A rare legal/political drama set in Japan that engages with some really complex themes.
What They Say:
Everything can be connected to something else if you dig hard enough, and when you’re investigating a crime, it usually doesn’t take too long before you start finding the clues you need – if you know where to look.
When Public Prosecutor Zen Seizaki starts investigating a case of apparent fraud by a major pharmaceutical company, however, he quickly finds himself entangled in a nightmarish web of lies, intrigue, and murder on a global scale. And even worse, how can he fight a foe without a face, one that’s protected by members of the highest echelons of society and government, and seems to be able to convince its own victims to kill themselves? The nightmares of modern science are powered by old-fashioned corruption and greed, and one man may be the only force that can stop them.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this series is done with the original Japanese language track in stereo encoded using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec along with the English language dub. That’s welcome as this is an interesting series considering the small cast and the dialogue-heavy aspect of it. This aspect of the show is well handled with what it does as dialogue is well placed, everything is clean and clear, and the varying levels we get at times definitely hits a certain rightness about it to make it engaging. The bigger scenes aren’t big in a sense but they have the right impact and deliver when needed. Combined with the instrumental score throughout and a solid opening and closing sequence that gives it a bit of a boost overall, the show delivers what it needs to with a clean and clear presentation.
Video:
Originally airing in in 2019, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The twelve episodes for this series are spread across two discs with nine on the first and two on the second. Animated by Revoroot, the show has a very strong and distinct look about it with some really good details to the backgrounds and the characters as needed. There’s a really great sense of design and, dare I say, maturity about it at times as it handles its look right but it also has some really beautifully expansive pieces here and there as it delves into things. This is all richly realized and brought to life with a clean and problem-free transfer that highlights the show’s strengths. The color tone for this is definitely nicely done where it has a lot of grays and the like and that has the more vibrant pieces looking even more striking when they hit. Fans of the show will definitely like what they get here.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release is definitely strong as we get a beautifully illustrated and painted cover of the two main characters here. While I generally dislike the up/down pairing style as it just looks weird in a lot of situations, it works beautifully here with the darkened edges and the bright interiors of it all. It’s got a lot of detail and design elements to it but at the same time, it has a kind of minimalist approach, right down to the logo. The back cover gives us another nice illustration visual that sets the tone well with the tagline while below it we get a clean summary of the premise that’s easy to read even with it black on purple. The remainder is fairly standard with a few shots from the show while the extras are clearly broken out and the production credits along the bottom are done in black and white so that it’s straightforward. The technical grid also covers everything cleanly and accurately and we don’t have any inserts or show-related inserts included.
Menu:
The menu design for the release works off of the back cover visual of the main character Ai that was done as an illustration but which expands to the main cast below her. It comes together well and feels really distinctive and engaging in all the right ways. The background is set with the cityscape and having the colorful parts of Ai blend over that works really well. The navigation is kept to the left with a black strip down that has the episodes by number and title with a mixture of grey and white looks great. The highlighted episode gets some vibrant color that invokes Ai as well so it all ties together beautifully. Everything is quick and easy to access since it’s only the extras on the second disc that you have to do anything with and it looks great as a pop-up menu during playback.
Extras:
The only extras included here are the clean versions of the opening and closing sequences.
Based on the novel series of the same name, Babylon is a twelve-episode anime series that aired as part of the fall 2019 season (and crept a little bit into the next month). The original novels ran for three volumes from Mado Nozaki between 2015 and 2017. The anime was complemented with a two-volume manga by Nobuhide Takishita that began in early 2019 and wrapped up just as the anime got underway. The show, sadly, didn’t get a lot of attention during its broadcast as it was and remains at this time an Amazon Prime exclusive. Sentai Filmworks got the home video rights for it and has produced a dub that can only be found here, so it definitely has some unique aspects to it. The series should have gotten a lot of attention as it plays strong to the legal world in a really intriguing way while still being an anime through and through.
