B: The Beginning

7.1(186,820)

MAL Score

Ranked #4096

Popularity #747

Action
Mystery
Suspense
Detective
Psychological
Super Power

Episodes: 12
Duration: 25 min per ep
Aired: Mar 2, 2018
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

On the island nation of Cremona, a masked vigilante known as “Killer B” delivers brutal justice with a blade and superhuman strength—praised by some, pursued by the Royal Investigation Service (RIS). With arrests failing and the body count rising, the RIS turns to Keith Flick, a brilliant but eccentric detective reassigned to the Archives Department after a personal tragedy. As the killings escalate from covert executions of criminals to carefully planned attacks on prominent figures, the pattern points to more than one hand behind the violence.

Partnered with the impulsive Lily Hoshina and occasionally aided by the very outlaw he’s meant to catch, Keith digs into a web of secret groups, domestic terrorism, and human experimentation. The deeper the investigation goes, the more it exposes corruption within the government and raises unsettling doubts about who in the RIS—and among Keith’s closest allies—can truly be trusted.

Otaku Consensus

B: The Beginning earns its 7-ish reputation by pairing Production I.G polish with Kazuto Nakazawa’s taste for sleek, adult-oriented crime spectacle. Critics and fans consistently praise the direction, action, soundtrack, dub, and binge-friendly slow-unravel structure, while the recurring complaint is structural: its crime drama, superpower mythology, terrorism, and psychological material often crowd out clean character development.

Why You Should Watch

Watch B: The Beginning if you want the procedural paranoia of Psycho-Pass without a full ideological treatise, or the glossy Production I.G cool of early-2000s Adult Swim thrillers filtered through a Netflix-era binge format. Its appeal is in the collision: adult police work, fugitive momentum, body-horror-leaning powers, and conspiracy-thriller escalation all competing inside a 12-episode original. Viewers who like their mysteries initially disorienting, then increasingly pattern-driven, will get more out of it than viewers who need every faction and motive front-loaded. The show is especially easy to recommend to fans who value cinematic action direction, high production finish, and genre risk-taking over tidy exposition or deeply rounded supporting casts.

Key Characters

L
Lily Hoshina(VA: Asami Seto)
Lily works as the energetic counterweight to the show’s colder detective machinery, giving the RIS side of the story a human pulse without turning it into a conventional buddy-cop routine.
K
Keith Kazama Flick(VA: Hiroaki Hirata)
Keith is the kind of damaged genius detective fans remember for his eccentric methods and emotional restraint as much as for the deductions themselves.
K
Kokuu(VA: Yuuki Kaji)
Kokuu anchors the superhuman side of the series with a quieter, more haunted presence than the masked-vigilante iconography first suggests.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
B: The Beginning is an original anime, not an adaptation, with Kazuto Nakazawa credited as original creator, director, and character designer. That gives the series a unified visual identity even when its plotting becomes deliberately tangled.
2
Production I.G’s involvement is central to the show’s reputation: reviewers repeatedly singled out the visuals and action as the main reason the series remains compelling through its more confusing stretches.
3
The series uses a full-season release rhythm rather than a traditional slow-burn broadcast buildup: all 12 episodes are tied to the single air date of March 2, 2018, which suits its cliffhanger-heavy mystery construction.
4
Its genre blend is unusually dense for a 12-episode thriller, with AniList tags putting Police at 91%, Crime at 85%, Detective at 80%, Terrorism at 75%, and Body Horror at 66%. That tag profile explains why viewers often describe it as gripping and messy in the same breath.
5
The audio side drew stronger praise than many mid-score thrillers receive, with one review rating sound 9/10 and specifically highlighting the dub and soundtrack while criticizing the Japanese-subtitled experience.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Kazuto Nakazawa’s credit load is unusually prominent: he is listed as original creator, co-director, and character designer, making him the dominant creative signature on the project.
Fun fact 2: The show was co-directed by Kazuto Nakazawa and Yoshinobu Yamakawa, with Katsuya Ishida handling series composition, a division that helps explain the mix of stylish visual authorship and heavily layered plotting.
Fun fact 3: Its design staff includes Shinobu Tsuneki on mechanical design and Miori Tsusaka and Shuuko Tomita on prop design, a notable fit for a crime series that leans on vehicles, weapons, and investigative objects as part of its texture.
Fun fact 4: Reception sits in a very specific middle zone: MAL lists it at 7.14 from 186,688 votes with popularity at #747, while AniList records a 69/100 score and 1,296 favourites.
Fun fact 5: Several critics framed it as a throwback to the kind of stylish Production I.G action-thriller that once fit late-night Adult Swim viewing, with comparisons in tone to the appetite for Ghost in the Shell and Psycho-Pass rather than to standard battle anime.