I don’t know what’s happening.
I’ll start with the easily observable: B: The Beginning is a gorgeous production from Production I.G. Three episodes in, I’ve seen some very good looking, well-directed fight scenes that I wish were in a better show, and the setting – while not particularly original – is at least rendered beautifully.
But wow, is this show incomprehensible. I feel like we’ve made some vague plot direction by the end of the third episode, but I have no clue what’s going on with the title character because he has only barely appeared, and the only thing I’ve really come away with is that a) I’m not even slightly invested in what’s happening, and b) this show really wants to be Death Note. And I’m not the biggest fan of Death Note but at least you had some understanding of what was going on. B: The Beginning seems to be trying to jam together Death Note and Psycho-Pass but has failed to tie anything together and feels more like two shows jammed together into one runtime without consideration for cohesion.
This is all the vision of Original Creator Kazuto Nakazawa, whom I’ve never heard of and seems to have very few directorial credits on anything I’ve ever heard of – he’s worked on episodes for quite a few good shows, including Digimon Adventure, Kids on the Slope, and Samurai Champloo, but seems to have no idea what to do when given the reins to his own project and a Netflix budget to work with, leading to the aforementioned fun fight scenes but nothing meaningful to tie them together, since the supernatural fight scenes just feel completely separated from the police drama and they have nothing to do with each other.
I’ll give it a 4 just for the great animation, but I have no emotional investment to speak of and won’t be watching any further.
4/10.
The Arcane Archive 