Babylon

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: バビロン

Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 12

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 7, 2019 to Jan 28, 2020

Premiered: Fall 2019

Broadcast: Mondays at 22:00 (JST)

Producers: Fujipacific Music, Twin Engine

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: Revoroot

Source: Novel

Genres: Mystery, Psychological, Thriller

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 6.85¹ (scored by 32,979 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #4204²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1340

Members: 98,251

Favorites: 372

6.85

Ranked #4204Popularity #1340Members 98,251

Fall 2019TVRevoroot

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Episodes: /12

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Synopsis

In the newly formed Shiniki district of Tokyo, Zen Seizaki is a diligent public prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. Assigned to a case involving false advertisement, Zen—along with his assistant officer, Atsuhiko Fumio—investigate Japan Supiri, a pharmaceutical company that had provided fabricated clinical research on the company's new drug. While investigating the file of Shin Inaba, an anesthesiologist connected to the crime, the case takes a dark turn when Zen finds a page stained with a mixture of blood, hair and skin, along with the letter "F" scribbled all across the sheet. As he investigates further, the case goes beyond Zen's imagination and becomes vastly complex, challenging his sense of justice and his knowledge of the truth.

Digging deeper into the investigation, Zen begins to uncover a concealed plot behind the ongoing mayoral election and ties to many people of interest involved in the election and those closer than he thinks. The case grows more severe and propels Zen into an unforeseen hurricane of corruption and deceit behind the election, the establishment of the Shiniki district, and the mysterious woman associated with it all.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

The broadcast for episodes 1-8 was Mondays at 22:00 JST (Tokyo MX) (Aired from October to December 2019)
The broadcast for episodes 9-12 was Tuesdays at 0:00 JST (BS11) (Aired in January 2020)

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Related Anime

Adaptation:

Babylon

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Magase, Ai

Main

Yukino, Satsuki
Japanese

Seizaki, Zen

Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi
Japanese

Kujiin, Shinobu

Main

Sakurai, Takahiro
Japanese

Sekuro, Hiasa

Supporting

Ichimichi, Mao
Japanese

Fumio, Atsuhiko

Supporting

Ono, Kensho
Japanese

Itsuki, Kaika

Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou
Japanese

Hanta, Ariyoshi

Supporting

Okitsu, Kazuyuki
Japanese

Morinaga, Yasutaka

Supporting

Horiuchi, Kenyuu
Japanese

Seizaki, Hitomi

Supporting

Nakahara, Mai
Japanese

Torao

Supporting

Inada, Tetsu
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Yamamoto, Kouji

Producer

Suzuki, Kiyotaka

Director

Aketagawa, Jin

Sound Director

Kimura, Nobukage

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"Echoing ft. Sysha" by Yamada Yutaka

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Ending Theme

#1: "Live and let die" by Q-MHz feat. uloco (eps 1-3)
#2: "Inochi Shokumu Tamashii (イノチ食ム魂)" by Q-MHz feat. Mikako Komatsu (eps 4-7)
#3: "The next new world that no one knows" by Q-MHz feat. *Namirin (eps 8-12)

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Reviews

Jan 28, 2020

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 1

RebelPanda (All reviews)

318 people found this review helpful

Throughout my high school years, I struggled with an illness in my mind I couldn't put into words. The way I thought of it was a roller coaster that I could never get off. My whole life has been a series of peaks and valleys.

For weeks, the roller coaster would be at a peak. I would have an endless supply of energy. I was able to make friends and enjoy every day to the fullest. Then everything would crash down and suddenly the roller coaster was stuck in a valley. For weeks, I would be exhausted and depressed. Making friends was the easy part, but keeping them was hard. During a valley, trying to talk to anyone was as painful as getting a tooth ripped out of your mouth. I had to avoid my friends altogether so I wouldn’t have an angry outburst and ruin our friendship. Growing up, I didn’t have many people in my life because I learned all of this the hard way. Even my family tried subtly avoiding me because they were afraid of sudden mood swings. There were times when the roller coaster was so low I couldn't tell if it'd ever go back up.

Babylon is like that roller coaster. It entices you with an interesting premise, it begins at the bottom of the coaster, and gradually rises. It has bursts of greatness, then it suddenly shoots downwards leaving you frustrated and trapped in the headspace of the demonic antagonist. She beckons everyone in the series, including you, to consider suicide as the answer to life-long suffering. Along the way, it touches upon—or rather, beats with a baseball bat—themes of suicide, depression, and morality. It puts a unique spin on the conventional cat & mouse murder mystery, while also tackling politics and the central theme of whether or not suicide should be legalized. Much of the screen time is dedicated to intellectual politicians debating the show’s themes. To the untrained eye, these arguments may seem intelligent, enlightening, and enthralling. Anyone who has ever taken an intro-level philosophy course can tell this entire show is pseudo-philosophical bullshit laden with logical fallacies.

