshinaga is one of those characters that just magically has the ability to create mind-breakingly convenient programs that can track down criminals as well as out-hack pretty much anyone on the planet, all while looking like she's the Johann Sebastian Bach of computers. Luckily, Kaela's contribution to the plot is minimal since she's limited to being tech support and an occasional vehicle for the plot when she "stumbles" upon something that hints toward the deeper conspiracies of the show.
I seriously wouldn't be surprised to hear she has the ability to, quite literally, "hack the world."
Last, but far from least, is the second main character in this show's take on the buddy cop drama, the idiot savant Lily Hoshina. While not nearly as intelligent as Keith, Lily is essentially portrayed as being the man's tomboyish, feminine equal that solves things with her gut rather than her mind. When push comes to shove, though, she does have an intellect that can rival both Keith and Kaela, so long as they point her in the right direction. Unfortunately, while I call her Keith's partner in this crime drama, her role is a lot closer to Kaela's in that all the drama with Keith and the Shounen aspect of the show tend to railroad her out of the picture. Worse still, she unfortunately gets railroaded into being bot just a lesser character but also a romantic interest for Keith and a damsel in distress towards the end of the plot, devaluing her efforts and even more. I feel like it almost goes without saying that such a portrayal of a strong female lead irks me to no small degree. Even more so when you fall into the camp where Lily is your favorite this character this show has to offer, which I assume to be most fans of this show. Where Keith is a walking deus ex machina of a detective, Lily functions like the down-to-earth beat cop who might be well out of her league but can still fight with the best of them. She is simultaneously the lovable underdog in all this and one of the show's most compelling characters if only because she isn't held on the same pedestal as the rest of the cast.
I'd be lying, though, if I didn't admit part of my love for her stems from the simple fact that she's adorably expressive.
I'm not saying she's waifu material, but I do get why she's the center of the show's romance.
Throughout the vast majority of the plot, Keith and Lily slowly work to piece together all of their cases throughout the series until they begin to uncover the deeper conspiracy to it--a conspiracy that, for whatever reason, is tied simultaneously to both the recent terror attacks and the death of Keith's sister. To simply things down to a point, it is eventually revealed, through a considerable amount of bullshit crime solving, that all these troubles were engineered by the apparent head of a secret government organization named Market Maker, whose sole role in the nation is to "create peace through the use of strategic chaos." In other words, the villain of the show is the head of an organization that is specifically designed to attack its own nation. Just from the sheer amount of crazy involved in that idea, I want to meet the King of this nation. He must be the most hedonistic asshat to ever exist. More to the point, though, the simple fact that the villain of this part of the show hasn't been caught or at least noticed over the years is nothing short of astounding given how obvious he is. So long as you have eyes to see, it's honestly pretty obvious who the villain is from the start. What's more baffling, though, is trying to untie all the threads that tie that same villain to everything else. In fact, most of the crimes he orchestrates over the course of the show amount to jack shit in the end simply because the show has to rapidly transition between his defeat and the acceleration of the Shounen aspect of the plot toward the very end. To make this matter all the more frustrating, we're left with the revelation that the villain of this show is little more than a half-baked Moriarty character whose sole motivation boils down to a desire to break Keith's moral code that was neither mentioned or likely existed at all until the villain draws attention to it.
I say I doubt the validity of this motivation mainly because the show makes it pretty clear that Kieth is
far from being some paragon of justice. Dude tortured a man without authorization to do so.
His less-than-clean record is kinda why he was exiled from the force in the first place.
With that aspect out of the way, we now come to the reason a lot of other people might be drawn to this show--the balls to the wall insanity that is born from the show's Shounen aspect. Luckily for us, the vast majority of this part of the story can be centered around a single character, the infamous Killer B also known as Koku. For reasons that amount to basically "because of course he does" the story and character of Koku can be summarized with a trope checklist. For starters, in his "normal" daily life, Koku conceals his identity as Killer B by being an apprentice violin craftsman/repairman. There is, of course, very little explanation for how he came to be a violin repairman (outside of violins being a callback to the actual city of Cremona, Italy, which is not an island, being a historical hub of the violin) because of course he has a kind of selective amnesia. Regardless of all that pointless background information that makes little to no sense, the fact of the matter is that, while he hides in plain sight, Koku is the infamous Killer B. What the police don't realize, though, is that Killer B is more than just your average killer; he's also some kind of superhuman, heterochromatic crow demon that can turn his hand into some crazy legendary sword, because of course he can. Just to make him even more of an anime protagonist though, it must be made clear that he doesn't just kill people all willy-nilly. No, he only kills people who really deserve it, because of course he does. Then, after each kill, he leaves the letter "B" at each of his crime scenes, because of course he does.
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the simultaneously literal and figurative
"edge lord" protagonist of this show, "The Black King" Koku.
