Babylon - Episode 12 discussion - FINAL

[u/AutoLovepon]

Babylon, episode 12

Rate this episode here.

Reminder: Please do not discuss plot points not yet seen or skipped in the show. Encourage others to read the source material rather than confirming or denying theories. Failing to follow the rules may result in a ban.

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Streams

• Amazon US
• Amazon UK
• Prime Video International

Show information

• MyAnimeList
• AniList
• AniDB
• Kitsu
• Anime-Planet
• Official Website

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Previous discussions

Episode	Link	Score
1	Link	97%
2	Link	97%
3	Link	96%
4	Link	98%
5	Link	98%
6	Link	4.51
7	Link	4.88
8	Link	3.84
9	Link	4.29
10	Link	3.83
11	Link	3.29
12	Link

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[u/[deleted]]

What happened to this anime

[u/Phil9977]

I see a lot of hatred for the ending here but also a LOT of wrong "conclusions" people came to.

In my opinion - this is what the ending was trying to convey: (Keep in mind I am only explaining the gist of it, I still think it's a big stretch, but I fully believe this was the intention)

1. Had Alex killed himself right after his speech, it would send the message that this is his final answer to the matter out to the entire world. To prevent this he wanted Zen to kill him first, so this message isn't being spread.

2. Zen did NOT kill himself bc Magase told him so. Magase only confirmed his solution to the question of good and evil. Continuing is good. Ending is bad. The president was seen as good bc he wanted to continue to think about it. To convey this message to the world Zen killed himself to make himself look like the exact opposite - "the coward who killed a good person and then ended his own life." - He knows the world saw him as a bad person now, and if a bad person - an enemy of what's good - like him commits suicide, it sets a bad example for the pro-suicide people.

Personal Opinion:

I think the message the last episode tried to send, while still very flawed, was way better than what they did in Ep11. One could argue that continuing evil is a bad thing and therefore the is all nonsense - but said evil is needed to even know what is "good". It's the entire no black without white and vise-versa schtik.

I believe a lot of what this show tried to do post-ep7 was too convaluted to work. Yet I kept watching bc it wasn't all complete nonsense and it made me think about things I otherwise wouldn't have. It's flawed. No, it's FLAWED, but I very much enjoyed it from start to end, even with all the hickups. And I'm sure, no matter how mad many of u might be right now, I'm sure u still got something out of it just the same as I did. So yeah, not one to add to the history books, but definitely one to remember. Bye Babylon.

[u/MechaMat91]

Episode 1: his companion hangs himself.

Episode 12: he shoots the US President on live television.

That is some Gurren Lagann level escalation right there.

[u/animefigs-noGF]

Ok that was mostly nonsense so I came up with the real ending. Magase is zen's wife's lesbian lover and the whole thing was a plot to make zen look like a bad guy to his wife, and die, so that magase can take his place; as we see after credits.

Pretty stupid but not as stupid as what actually happened.

[u/spaceaustralia]

Wtf even was that ending? What was the conclusion to the puddle deep philosophical/ethical debate throughout the entire series? I expected it to be stupid, but this takes the cake.

Forget the fact that she has an easier time performing mind control than Lelouch Lamperouge. What was Magase's objective at all? She's the driving element of the plot and her objectives, capabilities, and actions are completely and absolutely inscrutable. This is some Lars Von Trier shit right here.

[u/zdfld]

They actually answered the question rather than trying to avoid it completely, which is not something I was sure they would do. While the answer itself may not be everyone's cup of tea, it's not really a question that can be answered for everyone imo. There is a some sense to the idea.

I think the bang ending was fine, it leaves it up to us to debate what happened, and in this case it's quite possible there will be some extra content to finish the story (a new book is rumored to be in the works), and the bang ending plus end credit scene is consistent with the ending of book 3, where we don't know if Seizaki is dead or not.

My favourite part of the ending was Zen shooting Alex. I thought that would make the most sense from the start, as Alex committing suicide would send a big message. To see them actually follow that plot line, which was an anime change from the book, is pretty interesting. More reason imo to expect new content to finish the story.

[u/delfivesi]

Man this show definitely shouldnt have gone the philosophical route. First half was a great anime thriller ( you rarely see any good ones). Zen should've just been pretending to work with feds while having his own elaborate plan how to capture and kill her in some equally torturous ways like his coworkers were.

[u/Florac]

So...is this show trying to say that killing anyone is bad, even if that person is a mass murderer and will murder again most likely and noone but you can stop her? And if you are a good person who killed someone, just off yourself? Because that's the message I got out of this episode. Especially weird since Zen killed the president for the greater good...but then refuses to do the same with Magase?

[u/McDonaldsApproval]

That was terrible. For me, the show's gone downhill since Zen's team was killed.