It asks questions such as: Is suicide wrong? Should suicide be legal? What if someone could coerce you into killing yourself within seconds? What is it she can say to change your mind? And if you figure it out would you be convinced to join her victims? It begs you to understand these questions. If you don’t get IT, you’re the minority, if you don’t get IT you are not intelligent enough. Politicians, citizens of Japan, and entire countries vote to support the suicide law. But you simply don’t understand why because you are a normal human being. You know what's right from wrong, and you can tell that everything that occurs within the world of Babylon is illogical. Rather than asking questions rooted in modern-day society (such as the legality of euthanasia), the writer discusses the suicide law, an argument no one in the real world would benefit from pondering. No one acts like a real human being in this show. They are all cardboard cutouts existing to preach philosophy from the insidious mind of an uninformed writer.

There is no reality in which suicide will be legalized as a law. If someone is determined to take their own life, they will not stop to consider what the government has to say about it. People still have morals and know right from wrong, no decent human being would stand aside and watch a person commit suicide when they have the power to save their life. Meanwhile in the ass-backward world of Babylon... Hundreds of people commit mass suicide and the police do not investigate anything because they “want to avoid a scandal.” What the fuck. This is Japan not fucking North Korea. I find it impossible to believe the police wouldn’t care about a string of violent deaths at the same time in the same place. Babylon imagines a nightmarish perversion of reality where suicide is morally acceptable, encouraged, and the solution to depression. The sun emits a hellish hue of orange, water is colored blood-red, and the many deaths are shown in gruesome detail for shallow shock factor. The deaths also exist to get under your skin, desensitizing you to suicide in record-breaking speed. If I had to I live in a world where suicide is legal, enforced, and considered unimportant to the justice system, I wouldn’t want to live in it either.

Suicide is glorified in a way that only someone who has felt suicidal can contextualize. Like an angel of death, the Whore of Babylon whispers sweet nothings into someone’s ear and they commit suicide. Victims become crazed, there’s nothing that can stop them from the uncontrollable urge to die. This is what it is like to struggle against the overwhelming need to release yourself from the pain of life. One victim compares suicide to sex, and the end of his life is the orgasm. At the end of his monologue, he puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, blood squirting, but for a brief moment, it appears completely white to finish the sex metaphor. This sort of disgusting self-masturbatory directing is used throughout the show. I cannot fathom how people find this kind of unsubtle imagery remotely good. Babylon targets a large subset of the anime community who seek out mature seinen and psychological-thrillers, I consider myself part of this audience. If an anime has dark themes, dramatic music, and adult characters speaking very seriously, this subset of the community will flock to the anime. Babylon has it all, everything except the execution. I have no ill will towards anyone who likes this anime, after all, it coerces you into believing you are watching a revolutionary work of art. For me, this is one of, if not the worst, anime I have ever watched. None of the philosophical anime I have seen come close to being as pretentious as this one.

This show may have redeeming qualities: the music adds suspense, the animation is mostly acceptable, and it has an intriguing premise, but every positive aspect is doused in an impenetrable layer of poison. Babylon is an abyss with nothing at the bottom but despair and hopelessness. It gaslit me into believing its ponderings on suicide were of substance and worth reading into. Perhaps it is because I am in a valley as I write this, but analyzing Babylon made me contemplate suicide as a valid cure to a life of struggling against that roller coaster. I’m sorry this is not like my other reviews, but someone needed to warn people about this vile sack of shit. It’s about time I put this out of my mind for good. I think I’ll go outside today and enjoy the wonderful and beautiful things the world has to offer. Maybe later I will watch a comedy or a relaxing slice-of-life.

NOTE: If you have Depression, Bipolar Disorder, experienced suicidal thoughts, or a history of self-harm, please do not watch Babylon. If you are currently having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255.

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Jan 27, 2020

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

SpikyTurtle (All reviews)

169 people found this review helpful

Review contains some spoilers:

This is going to be a short review/rant about Babylon.

I remember when the first 3 episodes came out everyone was impressed since this show had amazing cinematography and direction, a dark and thrilling atmosphere and the story was executed very well. It continued to be very good until the 7th episode, then it had a long break and everything went to shit.

Babylon would have been great if if was just a political thriller with mystery elements. But the suicide law going worldwide and the law in general ruined the show. It is just very unrealistic that people would react to this law read more

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Jan 27, 2020

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 5

SingleH (All reviews)

106 people found this review helpful

This review is best consumed pretending you hadn’t just seen the score it’s headed with.

