orpheusx9

TL;DR- It was okay, but had a lot of wasted potential.

Has great production value. Really great animation sequences, particularly during some of the battles. Never had any noticeable moments where characters, anatomy, environments, etc., were warped. Audio was also very good - great OP/ED, and the voice actors/actresses have really nice voices. There were a couple of interesting twists.

Where it struggled was with story and genre. It starts off very slow, and you're pretty much in the dark about everything until more than halfway through the series when they finally sit down and explain things.

I understand there are other shows that do the same thing, but this one just doesn't pull it off particularly well. Other shows, for example, like Akudama, have a really nice build-up to the big reveal. B: The Beginning didn't have that - we were literally just left in the dark about what was happening, why it was happening, and it detracted from both character development and overall story.

The characters weren't all that great. Only two stood out to me - Gilbert and Lily. Lily's character and personality were like a sunflower in a show filled with eggplants. Gilbert was a mildly interesting character who wasn't given any decent screentime until the last 2-3 episodes.

The rest of them just didn't quite hit the mark. One of the main characters, Keith, has a back story that isn't fully explained, and the parts that are explained leave you even more confused about who he is or what his motivations are. Multiple characters, including Keith, Koku, Yuna, and others, had personalities that didn't really match up with their pasts and traumas they'd faced. Keith just struck me as being too aloof. Koku and Yuna were too normal. The rest of the villains are barely given any screentime, and they fall under the typical tropes of being chaotic evil/wanting to see the world burn. They're also defeated hilariously fast by Koku, so in general, they seemed mostly pointless.

In addition to the above, the story-telling just missed the mark. Good mystery shows have excellent build-ups and make use of a lot of literary elements like foreshadowing, foils, plot twists, etc. But this show couldn't seem to decide whether it was a mystery or an action.

If it had focused purely on being an action flick, I think this show could have been a 9 or even 10/10. But in its attempt to also be a mystery, it withheld information that was crucial for certain build-ups and character development.

One last gripe I had was that the overall theme of the story (e.g., scientists breeding the perfect human and controlling chaos/order, etc.) seemed less like a theme and more of an excuse. At no point does the series ever fully focus on the implications of these humans. They seem not to make an impact on society at all, despite logical conclusions otherwise. There's little discussion about the overarching politics and bureaucracy around these superhumans. It just felt cheap.

All in all, the show wasn't bad by any means. But it feels like a lot of potential for greatness was squandered by a bunch of half-assed elements. If they had gone for full-blown murder-mystery genre, then a lot of the supernatural elements could have just been removed and all of the characters would have had opportunities to really shine in unusual situations. If they'd gone for a full action flick, then all the attempts at surprising you and withholding information could be done away with, and the story would have been given the room it needed to breathe.