To be perfectly clear, though, Koku doesn't just kill people out of some twisted shounen protagonist sense of justice. He kills people and leaves his signature mark behind because he's on a mission to save his girlfriend/destined bride, Luna. Since he has no clue where to find her, though, he somehow reached the conclusion that killing unapologetic criminals will somehow throw a wrench in the plans of the people who kidnapped her. In other words, he's expecting his efforts will just encourage the baddies to come to him. Unsurprisingly, his plan goes off without a hitch, because of course it does. Now it's just a question of whether he's caught more than he can handle because the villains behind kidnapping Luna are none other than the enigmatic organization, Market Maker. Rather than hunting the same villain that Keith does, though, Koku's target is the court of villains that follow the orders of Keith's villains who just so happen to be supernatural super soldiers known as Reggies who have similar origins to Koku himself, because of course they do.
Hmmm. Might have been more accurate to call them a "troupe" of villains, rather than a court,
considering how they all look like a bunch of creepy, homicidal clowns.
There is, of course, more to this battle between Koku and the Reggies (Christ, what an awful name for your villains) who stole his girlfriend. Through some convoluted turn of events, it is revealed that Koku and Luna are a pair of gods that were scientifically engineered, a la Jurassic Park, who have been prophesied to rule humanity. The Reggies, on the other hand, were the previous, failed attempts to create those gods. Like the Bladerunner ripoffs they are, the Reggie's imperfection forces them to suffer from some kind of deleterious condition. In this case, however, that condition can be treated by taking a drug made of liquid gold, because that makes total sense. So, to put it plainly, in order to get his girlfriend back, Koku must kill a troupe of failed gods who are kinda, sorta like his family or something.
Are you thoroughly "What the actual fuck"-ed out yet? If so, oh boy,
we haven't even gotten to how this mess ties together.
Since 1v6 doesn't sound fair, though, and because Koku doesn't actually know any of this--what with the selective amnesia and such--the time finally comes for our two parts of the plot to start intermingling. More specifically, it's time for Kieth to get forced into the Shounen aspect of the show because he's apparently the son of the man who raised Koku and the other god children as well as the person who solved the Rosetta Stone that foretells that Koku will come to rule over humanity. For reasons that are never adequately explained, Keith is functionally inserted into Koku's story to be a kind of walking, talking information dump for all of Kuko's backstory as well as the occasional deus ex machina that gets Koku out of a jam or two. Once the nature of Koku's birth, the lead up to Luna's kidnapping, and the prophecy that surrounds the two of them are made clear, though, the two stories separate once more. Koku goes off on a killing spree that involves a lot of name shouting, angst screeching, god killing, and prophecy citing. Keith goes on his somber manhunt for the man who killed his sister, kidnapped Luna, slaughtered nearly every god child, and ended up being the secret leader of Market Maker and their troupe of superhuman psychos. Then, once all is said and done, everything ends happily ever after without any of the likable good guys dying in the process.
Can you see why I call this show an absolute mess?
As much as I love this title for all its stupidity, it is still an imperfect mess of a product. Not only does the majority of this show's plot not make sense but it's also genuinely difficult to follow at some points. To put it simply, there's just way too much going on in this story for any of it to actually work. There are just far too many loose and tangled threads and there's too great a difference between the two parts of this story both tonally and thematically for any of it to make sense. Even if it made perfect sense, though, there are far too many less than savory subplots and themes in this show to give it an automatic pass--the most egregious of which being the relationship between Kieth and Lily which is fueled on the basis that Lily looks a lot like his dead, not-blood-related sister who secretly had a thing for Keith. The fact that this show is even remotely understandable and likable is nothing short of a miracle given all the ingredients thrown into the pot.
Or, rather, into the anpan in this case.
In truth, the only reason I think this show did as well as it did was that it seemed to give into the idea that its story was nonsense. Rather than playing things totally straight-faced, a lot of humor and exasperation was thrown into the character interactions to make it seem like the cast was somehow in on the joke. "Campy" is probably the ideal way to describe how this show carries itself. Both in the Crime Drama and the Shounen aspects, the absurdity of every situation is made blatantly apparent and then ratcheted up to 11 just for the hell of it, making both aspects of the show into near-parodies of the shows that inspired their content. That kind of campy attitude, paired with the show's stellar music, character design, and animation is ultimately what saved this title from being just another garbage shounen title in my mind. With that kind of approach, the show ended up being not only funny and weird but also seriously compelling if for no other reason than my wanting to see what insane corner this show's plot would take next. I'm not saying this kind of formula works for every show, mind you, but it does give this show a significant handicap when it came to my overall opinion. Does that mean I'd recommend it to everyone? Probably not. For any fan of the shows B: The Beginning was emulating, though, I think there's a lot of fun to be had here. Even more so if it's watched with a group who loves to tear apart dumb stories along the way.