This one’s going to be real prosaic, because Babylon is a very dense, logically tight show for adults in a way you don’t often see in media, especially anime, and is certainly not for people even among older audiences who cannot keep up with sociopolitical factions and legal jargon, as it is a premiere example of a political thriller, a genre both elusive in the medium and almost never laudably delivered on therein or out. Every facet of the show is oozing with a thick sense of seriousness and often boils down to a lot of very grave talk amongst crotchety middle-aged politicians and civil servants trying to solve real crime, all of which is presented without a lick of fun or funniness. It’s exciting simply because it operates on the very generous assumption you, the viewer, are mature and worldly enough to recognize the implications of what’s happening in the story are really serious in a hyper-realistic fashion, and the fact the world is established such that that sense of realism is actually believable, the events play out like urgent breaking news as opposed to the writings of an inherently fictitious narrative. Where Babylon becomes something of a masterwork, though, is in its functionality as a mystery. Like any good political thriller, Babylon is rife with juicy machinations behind the scenes and moving parts to obfuscate them, but unlike most so-called mystery box narratives which string you along offering nothing but minuscule and minute information only at times convenient for the writers—which you could’ve very well gotten at any moment—until it’s all over and the contents of the box turn out to be ultimately unsatisfying, Babylon continually gives you specific and totally gratifying answers to questions you have, thusly reassuring you of the show’s ability to deliver on its promises, and packaged within those answers lie details of an even large mystery to come to light, so—at the same time—you’re fulfilled momentarily whilst continually intrigued with what the hell else is going on. And while Babylon opens itself with the heavy task of untangling this mess of clues and conclusions, the reason the situation is so complicated is every player is operating of their own accord, so whilst the narrative is never dizzyingly convoluted, it is very complex, even though it soon reveals itself to be one of the shows which has you slowly realize less of it is actually a conspiracy than you may’ve first thought.

Babylon takes place in the city of Shiniki, the self-proclaimed testing ground for nations, a special administrative zone just north of Tokyo whose foundation was on behalf of the mission statement to decentralizing the Japanese economic center away from the overburdened Tokyo metroplex whilst also instating a new city with little regulation where laws are both easy to pass and easy to terminate, hence the tagline. Our main character, Seizaki Zen, is a public prosecutor who finds himself investigating a string of apparently related incidents of political sex trafficking being used to influence elections in the city, and it doesn’t take long for him and the viewer to come to the cold realization these cases are merely the tip of the iceberg of a thoroughly deep rooted scandal, which is to say—spoilers from here on—the police are in cahoots with the corrupt politicians. As Seizaki is lured into the conspirators camp by the fact they’re work rigging elections is actually—no matter how rigorously illegal their actions are—for the greater good of stabilizing Shiniki’s still shaky political sphere and finally giving the city an identity of its own as the aforementioned legal envelope pusher, the puppet candidate they’re working to instate in office suddenly cuts ties with his fellow conspirators the second he’s elected and announces—unbeknownst to them and in complete and utter surprise to all their plans—his first new law to define the courageous new world which this city is to build is going to be the Suicide Law, the right to death, and what follows is the single most cinematically genius use of mass media spectacle I’ve seen in any anime ever. The already blood pumping, philosophically stimulating narrative of Babylon proceeds by stacking plot twists in such a way you’re constantly shocked, with every episode having some element which radically changes your perception of the events so far, all while the scale of said narrative keeps widening and widening alongside of which every conversation adds some kind of information and the scripting continuously parcels out information in such a way which is integral to the storytelling’s engrossing identity, keeping us viewers intoxicatingly entertained.

