Babylon Episode 7 Discussion

kuroneko99 said:
It turned out that Magase has the ability similar to Eucliwood Hellscythe in "Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?". Quite supernatural...
Then the show has turned into "Higurashi no Naku Koro ni".

Incidentally, I found that this show is based on a novel that was written by Nozaki Mado. This name rang a bell. He was the script writer of "Kado: the right answer". It was a highly claimed show as an eccentric SF anime from a certain spectrum of audience. Actually, the show has a lot of silly aspects, but if you like Babylon, you would also like Kado.

Azazin said:
I hope they can give us a good explanation why Magase got those superhuman abilities.
Right now Babylon is a mess, and they want to 'shock' us instead of giving us a suspense and halfway decent thriller.

The suicide topic could be used for an interesting thought-provoking plot about pros and cons of suicide or about good/evil, but they go for cheap thrills instead.

Daniel_Naumov said:

You do understand you spout this while merely mid-way through a thriller? You do understand there is a lot of crucial information yet to be revealed, and we can only surmise what is going on from the symbolism and foreshadowing? You do understand everything you said has zero credibility at this point, don't you?

smoledman said:


With Ai Magase, it's implied she's been highly sexualized since 15. In fact I think it's possible she might have been gang raped in high school and this is her ongoing bloody path of vengeance against a world that provided her no justice.

Nachito_Nwbie said:

Its not clear? I think that this episode leave it really fucking clear.
That whole conversation between magase and seizaki explained it really well, we, aswell as Seizaki, cant understand the reasons or the logic behind "evil", we were born in a "good" world, in good circumstances, with good things, we are not able to understand whats behind evil.
See it this way, its like trying to understand the behaviour of a sociopath, someone who enjoys to steal, hurt, lie, etc. We see all that behiour as something "illogical", we are not able to make sense out of it. And on the other hand, the socipaths cant understand "good", cant relate to good, cant understands "good" feelings, they cant understand US, who are "good" people.
Its the same, and thats her objective. Its not "completly clear" (Though, we can create an idea of where this is going and why, wich is what i explained above) cause it is meant to be that way to be explained, so it can be logic to the "true world" logic.

Nachito_Nwbie said:

I think this is fascinating, the way the whole show decides to explore the behaviour and the way it works the brain of someone as Magase, it is a gem when it comes to psychoanalysis and such matters. Also there are a lot of other things that are incredibly good, the debate of wether suicide should be legal or not, what i could provoque, if its "good or bad" to let someone die, cause yes, it is painful to be "obligated" to live because of society when you are feeling like shit because of X problems, and suicide is an option; but, theres also the option of helping someone to get through whatever they are going and avoid suicide. The way the show explains that getting suicide legalized, people will stop seeing such as a "joke" and begin to see it more seriously, and probably lower the suicide rates, the comparisson with the Marihuana case is absolutly correct and well done, i really think this last episode and the show itself is really fucking good.

Nachito_Nwbie said:

Also there are a lot of other things that are incredibly good, the debate of wether suicide should be legal or not, what i could provoque, if its "good or bad" to let someone die, cause yes, it is painful to be "obligated" to live because of society when you are feeling like shit because of X problems, and suicide is an option; but, theres also the option of helping someone to get through whatever they are going and avoid suicide. The way the show explains that getting suicide legalized, people will stop seeing such as a "joke" and begin to see it more seriously, and probably lower the suicide rates, the comparisson with the Marihuana case is absolutly correct and well done, i really think this last episode and the show itself is really fucking good.

Mythologically said:


I don't think "how to not do a mystery series right" is how I'd phrase it tbh. Rather, this is the single worst episode of anything I've ever seen.

