東京 BABYLON

TOKYO BABYLON

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
7
RELEASE
December 10, 1993
CHAPTERS
18

DESCRIPTION

It's 1991, the last days of Japan's bubble economy, and money and elegance run through the streets. So do the currents of darkness beneath them, nourishing evil spirits that only the arts of the onmyoji—Japan's legendary occultists—can combat. The two most powerful onmyoji are in the unlikely guises of a handsome young veterinarian, Seishiro, and the teenage heir to the ancient Sumeragi clan, Subaru.

(Source: Dark Horse)

CAST

Subaru Sumeragi
Seishirou Sakurazuka
Hokuto Sumeragi
Kazami Asou

CHAPTERS

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MANGA ComedyShoten

REVIEWS

ioctan
65/100
A plot that slowly grows between episodic paranormal cases, but does so in an annoying manner.
I wasn't planning to make a review, but I ended up surpassing the character limit of the notes system, and while I went through it to fix it up a little, there might be some jank within.

What I can say before running into spoiler territory is that we have a setup in which the protagonist, as the next successor of his family known for spiritual powers, handles paranormal cases. While the cases are not brought up again after they end, there's a story that develops between them and sometimes while in the cases.

After this point there are spoilers.

The manga is about Subaru, the 13th successor to his clan who work to settle paranormal cases, he has a twin sister called Hokuto who has little spiritual powers, so she wasn't chosen. They are often together, the protagonist is a goodie and kinda bland protagonist, while Hokuto is outspoken, and always telling her brother to go out with Seishirou (who is 9 years older than him, and apparently Subaru is 15 when they meet, and maybe 16 when it ends, pretty creepy), a veterinarian who's always professing his love for Subaru.

Often, when they meet, we have Seishirou pushing himself onto Subaru (not physically, usually), Subaru blushing and his sister teasing him. There's quite a bit of that in this manga for some reason, specially at the start. In between these antics there are paranormal cases, sometimes spirits clinging to a place, and sometimes the living meddling in some way with spirits, not all of these cases have a happy ending.

The problem is how they try to build suspense for stuff that will appear much later, they mention the glove Subaru wears, that he must not take off for any reason, the thing is even he doesn't know why, he's just listening to his grandmother, the previous head of the family. The gloves are brought up a few times through the manga maybe in case we don't forget, but it's still a bit annoying to keep bringing them up without actually provide information on why they are important, and this happens with something else as well.

Now the thing is that the Sumeragi clan isn't the only clan known for its spiritual powers, the Sakurazuka clan is known to use spiritual powers for murder But while Sei has the Sakurazuka surname, it's common so it doesn't mean he's part of the clan. However, it's revealed early on that Sei possesses some powers, and while we see some otherwise normal people using incantations, the fact that he can and with his surname, it should make some alarms ring on Subaru's head, and while he thinks about it a little at some points there's no real effort put towards finding out if it's the case.

Now back to the sister, as her brother is often doing spiritual works, she often cooks for her, apparently she's good at cooking and baking, and while she isn't good with the spiritual she's adept at fighting (we never see her actually training, and it's never important to the story, she only beat some policemen in a side story where none of the other main characters appeared). She also acts as moral support for Subaru in general, and loves to wear extravagant attires. While she's always pushing Sei and Subaru together, about midway through the manga she starts threatening Sei saying he better not hurt Subaru, despite this she keeps pushing them together.

A "bet" is often mentioned by Sei, generally muttered to himself, and a lot of those times he removes his glasses for dramatic effect, just like with the gloves the authors thought to "build suspense" by just mentioning something repeatedly in a dramatic fashion, heck, Sei even broke a mirror once when mentioning the bet so we don't forget. Eventually we see that Sei isn't afraid to hurt others and even murder, but these events are unknown to the protagonist.

At some point, a woman is going to slash at the protagonist and Sei gets in the middle and ends up losing his eye as a result, the problem is that there's no reason for this, he has shown how adept he is, even if you consider that he might not want to show his ugly side to the protagonist, he has already shown twice he can make people faint, once with Subaru and once with Hokuto, so he could have avoided being wounded altogether. From this, Subaru ends up realizing he truly loves Sei.

Eventually the lid over the secret is unveiled, the protagonist finds that he had met Sei 7 years prior. Sei had just killed a little girl, as he was the head of the assassin clan. While he'd normally kill any witnesses, he decides to make a bet, if they ever met again he'd try to love him for 1 year, if by the end he became a special person for him, he wouldn't kill him, and he marked his hands as he was now a target. Subaru's grandmother gave him special gloves to conceal the fact, not that it fooled him when he met Subaru in Tokyo 7 years after. Despite the year they spent together, and the affection he had shown, he never cared about Subaru, and was only saved because his grandmother managed to break his spell, but Subaru was left as if soulless due to the shock.

His sister feeling responsible ended up chasing Sei and being killed, which finally makes Subaru snap out of his trance like state, there's a time skip showing he began working again, is now smoking, and isn't cheerful like he used to be. He vowed to kill Sei and avenge his sister, but it ends without them meeting again as the last stretch was just so set up a sequel hook.