The premise for this focuses on a group of public prosecutors that kick things off by going after a pharmaceutical company that was accused of being involved in some shady things with one of its drugs, from it being defective and the results being hidden. The main focus is on a public prosecutor named Zen Seizaki who is working this angle. And they definitely have something to prove as they’re working out of the Shiniki district, newly made up by Hachioji, Machida, and Sagamihara as a kind of tentative independent state. That’s a legal quagmire of its own that I’d love to explore a lot more but it also sets a fascinating backstory to things. Zen’s investigation takes a pretty strong leap quickly within the first episode with certain deaths starting to come up and a suicide with a not that seems to incriminate someone by a single letter. Even worse, Zen’s partner that we meet early on with Fumio ends up dead quickly and that just drives him all the harder to find justice for one of his own.
Babylon establishes itself as working in a number of complex areas here and ones that, even after decades of Japan-watching and reading, I’ve still not broken myself into. As immersed as I am in American politics and a few other places, Japanese politics is its own distinct game that I’ve only got a superficial look at. And that plays heavily here as it goes on because of the semi-independent state that’s being played with her as well as just the number of various political parties that exist and how they all interact with each other. Combine that with a look at the legal system, which from my few observed detailed looks comes across in a kind of horrifying way, there’s so much going on here that’s interconnected with the story and what Zen has to investigate. Elections are being swayed, Zen himself pushes past legal limits a few times (which is admittedly standard for a lot of shows in the West), and there’s a lot of very pro-legal system aspects here that may frustrate some who know just how stacked the system can be against someone when it sets its sights on you.
But really, the biggest thing it tackles here, and the most complicated one for a lot of people, is suicide. Through the character of Ai, our villain of the series, she’s got the ability to have people kill themselves so that it looks like suicide. Suicide is a difficult subject in general – look at presentations like 13 Reasons Why for an example – and placing it within this context can be walking a thin line. There is an underlying story to the series about trying to legalize suicide and that’s a complicated issue there. With this place looking to define itself as its own state, and someone like Ai in the mix causing more people to die of suicide than normal – just the idea of seeing politicians taking sides about the whole idea can be stomach-turning. But, to the show’s credit, I think they did a better than average job in actually going into this, roughly around the halfway mark, and engaging in some of these ideas beyond just the usual bog-standard moral concepts of it all. Having grown up reading a lot of Heinlein, I’ve always been predisposed to the idea being a fundamental right, though with all rights there are caveats, and that there are things that are not cut and dry here as some would like. So I really do admire the series for not just going there but truly engaging with it in a strong and surprising way from multiple sides.
There is a lot going on in this series as it adapts from the novels and some of the subplots don’t hold as well as others. In some ways, this felt like a series that should have been half its length and focused more clearly on the story at hand. The opening material is just setup to shift us into other areas because once Fumio is dead, we start to get a handle on the bigger picture of what Ai is up to through her disguises and attempts to change the narrative to her favor. But it feels like a weird drop of storyline, especially when we see others launched that barely get referenced again as well, as it feels like there are more ideas than execution going on here. But when you do hit that key point in the series, you realize it’s more about certain themes and larger implications being explored around it than anything else. But at the same time, we do get the stranger elements kept in place as well with what Ai is up to in order to give it more intrigue, action, and tension.
In Summary:
I’ll always have a good soft spot for a good legal drama, especially from outside of my own country as a way to get a taste of what things are like elsewhere. That said, it’s not reality here but it’s an interesting anime series simply because we get so few true legal-oriented shows out there. It’s a tough genre in a lot of ways unless you really blend it with others or just go for outright goofiness. Here, Babylon is completely serious in what it’s trying to do and that means engaging with some really tough themes like suicide and more. It’s also a very Japanese-centric view – as one would expect – and that’s going to ruffle a few feathers depending on your thoughts about suicide and its meaning as it’s an incredibly complex thing in Japan. I’m beyond glad that Sentai grabbed this for release and gave it a dub because it’s so rare for a cast to have this kind of material, these kinds of conversations, to engage in and bring to life. It may be a bit of a barebones release with just the show and theme songs, but it looks fantastic and the overall package design is great. Definitely scoop this one up, it may be a dark horse gem in your collection.
Features:
Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Clean Opening Clean Closing
Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-
Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: May 11th, 2021
MSRP: $69.98
Running Time: 300 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