• Every single thing that happens is completely telegraphed and obvious, so there's literally 0 tension
  
• Haha let's kill every character because dark good
  
• 100% unnecessary torture scene with some surface level, faux-intellectual moral discussion over it because haha shock value good
  

But if anything pisses me off the most, it's that an abysmally written character is being compared to fucking Makishima. Makishima, who is undoubtedly the best anime antagonist ever written, is being compared to this bitch. What? Magase is a purely evil character with no motivations or redeeming qualities. Makishima was literally the good guy in his show. How can you even begin to compare them?

Anyway, the show was gradually getting worse after the first 3 episodes, but this ep sent it from an 8 to a solid 1. It went from a fairly enjoyable mystery series to a juvenile edgefest that pretends to be deep.

Daniel_Naumov said:

This is fine. You are unable to properly answer my remarks since you clearly understand how uncultured and lacking effort is your input on this episode discussion thread. Accepting the problem and understanding it is 2/3 of solving it. Be blessed.

I also feel that this ep was more for shock value but I’ll give some credit where it’s due , magase posing as the taiyou kid mother was a unexpected but nice touch ( idk if its just me but I didn’t see it coming)
The scene where magase was casually telling the chief to write down his “death message” in front of many other officers “spellbound” shows the cunningness of magase and gave me suspense of what is gonna happen next (I knew what was gonna happen but I wanted to see how it was animated)
Now after the praise, now for the shitfest
1. Sekuro torture scene was very unnecessary - I get the point was to break down Seizaki but wtf , I pretty sure he was already more than a little traumatized by seeing his friend off himself and so many others in the task force . That scene was nothing more than shock value , to its credit, the transition between the innocent family making lunch and sekuro getting mauled was disturbing. I’m not sure if that scene was originally the the Source material but if it was , that still was excessive
2. Magase herself- idc ,nothing the story does or says through flashbacks or backstory can ever make her redeemable or understandable. She is just a disturbed women . This is not inherently something point to everyone, it’s just a bad point to me to add a edgelord who gets off torturing people.On a side note , why does she have more favorites than the women she tortured on MAL?
3. Contradicting story - earlier we see the post operating interrogation, we can clearly see the officer interrogating Seizaki. There it was established that most of the police force clearly do not believe the existence of magase. A second later we see a stream of magase torturing sekuro, if seizaki is not on the case in the next episode with half of the police force after having very incriminating evidence of magase existence and her torturing a women working for the police, well it just proves further that torture scene was only for shock value because what police depart will stand by after a blatant murder of a women in their own industry
Thank you for actually trying to be a worthy person visiting forums, it means a lot that at least some still exist. I will address your points now.
1. You are wrong, that scene is crucial to the whole narrative. I understand why you would feel such way, and I still believe this is (sub)conscious dissatisfaction with excessive violence. Nevertheless, your or anyone's mental predisposition does not give or take value and importance of such scenes. We are shown how completely out of control is Magase Ai, and how little grasp of the whole situation Seizaki Zen has. Just like everyone else he believed that Itsuki is the one pulling strings. I doubt he does anymore. Shock value is honestly an empty phrase. Either the scene has meaning, or it does not and is frankly redundant. Just like Magase Ai claims everything has a meaning, that scene had extremely potent meaning in itself. This is not just some excessive violence - this is how insane crimes happen. Someone cuts someone else up. While someone's family is happily making dinner or thinking about the future. This is the real society we (them Japanese) live in. If it is to change we have to accept it even in such medium as art. The mindset comes first, but I digress.

Magase Ai specializes in psychology and she does what she does to unhinge Zen, to throw him off his refined self and to make him fall closer to her level - a villain. Which is why she does these evil things, to make him believe there is no other way to stop her but to shoot her. Since she would get away from prison and prosecutors. She was shown to control men after all. That scene is crucial to the whole narrative, because if what I say is to happen, then only through such gruesome, inhumane and shocking (as many seem to believe, I didn't twitch) experience can Zen believably drop from his pedestal and seek revenge instead of justice. Or maybe he would become a hero himself. To be seen.
In conclusion I strongly disagree with your understanding of the said execution scene, as you look at it through the prism of your own borders, you create a mental block. You do not go beyond to perceive it through the narrative, context, and reality. As it should be perceived, as the authors intend it (hopefully, proper authors should).
2.You don't want me to write a discourse into why the locals "favourite" the villain more than the victim. It is a cruel and humiliating narrative, the masses of MAL users. Some kid was calling mass-murderer a good guy several posts ago. Some questions... are better left unanswered.