With all that said, the highlight for me were the cases, some more engaging than others, of course, but a lot of them contained criticism towards the Japanese society. Though some were just about the personal pain the people within the story suffered. Once the protagonist finds a woman trying to bury a dog's head to create an inugami to curse the killer of her little daughter, she was denied retribution by the justice system as he was declared insane, the protagonist channels her daughter's spirit in an attempt to stop her, and while the mother is able to see her spirit she can't hear what she says, but he can, and she's saying how much it hurt and that she wants the criminal punished, so the protagonist ends up lying to the mother to stop her (as cursing the man would end up getting her cursed as well). Though it's unclear if this case has a lasting impact on how he thinks, he's hurt and feels guilty about lying to her about what her daughter was saying.

The relationship of the protagonist with Sei, Sei's preventable wound, the protagonist putting 0 effort into finding more about Sei, the way it tried to build suspense with both the gloves and the bet and how it ended with a sequel hook are what ended up souring the experience to me. Although it was nice that just like some of the cases didn't get a good ending, there was no good ending for his love story. So in general in its exaggerations it ended up losing me, but others are likely to look past that or not care as much as I did.
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CantaranBoat
100/100
Both a commentary of the state of Tokyo in the early 90s, and a deeply tragic love story. Perfection in manga form.
Tokyo Babylon was the first CLAMP manga I completed (I had read a few volumes of Cardcaptor Sakura a few years previously) and even after finishing their entire biography I still think it's the best thing they've ever written.

Following 16 year old Onmyouji Subaru Sumeragi, his twin sister Hokuto and their veterinarian friend Seishirou Sakurazuka, Tokyo Babylon explores social issues such as victim-blaming, elder abuse, predatory cults and much more through the lens of the supernatural.

From a technical, strictly literary point of view, it's very well composed; the first chapter fumbles a little, trying to a bit too hard to be jokey, but it finds its footing early on and each new case brings interesting philosophical and social musings. While the "case-of-the-week" format may appear overly disconnected, CLAMP manages to smoothly ties them into the preexisting thematic and chracter development, making the story develop in an organic way.

Tokyo itself is almost a character in this manga; a beautiful city that glitters in the light, and yet its inhabitants are abandoned; their dreams crushed by reality. The aspiring actress kills herself once her efforts are revealed to be futile; teenage girls hurt others in delusions of grandeur; a mother goes insane as her children succub to sickness.

Tokyo babylon is first and foremost a tragedy of the modern age, and it never lets you forget that.

Character-wise, all three of the main trio shine in their own ways, gradually revealing deeper character traits as the story goes on.

Subaru is presented as very kind-hearted, almost an angel in the body of a teenage boy. Yet as the story progresses, his confrontations with the ugliness of Tokyo and situations where kindness is not only incapable of solving things, but may possible makke them worse, we see him change and grow, and his previous love of helping others is gradually recontextualised as something deeply harmful to himself, at one point wanting to donate a kidney (an operation that could possibly kill him) to someone he's barely known for a few days.

Hokuto at first appears extremely frivolous, obsessed with fashion and matchmaking, yet she is shown to possess deep compassion and understanding for others, her matchmaking an attempt to find someone for her brother that will pull him off his self-destructive path.

Seishirou Sakurazuka appears almost incongrous at first; he's a friendly, joking veterinarian who is constanly trying to woo Subaru, and yet Hokuto offhandedly suggests him being part of the Sakurazukamori, mortal enemies of the Sumeragi, something he almost immediatedly deflects (in hindsight she should have pressed that point more). Often taking on a sinister appearance as he manipulates things behind the scene, and making occasional references to a mysterious "Bet" that seems to be ongoing, he also acts quite different when he's alone with Subaru, regularly discussing with him questions of morality.

Seishirou and Subaru's relationship is also very well-constructed; the initial set-up, of an older man pursuing a teenaged boy, is one that at first is deeply uncomfortable, but them working together and the talks they have about morality and life (Seishirou playing the role of the cynic while Subaru is more of an idealist) serve to flesh out their relationship and Subaru's eventual falling in love with him.
The ending, bringing into questions whether Seishirou could fall in love at all or merely even feel, is what makes this relationship truly special. The fact that Subaru, for the first time in his life, had found someone who seemed like he could truly understand him, only for it to be just a lie, is really heartbreaking

What makes Tokyo Babylon truly stand out, however, is its ending. Oh, the ending.

I've seen a lot of people come away crying from the ending, and I was no exception. Seishirou reveals what "the Bet" he alluded to throughout the story was: he once met a young Subaru, and Subaru witnessed his killing of a young girl. Under Sakurazukamori rules, Seishirou would normally have to kill Subaru, yet intrigued by his kindness, he decided to let him live, saying that when they met again he would try to fall in love with him but kill him if he couldn't.

And he does not love Subaru after all; his declarations of love were but lies.

Saying that "things like these happen every day in Tokyo" he attempts to kill Subaru, putting him in a coma. Hokuto sacrifices herself to save her brother, and Subaru awakens, to be alone and bereft both of his sister and his love.

It both functions as a perfect continuation to the themes gradually explored throughout the manga-Tokyo, the remorseless city where no one cares if you get hurt- and something deeply and profoundly cruel. Foreshadowed heavily throughout the manga, especially through Seishirou's vague allusions, it nonetheless shocks by its casual and tragic brutality.
This manga deserves a high-quality anime adaptation, unfortunately GoHands screwed it over.
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