Reviews Anime / B The Beginning

Started with such promise, then quickly became yet another typical cliche series. ( Heavy Spoilers)

The show started out with such promise. A serial killer's going around murdering people and leaving their calling card in the form of a B with four lines in the victim's blood. The police are stumped, so they call in Keith Flick, one of the rare adult protagonists in modern anime and Sherlock Holmes homage/ripoff to help solve the case, with the one murder he never solved being his sister's murder. Working with Keith is Lily Hoshima, the audience surrogate who is almost as clever as Keith but doesn't get many real chances to show it in regards to solving the case. How could it go wrong?

Well it turns out the serial killer is actually a kid named Koku who lives with Lily's family and the B is actually the number 13, and he's only murdering people so he can draw out his childhood love interest and be with her again. Then it turns out he's the product of a cult trying to recreate supernatural creatures considered to be gods to fulfill some prophecy, his love interest is part of that cult and has amnesia until she magically regains the memories and fades into irrelevance. The supporting cast in the police are largely irrelevant, the antagonists in the cult are largely just there to be obstacles with no real motives or personality with only the Big Bad being a Moriarty homage/ripoff who turns out to be Gilbert Ross, Keith's old friend and the murderer of his sister who also reduces Lily and Yuna to damsels in distress who need rescuing.

Overall, the series start with alot of promise as a murder mystery, which midway through the 12 episode series turns into a cliche supernatural show.