Babylon is a 12 episode anime based upon the Japanese novel series. The anime follows public prosecutor Seizaki Zen and begins with him investigating a pharmaceutical company. It is suspected of colluding with various other organizations to fake test results in order to sell a new drug. As he investigates, the investigation gets bigger in scope, eventually leading to a political scandal.
The anime is mostly set in a fictional city of Japan. The city is a new experimental city called Shiniki, which is an autonomous region and has several advantages such as the reduction of red tape, allowing suggestions to speed through to become law and reality. The investigation ends up touching on the current mayoral elections, and how several prominent figures are manipulating the election in the background. Key to the case is a woman who appears and seemingly connected to how several people committing suicide who had shown no signs before then. The more you learn about this character, the scarier she seems to be as she possesses an unnatural, almost supernatural, power. The anime itself is rooted in reality until it goes off the deep end towards the end.
The extent of the woman’s atrocities is fully shown in a later episode. Whereas what she had done before (and after) is evil enough, this one act was shocking. It was disturbing enough to have a warning at the beginning of the episode. As if having the ability to cause people to suicide isn’t bad enough, she has a sadistic streak and it is at this point that she crosses the line where she cannot be redeemed. The way she explained her motivations makes it vaguer on how her actions benefited her. The anime teases her abilities, building up anticipation of the point where we will understand her powers and her motivations.
The anime ends up becoming a chase of Seizaki against the villain. It revolves around how a politician wanted to make suicide legal, and the side effects that this causes. Now, that in and of itself is not that bad, but the politician somehow managed to cause the deaths of several people without actually physically intervening. Seizaki is not afraid of try unorthodox approaches, even at the threat of his position. However, as soon as he gets close, there is a twist in how the politician reacts. The politician always seems to be one step ahead, having planned way in advance.
The pacing is glacial and it takes a few episodes before it starts to reveal a bit more hinting at how the plot will pan out. The last third shuffle things around when suddenly Seizaki is not the focus anymore. The pacing slows down even more until it tries to throw a few shock events. Unfortunately, the payout is not worthwhile and the plot, while intriguing, becomes completely unfocused. It warps from a thriller to one where it tries to go deep with a philosophical question but it fails hard. It is completely uninteresting and feels too pretentious. Whole episodes are wasted on pointless chatter that does not advance the plot.
The anime gradually gets worse and the ending is terrible. It leaves so many plot threads hanging and there are so many unanswered questions. At the end, considering the things that Seizaki had to witness and experience, and what he had to give up, it felt all his actions were pointless. The last third of the anime felt so different and veered so far off track, it was like the writers gave up and filled it with pointless filler. Characters introduced that had a major role that you would have expected to be important were totally dropped without rhyme or reason. There’s no satisfaction provided from knowing the ultimate fate of the characters.
Overall, Babylon is a terrible anime. The beginning holds promise but the writing quickly ended up turning the anime into a mess. The plot was horribly mangled. Characters were uninterested and villains were underdeveloped to the point that they were just one-dimensional characters who are evil because they are evil. The ending was rubbish and the shift in tone to try to become a philosophical piece horribly backfired. The only good thing about Babylon is the sharp clean artstyle.
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