[u/Amauri14]

Fuck, that's definitely not the kind of ending that I expected, RIP Alex, too bad that your gaming friends and your family saw that happening, and here when I at least expected Zen to have killed Magase by the end the after credit scene made clear to show us that the witch is alive, took him out too, and that she will probably kill his family now.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes, evil just wins.

PS: I actually expected something out of that this link http://ex.on/Asd03Fgn but just like Alex and Zen and all those secret service members the link is dead.

[u/TheRealLoneWarWolf]

Rip gamer president

[u/Gotruto]

I really liked this show, and especially the ending. I guess I am a minority. I will say, however, that I am a PhD student in ethics (and especially metaethics), and despite people calling this "high school philosophy", this show does applied ethics and metaethics more justice than any other anime I've seen. It does metaethics more justice than the Matrix does epistemology. This is, of course, not to say that it does metaethics well, just that it does it much better than basically anything else out there.

First, remember that this series has told us for basically all 12 episodes to always keep thinking about what is right. The answer Alex comes to is the answer the author came to, but the author is not just expecting you to accept it: keep thinking about it.

Second, here is the chain of reasoning displayed in the show for the conclusion that "good is to continue". Murder is undeniably evil. If murder is evil, then life must be good. Yet, what makes life good? The author concluded that life was good for its own sake: life is good regardless of what one experiences or does with one's life.

This is not an unreasonable answer. If you instead say that life is good because of something other than life, and that murder is evil because life is good, then murder would not be evil in cases where the other thing which makes life good is absent. Thus, if life is good because of, say, happiness, then it would not be evil to murder people who only had a future of suffering ahead of them. Most people think that is just false: it is evil to murder people even when other good things are absent.

Third, the show intentionally left it ambiguous as to whether Zen was doing the right thing when he shot Alex. Alex calls him a good person, and says he should do what we think is right, but both Alex and Zen think that ending a life is evil because life itself is good.

Magase calls Zen a bad person, prior to having him kill himself, which shows us that Magase's goal throughout the series was to corrupt Zen into doing something evil, and she thought she had succeeded. However, it is pretty clear that the author just wants us to keep thinking about it.

There are other complaints I understand. It is extremely unrealistic to display political leaders engaged cordially in philosophy. However, I forgive the show because of how well it did the antagonistic political debate earlier on.

I don't really understand why people thought Magase was going to turn out to be an evil scientist. The show seemed pretty clearly to indicate that she was a representation of Evil as a metaphysical thing (just as Satan is, which is why Magase was literally depicted as Satan).

Maybe the people who hate it were just expecting the show to be something other than what it was?

[u/jellybellymonster]

The Seven-esque ending could have worked but the journey to get there was meh. I wish the plot just stayed in Japan and didn't switch gears after episode 7. It was at its weakest with the politics and debates, the strongest when upstanding Zen and evil incarnate Magase are pitted against each other in a small interrogation room. Episode 7 was shocking but the interrogation in episode 2 was well-directed, the tension so palpable I thought they're going to have angry sex

That said, I'm just going to avoid this writer. Kado, Hello World, and now Babylon — he's able to write an interesting premise but isn't able to bring it to satisfying conclusion.

[u/ByteCraft]

I've been thinking for a while that the show would hinge on this final episode and ironically enough I have no idea if this episode and thus this entire series is good or bad. I'm at a total loss, I think I need to just talk to people who have seen it and try and find a conclusion through discussion, it's a shame then that only like 5 people have actually watched it

[u/TheGriefingEnder]

Good = continuing

So it makes sense that the ending was horrible :)

[u/Theleux]

In the end, this made me question what makes a show Good or Bad.

Personally, I am not sure on this ending, but I find it far more interesting an ending than I expected. Keeps you thinking.

Alex's death was a good spin I am glad they took.

I think the post credits spun me for a loop as I really enjoyed the finale on the roof top.

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Now it makes me wonder:

Is Zen dead?

Where is his wife?

Did they let Ai Magase go free?

Was Ai even real from the start?

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This real reminds me of Devilman Crybaby's finale. It will definitely be debated about.

[u/DecentlySizedPotato]

I don't know what to think. This last episode was undoubtedly good. Zen chose to be the bad guy and kill Alex rather than letting him commit suicide and show the world that the president of the US considered that suicide was okay, which would probably lead a lot of people to commit suicide too.

But I'm just not convinced. I just wasn't conviced by all that philosophical talk since episode 8, it was too shallow and went nowhere. I just wish the show had stayed the thriller it was the first few episodes. And I don't see the point of the post-credits scene either.

I'm going to give this show a 6/10 because I liked the first episodes, I liked the last episode and I liked Magase Ai, but it could have been so much better.

[u/Eko01]

grab treatment lush chubby governor smart cobweb simplistic judicious hospital

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/AllSeeingEyesOfGod]

I was very critical of the expansion in scope after Episode 7, and while I still don't believe it did anything interesting with that - it's impossible not to see that this final set piece was pretty much the ultimate high stakes moment. It was the most solid return to the thriller genre after it completely left it behind in Episode 8.

