Babylon is yet the latest in a series of blunders courtesy of the seinen demographic that in many ways sum up exactly why the majority of people shun it in favor of its younger brother in the shonen demographic. Its not that I personally think seinen cant be fantastic plenty of series have done a marvelous job living up to what the demographic well implies and providing interesting characters a level of maturity not normally found in their younger contemporaries and fantastic storylines. After all one only needs to look at the likes of Berserk Vinland Saga Boogiepop and Others as well as Ghost in the Shell to know that there are many fantastic titles to find. What Babylon is however is a travesty of the highest order thoroughly incapable of telling any sort of coherent narrative and being thoroughly unsatisfying to watch. On paper a story covering euthanasia nihilism and morality sounds like a fantastic narrative that should intrigue even the most uninterested viewers. In practice however what is found here is complete and utter drivel. Babylon is essentially a story about a man whos lost several acquaintances to suicide but the suicide were in some shape or form them being convinced by a lady that life is meaningless and they should off themselves. Itd take an exceptional amount of careful writing to make this work but thankfully Babylon proceeds to butcher it through how exactly it treats the subjects its discussing like a complete joke. Scenes where characters literally jump off rooftops in complete synchronicity. Debates about why people should commit suicide in public. Strawmen being committed ad nauseum about how religions dont condone suicide and how if youre not religious theres no point to life. Entire discussions by various politicians about how euthanasia works which ironically ignore the little misstep where in several countries where its legalized if youre healthy should visit several mental health clinics and provide evidence of that and its not as simple as just going there and killing yourself. This kind of bad writing plagues the entire show from start to finish and its clear that the writer has no idea how police works no idea how the euthanasia debate works and an extremely shallow understanding of contemporary nihilism. And the worst part is it makes entire segments of the show where characters proceed to end their lives which youd expect to be a gutwrenching or painful moment to watch instead be a complete joke and unintentionally comedic instead. The dialogue is also noteworthy in how dry bland and soulless it is. Theres no personality to the dialogue merely poorly researched strawman fallacies everywhere when there are discussions and the characters personalities never shine through the dialogue either. You could swap characters and have them speak entirely different conversations under this script and yet I promise you wouldnt notice a thing because the series isnt interested in making its cast shine or the dialogue matter except to infodump about the poorly written setting. The plot is a complete and utter laughable mess as a result of all this and making things even worse is how uneven the pacing is. And while uneven pacing isnt necessarily something thatd doom the show theres nothing worse than a show that feels like its going too fast and too slowly at the same time and this becomes especially noteworthy when the soulless excuse for a cast get involved. I genuinely have nothing to say about the cast they can literally be defined in one liners and minus the main villain none of them had any strength of screen presence or personality worth remembering. They dont drive the plot forward they exist in service of it countless times are characters introduced speak a few lines and then killed either later in the episode or the next episode as if the audiences sympathy will be won over by just watching some random mook get slaughtered. And the worst thing is that this caused a massive disconnect between me who didnt care about these dull soulless one note characters and the main character who clearly did. A particular mention needs to go for the main villain of this show for being hilariously ridiculous every time she showed up on screen asking about whether the main character had sex or what his kinks were and always constantly messing with all the characters on screen. She was the sole character that stood out in a sea of dull boring empty robots and Im genuinely glad she was there. Special mention goes for her actions in the last episode and the epilogue to the show which actually made me lose it laughing my head off. On a technical level the show is competent while not much animation or movement exists in the show special mention needs to go to the direction of the show which consistently looked good and made a fair few otherwise dull scenes more tolerable. That being said the direction also made the show hilariously bad at times due to how completely over the top the portrayal of the main villain was which Ill admit I appreciate and made me look forward to at least seeing her on screen. I never thought the sound design was particularly bad and while nothing was memorable from the soundtrack I never thought anything was unfitting. Its clear there were some talented staff members behind this project and its a real shame that this is what they were relegated to work on. The core problem with this show is that by the time I finished I had no idea what the point of the show was. Many people would proudly mention that this show was this sophisticated commentary on euthanasia and suicide but truthfully I never felt it was competent in what it was tackling only that it was mildly entertaining when it starts and slowly but surely fizzled out like a pretentious old man whose advice no one is interested in hearing because everyone knows its false. And this ultimately makes this show just a complete waste of everyones time. At best the show is unintentionally comedic with bland soulless characters who I never cared for. At worst this show is a painful slog that I only finished because it was airing and for no other reason other than to see what some people were overhyping all over the internet. And like many a forgotten boring seinen it too will be remembered only for having all the same flaws that most other entries in the demographic do and for similarly having its fanbase in the first few episodes exhibit everything wrong with the kind of people who rally behind these kinds of shows. Your time is better spent watching something else be it watching a properly done crime thriller reading some book about euthanasia or nihilism or doing anything else you find enjoyable. It certainly isnt well spent on this show and I recommend that if you havent seen it to not waste your time doing so. And yes while I can make this review longer and flesh out my points more I dont consider this show worth putting in that much effort because if the writers didnt care about putting any level of effort into what theyve done here why should I?