Jun 4, 2020
Tokyo Babylon is mainly a collection of few stories about an exorcist protagonist and encounters he has during his works - both regular jobs and random confrontations.
Now, right from the start I felt like I was missing some chunk of the story, like I accidentally started reading the wrong volume and skipping the introduction. The characters aren't exactly properly introduced and thanks to their status as twins might even be easily confused for each other for first few chapters (though this might also be fault of the very low quality scanlations which are pretty much your only choice for this manga as the official
...
release is out of print). The character of the main protagonist is pretty much just "being a good boy". I'm hoping for some development in the sequel, but for now he's not exactly the most interesting protagonist. The other two of the trio of main characters aren't really important to the plot except for the finale, so they too aren't exactly expanded upon.
For the stories itself - most of them feel like an attempt to portray some serious topic to make tha work deep, but they don't offer any unique take or any more deep analysis of the problem. It's like Tokyo Babylon gives up on making it more interesting and always decides that "yep, that's enough, that will do, this suffices to entertain a reader", which to be fair might work if this is one of the first fictions that takes on those themes that you've read. The last part of the manga breaks from the linked anthology format and follows more straightforward storyline. While it's nice that there is some twist in the narrative, one of them is a leap in logic like straight out of bad yaoi. Tokyo Babylon truly does not forget its shounen ai roots and dishes out a questionable narrative as it tries to push two characters to have to interact with each other as in a relationship.
About the art, I won't hide that I'm not a fan of CLAMP art and this manga sadly isn't an exceptions. It's still more readable than the usual 90's shoujo manga and I have to admit that the art indeed improves through the volumes, but it's still not for me. If you're a CLAMP fan I'm sure you'll enjoy it anyway though.
Overall, most of this manga is forgettable both story-wise and character-wise so I would suggest it only to those that are already fans of the authors. If you want to pick this up to try to get more into the intertwined world of CLAMP works and to understand the links between the works, just don't expect anything great and you probably won't be disappointed.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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