Itsuki Kaika, the upstart mayor heading the Suicide Law, was chosen by the conspiring faction to be the puppet leader because of his young and refreshing image first and foremost, but also because he personally brought in the women they used to influence policy with sex and set their entire initiative into motion in the first place. As the conspirators in the challenging political parties and police headquarters, now including Seizaki, have to deal with their rouge masterless puppet, Seizaki is let in on some of the secrets they’d been keeping from him from when he was in the dark, one of which being the sinister fact all the women they’d been trafficking—including one sugar baby he himself had interrogated when previously working the case—was actually one person, one person named Magase Ai. As the show continues on and the narrative undergoes paradigm shift after paradigm shift, it quickly becomes apparent Magase Ai is much more urgent a threat than Itsuki ever was and is also hinted to even have some enigmatic occult afflictions. And before you turn away thinking a supernatural twist would ruin a straight-faced and thickly realistic narrative, remember plot devices as genius as The Voice of the City from Texhnolyze or The Black Blob from Paranoia Agent and remind yourself magical realism can be instated smartly into serious and mature stories. I’ll stop spoiling things now hoping my hinting at this character is motivation enough to go watch the show yourself, because she is a case study on presence and easily among the most electric personalities ever put to animation and says some thematically profound things about the nature of femininity and the allure and logical extreme of sexual release. And speaking of animation, her character design is iconic, her theme is enchanting, and again, her presence is simply immense. With that said, while I’m at it, the show as a whole is quite something from a production standpoint itself. The aesthetics are not particularly appealing, and the animation isn’t consistently beautiful or anything, but if it was trying to look like a hyper-realistic human narrative taking place in the real world, it succeeded wholeheartedly. It boasts god tier music which was absolutely nail biting at times, and it staffed talented character animators like Kouki Fujimoto who delivered on the most thrilling breaking points of the story with all due flair and terror. And all this isn’t even going into the excellent and outright laudably ambitious directing fit with more bracingly memorable imagery and exquisitely shot visual metaphors than you could ever ask for. Honestly, any way you slice it, Babylon is something of a modern masterpiece.

… … …

In Spring of 2017, an original anime by the name of Seikaisuru Kado went to air. It was a modest little thing, at least on production, made by Toei Animation, the premiere home for long running Saturday Morning Cartoon shlock and pandering game adaptations. My crude and irrelevant derision aside, though, Seikaisuru Kado not only looks and feels nothing like a project out of Toei, but it also looks and feels quite like nothing I’ve ever seen before for many reasons. Be it the quasi-CG character animation production, the irreplaceably unique concepts to accompany an alien invasion, or the hundred-ton dialogue scripting swamped in international relations of all things, Seikaisuru Kado was certainly a diamond in the rough, even if a thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly unpolished one. While it fashioned far more comedic relief and character emotions than necessary for a work of its apparent type—unlike Babylon wherein the characters are mature adults who are taking the story very seriously at all times—Seikaisuru Kado was first and foremost a fairly smart, talkative narrative of political intrigue. To avoid alienating what little of you are still reading by further narrating a show you’re not here to learn about, I’ll sum up the experience by saying it was brilliant…for six episodes…then it was annoying for the following two…and then it was a corpse by the end of episode nine. It was intelligently structured and adherent to reality even amongst all its inane sci-fi concepts, and it kept building itself until by even halfway though I was ready to tout it as a downright intellectual giant. However, it soon began devolving under the surface, and sooner later snapped like a twig in the most bracing twist of quality in anime history. A more-than-average mature show about the advancement of humanity and international geopolitical negotiations behind such progress was put to death by the draw of a giant energy sworn swinging the story into a downwards spiral of over-the-top mindless action, aliens VS humans battle to the death, fucking daughter from the future, batshit anime insanity, and the entire merit of the work up until that point was squandered instantaneously. And its author…wrote Babylon.

At first, Babylon’s only real weakness was in the fact it attracts losers like myself. When you reach the stage of consumerism wherein your priorities become tone-deaf and your intentions become incorrigibly cynical, media—no matter how innocent in its attempts to entertain you—will find themselves endlessly, hopelessly, relentlessly attacked by your unconscious will to break something down, as you’ve conditioned your mind to be little more than a machine for critique which can only even begin to allow yourself an inch of entertainment from media which is totally infallible on every level, as you now know what it means to be so. And Babylon is not totally infallible. Babylon, much like Seikaisuru Kado, even before that heinous death blow the series dealt to itself which I just described, suffers from authorial projecting. That’s a nothing piece of terminology I just made up on the spot, but I mean it to imply exactly what it sounds like. Nozaki Mado, the creator of both works, quite frankly seems to fancy himself more of a preacher than a writer. His works so far have been bursting at the seems with unforgivingly unsubtle theming to the point of characters sitting down and spelling them out to the audience just to make sure his oh-so-precious point got across in the specific way he wanted it to. Honestly, as paradoxical as it sounds given the (periodic) maturity of his works, Nozaki seems to me to be thoroughly childish. Whereas the episodes wherein they do so and the degree to which they do so differ per show, both works reach a point around halfway through where the show takes all its ambivalent ideation and starts facing the audience directly and asserting these inherently subjective questions actually have objectively correct answers, because morals and God and shit. The works reach another turning point later on, though, towards the end, where the show completely shatters itself, and while, no, there is no giant energy sword in Babylon, the series does get to a point by the penultimate episode where anyone thinking at all critically simply has to put it down. That’s right. This masterpiece died young.