However I will address the former point. The main problem with your second point is - you are talking about her character as if you know everything about her. Everything the authors wanted us to know or assume, anyway. Because, as you can see, we are merely on episode 8. It is not a newfound storytelling technique to prove an exposition, a massive one, for the villain right until the finale, to keep it all mysterious, almost meaningless. As I have pointed in my previous replies here and on reddit, she is doing what she is doing for a reason - most obvious one is to break Seizaki Zen and to bring him to shoot her. That's not an "edgelord" or a simply disturbed villain. There is more to it. I might be willing to spoiler another series and explain the depth her character might be going to, if you wish. Before we can with certainty say that her character is meaningless, we must witness it completely. This is not a simple series, it's a social critique and a statement, somewhere there, I hope.

3.Well the problem could be in two places - they do not believe something like Magase Ai could exist. Seizaki is the only one who actually knows she exists and is evolved, everyone else has perished, by that point. OR they could all be "on it" already, controlled to pretend that nothing is happening. As for the stream, as you said, it's in the next episode, so we can't tell what is going to happen. I could say that the stream website maybe does not have a saving function. Someone would argue that this is not possible in 2019. PPffft naivety. Even if they put all-points bulletin on her, they will still have to look for someone who had outsmarted... the whole society basically. Getting close to something as absurd as suicide-law. But please, stay determined and I am sure we will see how well and thought-out this series is.

tengoku-oh said:
That would be mind-blowing, but this episode already confirmed that they are not the same person. Seizaki had already lost contact with the crew members before Sekuro asked to the check on the situation. Also, the police officer Kujiin would certainly mention a detail that important with his dying breath. One of the previous episodes also confirmed it when Sekuro was standing beside Seizaki when Magase talked on the phone, a moment before agent Tsutsui committed suicide.

Bibimbapski said:
People are comparing Magase to Johan Liebert but I just can't see it.

Bibimbapski said:
Why is she choosing to torment Seizaki?

Bibimbapski said:
I can't understand why Magase would chop up Sekuro when she could've just told her to commit suicide?

ryanstrike said:
Why is Sekuro??? It's too sad.
Just ep 7 but nearly everyone died. What the hell...

AdroSlice said:
I have a question on Sekuro... Did she really die? Sure all her limbs were chopped off, but knowing this show I wouldn't be surprised if magase just packaged her up nicely and dropped her off somewhere, a hospital or somewhere to be found, that everyone would have to confront that she then would likely request euthanasia, a form of assisted suicide...

NthDegree said:

There are ways around the both of those - losing contact does not mean they're already dead. She could have simply used jamming or had accomplices that temporarily incapacitated them. Meanwhile the phone call could have been a recording she used to create an alibi for herself. Of course, that would mean she would have to predict how he's going to behave... but seeing how she already has manipulation abilities that are pretty much supernatural at this point, I wouldn't say it's impossible. Furthermore, Tsutsui's time of death was never mentioned and they explicitly state there were no witnesses, so she could have simply killed him earlier.

...Yes, I've read way too many detective novels.

But my point is, it is not impossible. The only thing it depends on is how far the author is willing to go. I don't know whether they're really going to go for it but I'm just guessing based on the fact that there are literally only two female side-characters that have not turned out to be Magase yet: MC's wife and Sekuro. It's pretty conspicuous.

tengoku-oh said:
Interesting! A plot like that would surely be very welcome, although we shouldn't expect too much considering what others have told us about the author of this series.

