Bem

Young detective Sonia Summers has been transferred to the outskirts of the port city Libra after stirring up trouble with her superiors. Libra is separated into two sectors—"the Upper," the center of wealth and politics, and "the Outside." The Outside is home to crime, corruption, and curious incidents involving monstrosities or youkai. Each case that Sonia works on seems to implicate the involvement of these mysterious creatures.

Sonia crosses paths with three peculiar humanoid youkai—Bem, Bela and Belo—who seek to protect humans and fight against the evil youkai that terrorize them. Living as "Youkai-Ningen," they are excluded by other youkai for their human-like lifestyles, and rejected and hurt by humans when they reveal their true forms.

Despite the hardships they face, these three Youkai-Ningen secretly live among humans, continuing to pursue their dreams of one day becoming human as well.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Belo Main

Ono, Kensho Japanese

Bela Main

Ichimichi, Mao Japanese

Bem Main

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Summers, Sonia Supporting

Uchida, Maaya Japanese

Walker, Roddy Supporting

Nishiyama, Koutarou Japanese

Bryson, Daryl Supporting

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Mysterious Lady Supporting

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Chris Supporting

Morishita, Yukiko Japanese

Kevin Supporting

Oda, Hisafumi Japanese

Manager Supporting

Kusunoki, Taiten Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Herek, Samantha Assistant Producer

Odaka, Yoshinori Director, Storyboard

Isobe, Kenji Director

Reviews

Oct 13, 2019

Zone_Q11

Recommended

Note: This is my first review and I am not a harsh critic on everything except story since I am not an expert reviewer who pays attention to ALL the details.

Story: 5/10 - Since this is a remake of an old anime and since episode 12 got rushed. It would've been better if there were some fillers to flesh out the small stories.

Sound: 8/10 - I usually never rate sound. I don't even know what this is. Voice acting is "very good"/10 (since I don't know what is good and bad) and the choice of opening and ending is 10/10.

Character: 6/10 - I love main ... characters in general, but I LOVE the side characters in general even more. The MCs are well developed, but since the story was rushed, it was inevitable that the characters would be less fleshed out as well. Even if we know the outcome, and even if they are generic, I would still love to see more.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Nov 5, 2019

grazr

Mixed Feelings

Bem is one of those shows that starts off with a lot of potential, but never really grows into its strengths. Instead meandering around semi-conscious before reaching a rushed conclusion that simply fails to satisfy.

The show begins in an unashamedly cliché American detective-cop story way, following a rogue hot head detective (Sonia) that gets themselves into trouble with their higher ups and gets sent to a dead end roll/position, but develops strongly afterwards following the main characters interactions and relationships over time as the cops try to figure out what is happening and the yokai and human-experiments are slowly revealed and explained. All very interesting ... stuff.

The most redeeming quality of the show are the characters, who show highly relatable strengths and weaknesses. The three protagonist yokai consist of an adult male (Bem), child male (Belo), and teenage girl (Bela). Though their age defies them as they're not actually human but immortal creatures that closely resemble vampire archetypes, their personalities do somewhat match their chosen avatars in maturity. This makes them easily accessible and provides variety in content.

Each yokai gets a mini story arc where they get to confirm their long unseen history of being betrayed by those humans with which they attempted to form relationship with using their counter-identities. Some of which go on to become major antagonists in the show later. Before meeting some unprejudiced humans who redeem the species when they discover the truth almost by accident. All while a plot unfolds where a hidden authority attempts to out the yokai as being evil and dangerous. This is where the show gets a little loose, because the show kinda forgets that actually most yokai are evil and dangerous and that it's only these 3 attempting to reach out to humans as friends. This comes across as a major oversight more than any attempt to play "grey area" with morals/ethics because no attempt is ever made to address the fact that technically, the baddies were actually right even though they were as morally bankrupt themselves as the yokai they were trying to condemn. Still, we root for these 3 yokai anyway.

Belo gets the classic "children are innocent and untainted" redemption story, Bela gets the "boy who loves beyond prejudice" redemption story and Bem gets the "ambitious adult who wants to unite the world" arc. Belo gets the most attention even though it was the most rudimentary of the three stories and Bela's friendship story gets half baked even though it was the most interesting and complex character relationship going. Bem's mysterious character is revealed towards the end right as the show begins to deteriorate and his potential deepness is never really expanded upon as the show rushes to a conclusion.

The show, in my opinion, would have had a lot more going for it if it had kept with the tone it set out in the opening episodes (semi-dark/serious). But the mid-level antagonist, the "mad scientist" who is as cartoonish as his name "Dr Recycle" suggests who makes a half man, half vacuum cleaner monster. From here-on it becomes hard to take the show seriously at all. Then there's the god awful finale.

Oh boy, there are so many things wrong with the finale starting with the fact that its orchestrated by "final boss" characters we know nothing about, are discovered suddenly with no gradual build up and puppeteered by the author as if we're supposed to have some kind of investment with them. The ending is a needlessly high stakes affair where the whole city is doomed to blow up through a seemingly benign interaction between the yokai that is shown before and never fully explained; and ends with the final boss being "buried for eternity" in an actually rather shallow river that would have to get dredged anyway to fix the broken bridge they collapsed on top of her. I really want to nit pick more, but i'm 7 paragraphs in and i think the gist of it is here.

The show is generally ok. But it lets itself down when it grows and then doesn't deliver. I completed it because i wanted to know more about what happens with the characters that accept the yokai, but it just doesn't go anywhere. The character development is dropped for the sake of pushing through the plot.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Oct 13, 2019

slavemaster_1991

Not Recommended

A bit spoilerish, but only a bit.

First things first: this is not original work, but I have never seen the source, so I will judge this one on its own merit. And oh boy I do have much to judge. Lets start with the easy part:
-Art. Pretty mediocre, with some parts looking pretty bad to be honest. At least it is not CGI, but it isn't much.
-Sound. Good opening, forgetable everything else.
-Story/world. And here the real problems begin. World is awfully inconsistent, while main trio of monsters look like each other and are of one style, their enemies are something that looks like from ... a comic book - flashy, unique and completely unfitting into the rest of the setting. If there were different ways how people became those enemies - it maybe could pass, but they are all made with SCIENCE by one mad scientist, so why do they very this much? The overall flow of events from episode to episode is pretty disconnected, while characters are the same, I always got an impression that something was missing, some key events or something like that.
-Characters. Well, not really much. MC try to become human cause reasons (really why, if they can't feel at all - they should not be able to feel jealous too). Their development is absent, they just get into fight and dispatch enemy of the episode while trying to look human when not engaged in combat. And here is another problem: there are LOTS of side characters, cause each of 3 monsters has his own contacts. None of them gets development, they are more like decorations, even though the cop girl could be a valuable ally on their road to humanity, and friends should be a valuable experience of human interactions.
-Enjoyment. None, to be honest. While I had hope after episode 1, it faded pretty fast. I don't normally drop reading or watching, so this was the only reason I even finished watching this one, it felt more like a chore and not like something one could enjoy.

Overall: waste of time, low budged, low efford attempt to grab some cash with a relaunch of an old title.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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