'Babylon' Is Terrific, Until It's Not

I passed on Babylon at the start of the fall 2019 anime season.  But it kept on generating excited buzz within the anime community that I just had to check it out, too, even though my anime watch-load was crammed full already.  Atypical for a seasonal anime, it went on a hiatus after its seventh episode.  Thinking of it as a perfect opportunity to get myself caught up with it, I proceeded to binge all seven episodes.  I was glad I did, for it ended up being one of my favorites of the season.

When it returned around New Year, I was understandably hyped to see how its concluding stretch (episodes 8 to 12) would turn out.  To my great dismay, the finale failed to stick the landing.

Babylon follows Zen Seizaki, a dedicated public prosecutor who’s supposed to build a case against a pharmaceutical company that’s been falsifying test results and promoting a defective drug.  His investigation, however, leads him to uncover a political conspiracy that’s occurring in a newly formed district named Shiniki, which is intended to be a testing ground for new, radical laws.  But as he further digs deeper into it, the matters that he finds himself dealing with only grows more knotty, sinister, and deadly.

As a thriller, it’s a genuinely riveting one.  It does a splendid job with developing and managing intrigue, tension, and mystery.  Due to a suspenseful score and solid direction, a grippingly taut atmosphere is well-maintained.  Moreover, as Seizaki’s battle against the antagonist (more on this later) becomes more serious, the series gets darker and more chilling.  By its excellent episode 7, it has become straight-up horror.

The storytelling is so compelling that even the scenes where characters are just talking – and there’s a good amount of them – are engaging.  Watching through the body of the series is a breeze.  In addition, in moments where what’s happening on screen doesn’t make sense, you are somehow convinced that it will eventually have a smart explanation around the corner.  It’s also pretty fond of philosophizing, especially about morality and death, and again, regardless of whether it’s actually being genuinely insightful or just pretentious, it presents itself in such a stimulating fashion that you just buy into it.  While you are watching it, you just get the sense that this is a show in which everything will perfectly click together in the end.

Alas, Babylon ultimately bamboozles its audience.  The first ten episodes are absorbing; the details stated in the previous paragraph hold true.  By its eleventh episode, however, you start to see it cracking.  You realize that it’s the penultimate episode already, and yet, the expected payoffs haven’t started to manifest yet, and it seems that there’s not enough time for them.  So you worry.  And as you are watching the finale, your worst fears are confirmed: the show doesn’t really have a proper, let alone epic, resolution prepared for its grand setups.  It implodes, thematically and narratively, and leaves you with the sour feeling that you have been swindled.

The heart of this show (this can be considered a SPOILER) is arguably the main antagonist, Ai Magase – a seductive master of disguise who can talk others into committing suicide.  She’s a legitimately intimidating and terrifying villainess, and her presence in the plot fuels much of its thrills and scares.  Moreover, the nature of her abilities – science fiction, hypnotism, or magic – is unclear for most of the series, and the sense of mystery from it consists much of the value of the narrative’s stock.  That’s why a major reason for the show’s confusing, inconclusive, underwhelming finale is its failure to present a satisfying revelation for what her real deal is.  In other words, with much of Babylon revolving around Ai Magase, when the writing for her character fell apart, the show fell apart as well.

To sum it up, while it’s engrossing for the most part, Babylon turns out being a massive letdown.