B: The Beginning

Spanning a vast archipelago, the nation of Cremona boasts its own royal police force, cutting-edge tech, and a growing body count. Someone called 'Killer B' is carving through the criminal underworld with a blade and abilities that shouldn't be humanly possible, and not everyone thinks that's a bad thing. Enter Keith Flick, a brilliant but burnt-out detective who's been rotting away in the archives department after some personal tragedy. The RIS pulls him back into active duty because Killer B is escalating, and nobody else can crack the pattern. Meanwhile, a quiet young man named Koku is wrapped up in all of this in ways that aren't immediately clear, and figuring out how his story connects to Keith's investigation is half the fun. This is a 12-episode ONA from Production I.G, and the animation quality reflects that pedigree. Two parallel narratives, one grounded detective thriller, one supernatural mystery, run side by side and gradually converge. The tone sits somewhere between Death Note's cat-and-mouse tension and Psycho-Pass's dystopian crime procedural, with a dash of Ergo Proxy's moody atmosphere. Yoshihiro Ike's soundtrack does a lot of heavy lifting for the atmosphere too. If you liked any of those shows and want something that doesn't overstay its welcome, B: The Beginning is a tight, action-packed watch. It's not trying to reinvent anything, but it weaves its storylines together well enough to keep you guessing through the whole run.