Babylon

Episodes 1-3

Ever since I covered its first episode for the Preview Guide, I knew Babylon would be the kind of show where I'd need to be taking notes. Regardless of how well the show's actual plot lays out its tracks and set up its mysteries, the anime does a decent job of at least making its feel like its watching an ever complex web of lies and conspiracy unfold. That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but I actually appreciate the show's commitment to indulging in its overwrought story – usually, when an anime tosses out reams of exposition and plot minutiae like this, it comes across as the show not trusting its audience's intelligence. The impression I get from these first three episodes is that Babylon absolutely expects its audience to put in the work to follow every twist and turn of public prosecutor Zen Seizaki's quest for justice in a city that may just be starving to death for it.

The city in question is the fictional Shiniki, an offshoot of Tokyo with ambitions of being the city's next great metropolis, and it's currently in the process of electing its first mayor. In the first episode, Zen's investigation lead him to the bizarre and suspect suicide of a well-respected doctor, and the seeming trading of illicit sexual favors for votes behind the closed doors of the city's election. When Zen's partner Fumio also turned up dead in a very suspicious suicide, the case becomes more personal and harrowing than the prosecutor ever could have expected, but just when it looks like Shiniki's corruption threatens to burst it apart from inside out, things get even stranger.

There's a lot of plot covered in these first three episodes, but all of it ends up feeling like prologue to the real core of its mystery. There are shady corporations trading with other shady corporations, mysterious drugs being developed for nefarious purposes, and politicians making backroom deals and spitting in the face of honest democracy. Otherwise, its all of the usual complex shenanigans that come along with stories like this, but here's the simple version: The election is more or less rigged, which Zen learns when one of the mayoral candidates, Ryūichirō Nomaru stops by to inform him that everyone above Zen's paygrade, including his own boss, are in on deciding who the next mayor is going to be. For the good of the city, it has been decided that the young upstart Kaika Itsuki is going to lead Shiniki into the future, and there isn't anything a single man like Zen can do about it. The older men make all sorts of justifications for their actions, and of course Zen's stalwart moral code resists any of their bloviating, but the key revelation is this: The governmental conspirators may be guilty of many crimes, but murder is apparently not one of them, and they still needs Zen to track down the killer that somehow convinced Fumio to take his life.

This is where the story's real hook comes in, which is this case is a character we meet in the show's second episode. In a riveting sequence that shows off all of the show's flashiest direction and animation chops, Zen interrogates Ms. Hiramitsu, one of the three so-called mystery women that he suspected were acting as political prostitutes for the likes of Nomaru and his cronies. The woman carries the kind of eerie vacant smile that would be write at home on the face of a villain in a horror visual novel, and she blithely chortles and sneers her way through Zen's questions; she even manages to turn the tables on him at one point by promising a signed confession only if he responds to her questions about his life, his sexual preferences, and his thoughts on the nature of justice.

If it wasn't obvious that this character is being set up as more than a mere politician's sugar baby, that she somehow manages to walk right out of the interrogation room before she can hold up her end of the confession bargain should be a dead giveaway. Something strange is going on with this woman, and neither Zen nor his companions can put their fingers on it. Its only when Kaika Itsuki and his entire political team disappears does Nomaru reveal to Zen the truth behind Ms. Hiramatsu and the other Mystery Women in Zen's investigation: They're all the same person. What's more, the enigmatic Ai Magase isn't some master of disguises or cheap tricks – she's supposedly some kind of shapeshifter, who literally becomes different women whenever it suits her, and she can even hypnotize and manipulate people into doing her bidding, which would explain both her inexplicable resources and the deaths of the men who have run into her different identities (including Fumio).

It's the first hint of something supernatural being at play, which would serve as the perfect counterpoint to Zen's rigid and stark view of reality as a binary battleground of justice versus injustice. Once that crack in the dam starts leaking, Babylon's story is able to really cut loose with it's creepy and surreal imagery, chiefly in the mass suicides of Kaika Itsuki and dozens of others, who leap from the top of a giant industrial complex with nothing but glee and acceptance on their faces. Kaika spouts a manifesto about society needing to embrace and even proselytize death in order to advance, but as Zen watches in horror he can't help but be reminded of those bizarre letters he found scribbled on the dead doctor's message back in the first episode. Catching a glimpse of Ai in the crowd, he thinks that it must mean “F”…for female.

This is where things get tricky, not only because that is a very silly leap for the prosecutor to make, but because it frames the story in a potentially unsavory light as being some kind of commentary on the feminine capacity for, I don't know, deception and duplicity or something. That there doesn't really seem to be any other thematic groundwork laid for misogynistic nonsense here is a small comfort – until this moment, Babylon had mostly been concerned with the sleazy world of politicking and the fight for civil justice – but I can't help but be worried that the “Babylon” of the title is somehow meant to implicitly be preceded by “The Whore of…” This is a mostly well-written show, not to mention a fantastically directed one, so I would hate for its storytelling to be mired in some misguided attempt to reframe mythic sexism with a modern noir twist.

What reassures me is that, were this reveal to come close to the end of the story, it would feel much more like a warning of things to come. We're only at the end of the third episode, though, and if there's a running theme about the assumptions Zen and the audience have likely been making all this time, it's that they're dead wrong. Babylon is setting itself up to give both us and Zen plenty of time to reflect on Ai's place in this story, and to see where it really stands once all of the bodies have hit the dirt, both literally and figuratively. I want to trust in the smart, capable, and genuinely thrilling show Babylon has been in these first three episodes, and not fear the potentially dumb and fatally ambitious show it could end up becoming – this is straight from the writer of KADO, after all. Still, this show feels like an oasis of original and confident ideas in an otherwise barren desert of formulaic mobile game spinoffs and cheap isekai-light-novel cash grabs. The house of cards might come tumbling down at the end, but I'm nevertheless looking forward to watching it all get built up in the meantime.

Rating: 4

Odds and Ends

• I didn't mention much about Zen's partners in not-crime, since this review is already obscenely long, but I'm digging his motely crew of low-key bros. Shinobu the police inspector has the most personality so far, but I also appreciate Ben, the intelligence analyst who seems perfectly content to be the Guy in the Chair.

• I might be worried about Ai Magase's thematic purpose in Babylon, but she works incredibly well as a deliciously eccentric foil to Zen's straight-laced routine. My favorite moment of hers would have to be when she can't help but snicker at Zen's seriousness in their interrogation, and then turns to the stenographer and dead-pans: “Aren't you going to…type that in?”

• Yutaka Yamada is here providing his second excellent score of the season; between this and Vinland Saga, consider Yamada someone to keep an ear out for in the future.

Babylon is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.