Rbastid

I can’t help but wonder, if this is just the beginning does it get better? Or is it just showing us how bad the rest of the series is going to be?

Story - 2/10

In a fictional country, that still resides on the globe we know, there has been an outbreak of gruesome killings, all which come accompanied by a calling card which resembles the letters B-lll, thus the new serial killer is dubbed “Killer B.” 

Hoping to unravel the mystery thats now ravaging their city, the Royal Investigation Services (R.I.S.) bring in detective Keith Flick, who became something of a legend because of his previous cases and ability to decipher complex codes and hieroglyphs. After seeing the text that was next to all the killings, Keith realizes that the truth isn’t what everyone has been assuming, as he’s seen this symbol before, and knows the person who actually uses it.

Our detective series now goes completely off course and turns into a show about a group of genetically engineered beings who were built, at first by the government, to revive an ancient group of gods. That main god is a boy named Koku, the one who was known to use the B-III moniker. Because of his status in the group, he’s now hunted by others who think that a prophecy has declared that they can gain his power through his death.

Things break away in two completely unrelated directions now as Koku goes on a search for his lost love, who is being held by those who want to kill him. Known as reggies, these drug addicted creations were actually built to be spare parts for Koku’s body, incase he ever needed them, and now work as killers for a private company. His story turns into basic and repeated fights, and pointless gore.

Back in the semi-normal world Keith now tries to find out who really runs this private company who directs the reggies, and it’s connection to his murdered sister. After an attempted sting goes side ways, he goes it alone and confronts his suspect, learning more about his own past and how ironically his rejection of killing others ended up being the catalyst for much of what’s gone on.

Their attempt to connect the two stories, through Keith’s father was a noble, but pointless, one; it almost seemed like they had the half of two story concepts and then tried to find some way to tie them together so they could have a singular show. Once who Koku really is, his connection to Keith, and the plot of the reggies is revealed the show just ends up being a slow trudge to a predicable ending. This is a mystery series with very little mystery, a suspense series with very little suspense, and a sci-fi-fi series with very little originality. Like many mystery series they fail at the most important part, keeping the viewer as one of the detectives, showing us clues and allowing us the chance to figure out the who and why.

Animation - 6/10

I really like the look they went with for the show, well if it stayed a detective series. Having almost the entire series taking place at night helps feed into the mystery and sense of danger that hangs over the more realistic parts of the series. That same darkness just makes the bad sci-fi sections seem a bit cheesy and at times it feels like they’ll use the darkness to cover up the bad plot and overdone, in the anime world, visuals.

The characters also tend to be a mixed bag of originality and interesting design. Keith had a good realistic look to him, but also he resembles pretty much every “troubled” detective in the history of entertainment. The other characters, from normal cops, reggies or “gods,” could have been picked out of dozens of other series. Likewise there were way too many scenes and image compositions that are ripped out of past anime series. Now all of these things were drawn and colored beautifully, but still just a bit too much artistic theft for my liking.

While the overall animation of this series was very well done, they made sure to include of metric ton of awful CGI scenes. There’s quite a bit of driving in the show, so all of those areas are covered in this terrible form of art, but to make things worse they then use the out of place looking vehicles even when they are stationary, so it just appears as if you have a floating shiny object on top of the frame, instead of actually in the world.

Sound - 6/10

The only real theme song for the show, outside of some moaning over strings for an opening, comes courtesy of one time Megadeath band member Marty Friedman, and it shows. The song fits perfectly in any eighties power metal playlist, and while not my favorite genre of music, the song does sound pretty good and fits the show’s tone perfectly.

Voice over work for this series was done really well, and I can’t see any point where the actors didn’t completely nail, or go beyond, what we would have expected. I also really enjoyed hearing Doug Stone, the great artist who covered Swanzo and Philippe Myers, back in a series.

Characters - 2/10

Outside of Keith Flick, the main detective who has the ability to solve the most complex codes, riddles and clues, the rest of the cast is pretty dull and awful. You have the super powerful boy who’s only goal is to find a girl. The cast of cops who are likable, but completely empty, and the psychotic group of killers who have nothing else going for them.

Even when they went ahead and gave us a look into the character’s pasts they didn’t do much to actually build them. If the story was more engrossing then maybe some of this could be looked past, but as it is these characters fail to make you want to continue watching.

Overall - 3/10

This series started out looking like it could be a pretty interesting mystery or detective series, but only a few episodes in it was clear we were getting another run of the mill Sci-Fi series about children who grew up with superpowers and the scientist/evil organization that manipulated them. 

They tried to do two completely different things and loosely tie it together, so they ended up failing at both. I think if they went full detective series it would have been a pretty good show, but heading in the opposite direction would have most likely made it even worse than it was, since the entire concept has been done much better a hundred times before.