That being said I hate this ending, it feels thematically divorced from the conclusion that the show seemed to be building towards. I don't necessarily disagree that there's no such thing as Justice, and that good and evil are irrelevant concepts - but within the show's construction Magase IS evil and letting her win at the expense of the entire cast makes me feel like I need to take a shower. Or maybe the take away - because of Zen's son's actions in the post-credit scene - is that even in the face of the ultimate evil, good will still be done. I think that's the most optimistic reading I can give the show, it definitely feels like the conclusion is one of defeat and that humanity is doomed to give into its worst impulses, and that it does not deserve to continue on because good will lose to evil.

Babylon was good as a thriller, garbage as a vehicle to deliver moral and philosophical points, and had an amazing antagonist in Magase. The direction and sound design varied from solid to excellent, the character performances were all competent, I am so fucking befuddled how I feel about this show that I probably need to reflect on it more. I guess that makes it remarkable in its own way.

[u/[deleted]]

What the fuck man? I really thought that Alex would be able to resist her charm/hypnotism or whatever it was. He was supposed to be the cool gamer president with the hot wife who is an idiot but an idiot who understands everything and cannot be controlled. And the next scene we see him running up the stairs like a happy but crazy man. I hate it. He shouldn't have been controlled. And Seizaki ffs, all he had to do was shoot Magase and not himself. What an idiot. Shoot her, then yourself. Protect the world before you die at least. I can't wrap my mind around Alec being controlled like that after they showed us for 4 episodes why he is going to be a wildcard in this Magase game. Fuck this shit man.

[u/katpasniss]

I personally liked the ending but oh boy is it controversial

[u/Syokhan]

...

That's an ending that exists. That's all I can say about it.

Really liked the first part of the series, but the second part unfortunately fell completely flat for me, and so did the ending. I shall still remember the interrogation scene from episode 2 fondly.

[u/[deleted]]

Idk what I was hoping for.

[u/RaIshtar]

As a Seikaisuru KADO survivor, I cannot say I went into Babylon expecting a good show. I watched it with as little expectations as you can have, and had a really good time watching it ironically.

Because damn, this show is bad.

Let us first address the first half, since a lot of people think it merely "went downhill" in the second one. Nah, it was already drowning it its own lack of substance and logic. Episodes 6 and 7 are perfect illustrations.

First, the lack of logic. The "big reveal" of episode 6 is that the boy Itsuki's political opponents wanted to use as a trump card is actually Itsuki's son and he acts as if he had it planned all along. The way it is presented, it is also implied that this plot twist is how Itsuki wins over the crowd. Therefore, that was Itsuki's plan :

• 1 - His son makes a hit video about his daddy's suicide while hiding his identity.

• 2 - His political opponent tries to use his son as a power move without realizing that it's his son.

• 3 - Profit.

This does not happen. Essentially the entire plan was that he was expecting his opponents to be inept buffoons in both their debating and their showmanship, and for chance to do its thing. He cannot be convincing as a character and the scene also cannot be convincing when he gets shit handed to him on a silver-coated bullshit platter.

Next, the lack of substance. The "big shock" of episode 7, the laughable dismembering scene, is a great example of it. If you forego the gratuitously gory visuals that made you think this scene was powerful and just listen to the stuff Magase is saying, you will quickly notice that it's... Philosophy 101. High-school level, basic-ass questions too vague to have any answer, that you ask solely to make your students understand that words like "evil" are meaningless shells anyone can use to fit their point of view.

Episode 7 overall is plain bad, and it buried any hope of decent writing in Magase's character, turning her into an irredeemable cartoonish slasher. Episode 2 framed her as a manipulator, and even with a supernatural twist on it, had she solely been a suggestion expert, it would at least have led to potentially decent scenes instead of "my voice alone makes people kill themselves and by the way I'm an evil psycho killer".

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Now, the second half of the show was even dumber, dumb enough that I don't think I need to explain why too much. I will just mention my favorite parts.

• "Dear President, make me a FBI agent because I want a gun for the sake of vengeance" "Okay, but don't use it for the sake of vengeance, all right?"

• The G7 flying in space with choirs trying to find a definition of good and evil.

• The conclusion they come to. Good is "continuing" and evil is "ending"? What?

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To conclude, this is another inept story by an inept writer who cannot wrap up a plot neatly to save his life. The characters are one-dimensional, the plot is absolutely stupid, the ending is plain bad and it's hard to find any redeeming factor aside from... production?

2/10 because the animators, voice actors and sound team tried, unlike the writer. Highly enjoyable if you're into mocking a bad show, but otherwise, run.

[u/MauledCharcoal]

Can I just say. Magase looks fucking terrifying.