RealTheAbsurdist said:
I don't want to say this episode was "edgy" but it felt...jarring. I mean, up to this point, this anime established itself as a really grounded suspense story, so for it to suddenly turn into a slasher flick is...confusing. The fact that it's so hard to figure out what Magase does to her victims to cause them to want to commit suicide makes it so confusing, that it's not even intimidating.



To be fair, the average person would probably be too shocked by the stream to take any action. But it's weird that Magase was somehow able to figure out that Seizaki would be too emotionally vulnerable to take action.

@Daniel_Naumov

I think I agree with @Doomroar about Magase: there's really nothing to her character: we're 8 episodes in, yet we don't know what her motive is, she provides no argument to justify her actions, and her monologueing about being a "hero" is so cringe that it actually makes her less intimidating (to me at least). You're saying that Magase specializes in "psychology" yet we literally have no clue how she manipulates people through talking.
"this is how insane crimes happen. Someone cuts someone else up. While someone's family is happily making dinner or thinking about the future. This is the real society we (them Japanese) live in."
The writer could've picked any other number of ways to convey that message without shoving it in our faces through gore. For example, cutting to a family eating dinner right after showing the aftermath of someone's suicide conveys that just fine.
We already are aware of how crazy Magase is just by the fact that she drives people to commit suicide.
But most of all, gore doesn't belong in a series like this: for nearly 8 episodes, there was very little gore. This anime established itself as a down-to-earth suspense series about characters trying to defeat each other under the law.

RealTheAbsurdist said:

RealTheAbsurdist said:
@Daniel_Naumov

1) Most great villains' backstories aren't revealed near the end. The problem with the mystery box, as Digibro pointed out, is that as it builds, it sets such high expectations, that it becomes impossible for the reveal to satisfy those expectations. Askeladd, Johan Liebert, are villains whose backstories were revealed either early on, or midpoint. I really don't think Magase's backstory is going to be revealed right at the end.

2) Characters like Johan who attempt to justify their insanity makes them more interesting, and actually intimidating. There's nothing cheaper than a villain who just goes around killing people, "because they're insane."

3) I don't think Magase's monologueing is supposed to be necessarily something that the common sane person would agree, but if you're going to have an insane villain monologue using analogies, then it should be more compelling. Otherwise, what's the point of the monologuing? Especially when it's something as stupid as "being a hero."

To my understanding, you believe Magase is a great villain, yet I don't think you have explained why you think so.

RealTheAbsurdist said:


2) Characters like Johan who attempt to justify their insanity makes them more interesting, and actually intimidating. There's nothing cheaper than a villain who just goes around killing people, "because they're insane."

RealTheAbsurdist said:


Except this isn't reality; this is a fictional anime. Insane murderers do have reasons why they act the way they do: usually something involving being abused as a child or whatnot.

RealTheAbsurdist said:

To be fair, the average person would probably be too shocked by the stream to take any action. But it's weird that Magase was somehow able to figure out that Seizaki would be too emotionally vulnerable to take action.

RealTheAbsurdist said:

Seizaki is a prosecutor though.

DatRandomDude said:
Bruh, the anime's poster was a big fat spoiler all along. (Thanks for pointing that out, Reddit.)

IndianAnimeReker said:
Lol Seizaki makes me so mad. How dumb can an inspector get. He can he let such a situation come to be. He let basically everyone die and let those two go on their own when there was clearly something going wrong with the groups.

Stop bloody whimpering and crying he knew he was dealing with a psychopath early on and should've taken precautions after seeing all those people jump of the roof AND his kouhai was murdered by her - he knew it was Ai Magase deep down and this had to be her MO. The moment the groups started to lose contact he should've known something very bad was up and he should go himself to check, instead the doofus just sent the girl to check?

Ugh also it makes no sense to me how there's absolutely no trace of where Itsuki, Ai Magase and that girl inspector went? You're telling me right after a live broadcast there were absolutely zero eye witnesses seeing them leaving the scene? No CCTV inside a building? What about that interrogator talking down to Seizaki saying 'you youself said they committed suicide'?

