Introduction
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]
Audience reviews
11 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
ziratrugar
Bem is a remake of the original Youkai Ningen Bem series from the late 60s. I'm generally not a fan of remakes, but this was a very strong show. The world they created was really interesting. It had this film noir style, reminiscent of the Batman TAS from the 90s. I also really liked how they developed the characters throughout the series. They wanted you to become invested in the world, and I definitely felt it. Unfortunately, the story felt rushed because of the brevity of the series. The original series was 26 episodes long. I think this series should've mirrored that in order to aid in the world-building. This is a strong revival of the series, but I think it could've been much better had they lengthened it.
Read at the sourcegrazr
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.…
Read at the sourceRottenOrange
Politically, socially and philosophically (if you want to call it that way), BEM fails to create the serious plot that it wanted.
–
Remember, children. Showing vague social stereotypes isn't good if you're trying to make a serious criticism about it.
BEM takes place in Libra City, which is divided into Upper City (the city of the rich) and Outside (the city of the poor) through a bridge. The three protagonists meet on this bridge every night (and surprisingly no one ever discovers them there). The three Youkai Ningen save humans from different monsters, hoping that in the future they will become humans themselves. The plot doesn't sound THAT bad, right? Generic, yes, but bearable. However, it's worse than that.
As I said earlier, the trio thinks they will become humans after saving other…
Read at the sourceCarpal_Tunnel69
I don't know how to put this one easy. This anime is the biggest dissapointment i have seen this year apart from my own actions. When i saw the cover i should have noticed something was off in that poster, that it was trying to imitate that edgy shading but not nailing it right, but I as a fool when i read the synopsis i had hopes for this anime. I felt so dissapointed that I made an account for this website just to make this shitty angry bwaaaa bwaaaa, I'm a cry baby bwaaah review
What a fool I was.
Animation: The animation is similar if not worse than Ben 10, Ben 10 had decent fight scenes and everything, but the animation only shined in the final episode, every other episode where just poor, uninteresting and forgetable, there where no moments when it could do anything risky or anythi…
Read at the sourceherine
Plot execution: meh
Characters: likeable
Soundtrack: fantastic
Long story short, storytelling destroyed this anime. I decided to write down a few words, because I had high hopes for this anime, which actually looked promising. Overall, characters are likeable, Sonia might be annoying, but she's harmless overall. The stories of three protagonists are showing their personalities and dreams well, despite not creating much of a character development (maybe a liiittle). But when it comes to the plot, it's full of question marks. Last episode was the absolute trash, being so rushed I had the feeling it's rather an abridged version of something longer, or that I actually missed at least one full episode which fills out the holes in the plot.
On the positive note I must say that the opening and…
Read at the sourceLeumas94
I didnt saw the original series or the 2006 remake so i had nothing to compare it. I saw this show with no expectations at all and i think that best way to watch it in an objective way. SPOILERS
Story: The story is a mess... The show introduces 3 main characters Bem, Bela and Belo anthropomorfic monsters with the long to be humans that live in Libra City, a city that symbolize classism, and that summarize the whole show. The way that was written and directed are the main problem, the show tried to be a social criticism about the classism, humans being the real monsters and corruption in goverments. Because of that the anime doesnt explain a thing... we dont know the origin of the main trio, how they met, why they live in that city and the secondary characters like Sonia or Vega "the main…
Read at the sourceWonted666
The potential existed for this story to be great, unfortunately it never reached that point. The beginning started off with some world building as well as introducing societal as well as social problems to the mix, which in my opinion is always a plus. The sad thing though, is that these problems were only slightly attempted at and the issues didn't show the slightest bit of progress towards the end. It's unfortunate because these issues were interwoven into the society that couldn't accept Bem,Belo, and Bela. It was a really interesting point to look at from , but the only difference between the end and the beginning is that a bridge got destroyed as well as the fact the the hidden council has a kid as the new head rather than a youkai human. The supporting cast became a bit stale, as the…
Read at the sourcelovelydeath
I have not written a review in some time. This anime could be looked at in many ways. One of which the writer is trying to showcase the ugliness of human beings.
The story line goes to three characters that are humanoid monsters. They give little explanation to where they may have come from but what they do showcase is that they would like to become human. What is human however? They go on a journey in a corrupt city that sounds similar to classism. Separation of classes.
I gave the story line a 6 due to the description I gave above. It showcases the real depth of human beings and their hatred for anything unknown. That they destroy what they don't understand or fear, even when that creature is willing to risk it's life to save us.
The art, like other's have mentioned, was not the bes…
Read at the sourceCdynamo
Well... it could've been worse. Unlike Arifuerta, where it was a beautiful mess, this was just a boring mess. I mean, it could've had some promise in it's early stages, but whatever we got, we got the worst version of it. It could've been a potential gem, but thanks to the underdeveloped writing, terrible characters and the awful world building.
First off, Bem is a terrible main character. After the pilot, he just becomes a nothing character even though the show is NAMED after him, but whatever. Belo is an annoying little shit that just comes off as obnoxious and Bela is the only character that comes off as a little less bland then the others but that's only because she comes off as somewhat likable. All the other characters are as thick as glass.
Alice, as a character isn't a bad idea. I…
Read at the sourceZone_Q11
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…
Read at the sourceslavemaster_1991
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…
Read at the source