Tokyo Babylon
Reviewer: Holli [website] [email]Overall Rating: C+
Media Reviewed: DVD
Creator: CLAMP
U.S. Licensed: Yes
Released by: Central Park Media
Run time: 60 minutes
BL Content: Ambiguous (yaoi implications)
Genre: Supernatural/Suspense
Other media: English-licensed manga [review]
Subaru Sumeragi is a 16 year old Onmyou (yin-yang) medium who is already the head of his family's clan that has served Japan's governments for a thousand years. First Subaru must face a power hungry businessman who has infailable luck. Then, Subaru meets a fellow psychic who can see the past, including murders. Subaru is a kind and gentle soul who genuinely tries to help every single person he meets in his exorcist assignments. But, he just might need the help of his older twin sister, Hokuto, and his mysterious gentleman friend, Seishirou.
Yay! Time for a CLAMP title! (Don't worry, I'm not a rabid CLAMP fan, so this review will not be biased; for every series I like by them, I hate another)
Gotta love bishonen! Subaru is so pretty, it's scary! He's worse than Kamui from CLAMP's other series, X! (which is funny, since TB is a predecessor of sorts to X, and Seishirou and Subaru's story continues in it) He looks so much like a girl in what I have dubbed as his "Michael Jackson" outfit (which kinda makes fashionable sense for the time period the manga was written, early 90s). The only way you can tell him and his older twin sister apart is by their clothing (barely) and that Subaru lacks boobs.
Whether this OVA is truly shounen-ai or not... you are left to wonder. Hokuto may tease Subaru about liking Seishirou, and Seishirou may join in with the teasing, but Subaru spends the entire time being confused by Seishirou's advances, that you can never tell if anything happens between them or not. Sadly, there is not that much evidence for shounen-ai in the OVA; you'll have to go the manga to watch Hokuto and Seishirou sexually confuse Subaru.
The plot. The supportive characters made for the OVA got on my nerves and took up precious time that could have been used to further explain "the bet" story between Seishiro and Subaru, or just develop them and Hokuto better altogether! Bad!
The first episode was a fun little piece full of the classic bad early 90s anime music and story, which I love and find hilarious. It was enjoyable to watch, and the plot worked pretty well, even if the concept of an inugami (dog spirit) was borrowed from the manga and used in a completely different story. Well it ends well, and the plot was only average. Listening to conspiriacy theories surrounding business men (even if supernatural) however, was not the entertaining for me.
Episode 2 had a highly, highly cliched romance plot of the new characters of this episode. I'm not the brightest bulb shining out there, but if I can even predict what is going to happen, that's sad. Too much flashbacking and especially foreshadowing that setup to the climax is to blame this time. I wish I could have been surprised. I will say that I do like this episode better however, for two things; one is, what little development and information we get about Seishiro and Subaru is in this episode. And two; the mood. This has more to do with the music and visuals than the plot, but the mood of this episode was indeed a darker one than the first. If it had been just pushed a little bit more, it could have been a truly dark and eeriely creepy anime.
Not only did this OVA have wasted potential, but as mentioned before, us fan girls didn't get any of our fun shounen-ai humor that is one of the factors why the manga became so popular. One nice thing about this is that more general audiences can watch this series and not be like, "ewww", since it is only hinted at vaguely; joked and teased about only once by Hokuto. Actually, that one joke is a third reason why I prefer the second episode to the first!
The original manga that this OVA is based off had some very simple stories, but they all add up to a more darker and far more impressive storyline and plot twists in time. This OVA had potential to do a lot of things, but the plot and story itself was way too simple.
This OVA was apparently made for the manga readers who know the rest of the backstory to the main characters, but it's not like a non-manga reader wouldn't understand what's going on.
The visuals! No CG in this one, baby! And there wouldn't be for the age it has (1994, afterall). The visuals were not vastly impressive. They served their purpose well, but weren't an overabudancy of prettiness that CLAMP titles sometimes get carried away with. This OVA was most certainly not poorly animated, and wasn't mediocre, but I wasn't overly impressed.
However, I will say that Subaru's dream sequence in episode 2 was very good. It was animated well, and I loved the use of red tones. The way he floated is just the way I feel when I have dreams. So, that was really good and impressive.
Hokuto's great fashion sense was well preserved (ha, ha, ha). I'm just happy that the animators didn't go to the really, really extreme outfits Hokuto had for herself and Subaru. Afterall, those outfits would just become a distraction to the story, which sadly but honestly, is and almost always is more important than the visuals.
I love the voices! I mean, it's Kappei Yamaguchi afterall folks, and he's one of my favorites (He's Ranma from Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha from Inuyasha, and Ryuichi from Gravitation!) Seishiro's voice was excellent (the same guy who is Sakano of Gravitation; now that's a really different role from Seishiro!). Hokuto worked very well, but...still lacked I think. She needed to work on Hokuto's laugh, which I think should have been even more outlandish, since Hokuto's laugh is such a hilarious trademark of her character in the original manga. I just imagined it'd be more wacky. Ah, well.
Music...hurt me...badly. Well, this music is definitely a very pop, early 90s kinda music, with the interlude song, "Strawberry Kiss" sung in the first episode in (actually) very accurate English, that couldn't quite lose the singer's accent. Such an Engrish piece, baby! I didn't like any of the main pieces or background music of episode one.
However, I was very pleased with the music of episode 2. While not extraordinarily impressive, the music helped the darker and more eerie feel of the 2nd episode, helping establish the 2nd episode as the more darker of the 2. Like I said before, plot was actually worse in the 2nd episode than the 1st, but since the mood setting was so much better, I liked the 2nd episode better. The music really helped to convey this.
And the dub. So...so...very, very painful! Ouch, ouch, ouch!
Acting... bad! Subaru, Hokuto and just about everyone's voices did not fit them well. But the worst part was the inaccurate transition of the English version of the script from the Japanese. Now, I do enjoy some dubs, but not this one!
(Webmaster note: this DVD has been re-released with new subtitles since the publication of this review.)
On another note, the company who has the rights to licensing this anime in America, was
even bad with subtitling of the Japanese version!!! Even I, who has poor skills in the
Japanse language at this point as I type this, can tell you that the subtitling was
inaccurate. I mean, if Subaru says Seishiro's name, but the subtitling says "Good Morning"
instead, that's pretty sad. And the subtitling was horribly, horribly timed! Plus, no
Japanese name prefixes were kept (Hokuto calls Seishirou Sei-chan, but the subtitle was
Seishirou). There were spaces of time when characters said things and I'm pretty sure
they were not translated also. Sad, sad.
I enjoy this anime! The DVD is actually pretty good tracking quality for my DVD player, but that doesn't make up for the horrible editing and work of the American licensing company that dubbed and subbed this anime. So, wretched!
I really like this anime (mostly for the manga it is based off, to be honest, having read 5 of the 7 volumes), but it is not a favorite of mine, since it is a prime example of wasted potential in an anime. Better material could have been executed. But, this show was too cliched and predictable. That's too bad.
Unless you just really like this title or are a very devoted fan to TB and its original manga, this title is just not all that good. It's average; mediocre. It's worth at least watching once, like for a rental. Unless you're a really big TB fan (like me) I wouldn't suggest you buy it.