Um hello how do you explain how EVERY COP (emphasis on cop) committed suicide simultaneously and Itsuki, the wife, (presumably) the kid AND another COP disappeared (likely kidnapped)? It would seem blindingly obvious to me that none of those events can be coincidences. The only SOLE survivor is claiming to you that Ai Magase is responsible so how can you talk down to him and claim it's all 'trauma'.

Is this really how incompetent police are? Why didn't bozo Seizaki make all these points clear to the interrogators? Why didn't he immediately move with full anger and urgency to find the girl and track down the people that kidnapped a police officer? In fact police officers being killed or missing should cause the whole agency to be in full swing. Why did Seizaki even go back to the police station and is not out in the field?

Also now that Magase has sent Seizaki a video stream the doofus didn't even record any of it I'm 100% sure and was too busy screaming. It directly links Ai Magase with murder and now Sekuro that police officer has died after BEING KIDNAPPED from the murder scene, clearly showing how it could not have been simple group suicide.

I've got too many questions now, a lot of things don't make any sense? Why did Magase even need to kill those police officers and why did she particularly want to use a physical method with an Ax and broadcast it to Seizaki? It presumes that she has full confidence that none of the murders will ever be traceable to her (including the steamed one). Honestly I think she's right I doubt doofus will actually be able to use it in a positive way at all. Her intentions nonetheless don't make much sense to me, was it just to make a statement to Seizaki and risk being caught? Maybe she wants to be caught.

What's all those politicians going to say now? How is it not national news? Is the general public really that stupid and immediately change their moral/ethical/political opinions immediately after one interview? That's not at all realistic. Also I was kinda miffed how none of the politicians couldn't counter Itsuki's arguments? There's so many flaws in his speech and logic.

Not once did he explain how exactly 'suicide' law is different from euthanasia (which is closer to what he's actually talking about since its about donating organs to save someone's life) - such things are already acceptable and is not the same as suicide. Doesn't explain how suicide will be treated legally nor how it would it be clearly distinguished from murder? What if someone coerced someone into suicide, the offender will get away with it because 'its now acceptable that people can kill themselves'. It's not explained WHY such a law is even needed nor does it address the root causes for suicide in the first place or any alternative solutions to lowering the suicide rate (considering Japan is an outlier not the norm, other nations have handled the situation better).

I think Itsuki will use the deaths of the police officers for the suicide law but is the public actually all going to believe him and not have any bad feelings about the fact that mysterious suicides are connected to him? Magase knows about Seizaki's family so I have a feeling the mother and son are going to die next.

Lots of plotholes and things I'm not looking forward to here because I'm sure in the next few episodes we're just going to see Seizaki being backed into a corner with no one believing him (despite evidence being on his side) and he will have to do everything alone by breaking the law himself and become a criminal to stop Magase. I doubt any of these concerns will be addressed.

Don't get me wrong I think this show is brilliant still but I'm really fking hoping Seizaki will actually man the hell up, think smarter and stop being useless. I'm also kinda pissed all the main characters are essentially dead now with nothing to show for it. So much backstory and introductions to these characters will not be coming and it feels like a waste. We'll have to wait to see what happens I guess. Really hope Magase dies in the way she does not want and suffers once justice is served, only then will I be satisfied.

DatRandomDude said:
Bruh, the anime's poster was a big fat spoiler all along. (Thanks for pointing that out, Reddit.)

Dylhelm said:
cant stand helpless scenes like that at the end, this is where I drop it...

DiscoMilf said:
That's the best episode of any show I've seen all year. I don't know that it'll be able to keep this up but god damn does the December 30th delay hurt like hell now. I WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS DAMMIT

ziad1419 said:


Episode was amazing
You should go watch trash show like kimetsu and bnha

ryuchigrayy said:
[quote=DatRandomDude message=58677911 bump