How anime which seem to so thoroughly understand the ways of the world lead themselves on with such delusions as evolutionary providence in Seikaisuru Kado and now a moral death in Babylon, I honestly will never know. I don’t get it, and now that we’re two for two with this guy, I frankly don’t even want to. Nozaki isn’t a writer the likes of Tow Ubukata, who hides the interworking of his concepts with an ostentatiously stylized exterior only to eventually expose their emptiness after its clear nothing is being said, nor is he like Shou Aikawa, who presents transparently style-over-substance codifications on behalf of potential themes which also end up being ultimately meaningless all the same. He presents concepts which do, indeed, payoff, and he continues to do so expertly, only for the process to devolve somewhere along the line and have the ideas stop churning out intellectual content and begin churning out holier than thou horse shit attempting to convince you of pretentiously figured objective answers to subjective moral questions. It’s like the latter ends of his works are written by an entirely different person with an entirely different set of priorities and personal values. On its way down from a thematically enormous wonder of a political thriller to a boilerplate pseudo-psychological character study, Babylon doesn’t break any one character, nor does it defile the established ideas, and it only really disrupts the tangible plot in the final episode and, I suppose, the cliffhanger leading into it. It only wastes itself in a general sense, so unlike Seikaisuru Kado who’s devolution wholly invalidates all merit it had accumulated up until the point the energy blade came out, Babylon is actually worth watching in a sense. In fact, you could probably just watch the first seven episodes as a complete story like all the brilliant bastards who dropped Death Note after episode twenty five. But do so knowing it continues. Know the following three and a half episodes slam on the breaks and attempt to convince you of the strict, objectivist take on the previously ambivalent, thought-provoking seven episode gem you just saw. And know, as well, the following episode and a half remaining after that turn out a finale which you’d never guess, not even in your wildest dreams, could ever have been derivative of the expert craft with which you began your viewing.

Thank you for reading.

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Jan 27, 2020

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 6

Marinate1016 (All reviews)

80 people found this review helpful

Every now and then a show comes along and has an absolutely amazing start, dazzles with great narrative, action, characters, etc and then it throws it all away at the end. Unfortunately, this is one of those. Babylon offers one of the most interesting examinations of the classic philosophical debate of Good vs Evil I have ever seen. While on paper, it’s easy for us to say what’s right and what’s wrong, in reality, it’s often much more difficult. Life is more often in shades of grey than black and white. Babylon does a really good job of making you question everything you thought you knew in terms of morality. Unfortunately, the show's premise goes by the wayside in one of the worst endings I have ever seen in anything.

The show deals with a recently passed legislation in a newly built city adjacent to Tokyo which legalises suicide. Unfortunately, not all of the people choosing to take advantage of this new law are doing so under their own will. Tokyo Prosecutor Zen Seizaki is tasked with investigating the cause of this movement and of several suspicious deaths and eventually finds himself involved in a philosophical and moral battle that’s bigger than he could have ever imagined.

Babylon doesn’t have much in the way of physical action in terms of fights, explosions, etc, so if you’re looking for that, this is not the show for you. What it makes up for it with is a mature story, absolutely masterful writing(first half), tension and direction that will consistently leave you on the edge of your seat, in my opinion, the greatest anime villain of all time (Magase) and challenging you to examine your own definition of morality.

The art is really well done and is quite unique in my opinion, the score is brilliant and adds a lot to the tension in scenes, the Voice acting is also top notch, particularly the work done by Yukino Satsuki(Magase). I will warn you that the tone of the show shifts quite dramatically after episode 7, there was a 6 WEEK break between episodes 7 and 8 which really killed a lot of the momentum of the show, and once the show resumed, the tone shifted from a fast paced detective thriller to a much more philosophical and narrative driven experience akin to End of Eva, which some people didn’t like, I personally enjoyed the shift initially, but things began to go south real soon.

Overall, Babylon started as one of my favourite shows of the year, and ended as one of the most disappointing I've ever seen. This was purely self inflicted damage. The author was on the cusp of greatness and let it slip, completely with an ending that is as nonsensical as they come.

I still would recommend giving this a watch, as I believe Magase is one of the best anime villains ever in terms of pure evil and being an unstoppable force. I also believe the first 7 episodes are some of the best you will see, just have tempered expectations for the finale.

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Recent News

Broadcast of 'Babylon' Episode 8 Delayed

The official Twitter account for Revoroot's Babylon TV anime announced on Tuesday that episode eight will be delayed until December 30. The anime will resume it...read more

Nov 21, 2019 2:44 PM by Sakana-san | Discuss (8 comments)

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Oct 27, 2019 3:35 PM by Sakana-san | Discuss (13 comments)

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