Momentary Life

Enjoy your stay. I actually had the time and energy to read through Tokyo Babel, which I had been sort of anticipating since the start of the year. With an impressive voice cast and a post-apocalyptic setting involving angels and demons, the game has quite a bit of potentials but ultimately and predictably fails to deliver fully.

Pew pew beam attack!

The world suddenly came to an end. Angels were chased out of heaven, demons lost their home to a deluge, and human (parallel) worlds began to collapse. With nowhere to return to and no one to lead them, many angels and demons committed suicide. Amidst the chaos, the Archangel Michael sacrificed himself to create Tokyo Babel, a floating octahedron purgatory where the surviving angels and demons took refuge in.

"Son of Man, make pilgrimages. Only through the seven pilgrimages will the gates to heaven open once again."

That is God's message. Seven pilgrimages, that is, to ascend all seven levels of Tokyo Babel. Desperate, angels and demons took humans from different worlds to Tokyo Babel in hope of reaching the top of the purgatory, and ascending to heaven through Jacob's Ladder.

However, each level has been taken over by a Ruler, destructive individuals who went mad after hearing the Chorus. To ascend all the levels, the Rulers must be defeated. At the same time, not everyone wishes for things to return to normal; some desire for a permanent end to everything while some seek to change the course of history.

I'm in despair! My missing ahoge has left me in despair!

The story follows Setsuna Tendou (Hiroshi Kamiya), an ordinary-looking boy who is definitely not ordinary, as he battles his way through the purgatory against all odds and searches for the reason of his existence.

Setsuna originally came from a world where science and technology are absolute. In a world where no one believed in the supernatural, Setsuna was created to be the perfect being who would lead mankind to prosperity. However, the hopes and dreams of the billions proved to be too much for him. Unwilling to play the role of "God" any longer, Setsuna ran away. He was born with the purpose of saving humanity, yet his actions inevitably triggered the end of the world. As Setsuna wandered alone in the perishing world, he was greeted by the flat demoness Lilith (Miyuki Sawashiro) and the ditzy angel Raziel (Kana Hanazawa), who offered to take him to Tokyo Babel.

Is this real life?

A human who is not human, the Apocryphal Monster, the Yaldabaoth; Setsuna is the boy who once destroyed his own world, and this is the story of him saving the world.

That's pretty much how it goes. Setsuna is basically an artificial superman whose body and mind are both greatly enhanced by the nanomachines in his blood. Indeed unlike many protagonists who often go through extensive trainings, Setsuna starts off in peak conditions and mostly improves himself in other areas, like understanding the mechanics of magic. For him to actually fight against powerful opponents on even ground though, Setsuna needs to discover his raison d'etre - the reason for one's existence which can manifest itself in the form of weapons, special skills or otherworldly phenomena.

空見、ちゃんとパンツはいてるか？

The prologue has a slightly different tone than the rest of the story, as the amnesic Sorami Kugutsu (Kanae Itou) finds herself trapped in a nightmarish high school, with dead bodies everywhere and her maniacal "sister" out to kill her. It's easy to notice one of the major flaws of Tokyo Babel from the get-go - many fights tend to be incredibly short. While I certainly don't want drawn-out fights but many of the battle scenes just don't feel as hard-hitting as they could have been. This is most evident in Raziel's and Sorami's stories, but no so much in Lilith's, which is probably the reason why it's subjectively the best route.

The thousand-year-old virgin

Lilith's only experience with the opposite sex is apparently holding hands with Adam. Raziel has scary big eyes and sounds suspiciously like a certain other Angel. I would have never guess that Kana Hanazawa also voiced Charlotte, Mayuri and Kobato though. Sorami adds some fun dynamics into the main group but she is not too good as a character on her own. A bit like Yozora in that sense, even though she's actually Sena.

Dantalion is moe as hell

With such a nice voice cast lined up for the protagonists, it's really a shame that the side characters come off as more interesting. From the stoic Dantalion (Mitsuki Saiga) and the friendly Belial (Tetsu Inada), to the hot-blooded Camael (Atsushi Abe) and the devious yet adorable Samael (Eri Kitamura), Tokyo Babel has a very decent supporting cast. For someone who never leaves the library (sounds oddly familiar...), Dantalion actually did pretty well and got quite a bit of screen time. I absolutely loved Camael and Samael in Lilith's route, especially Samael who was pretty much just a plot device in the other routes. Belial is probably the most unfortunate of all, the one time he showed off his raison d'etre, he got owned by Astaroth (Ryota Takuechi).

Are you going to brush my teeth, Onii-chan?

Need more Samael. I expected some quality fight scenes between Setsuna and his rival Adam (Takahiro Sakurai), who is created by the angels and modeled after the original Adam from Genesis. So it was disappointing when all I got in the end were wasted opportunities and contrived scenarios. The fights certainly seem physically intense, but the problem is that we've got Setsuna who has the emotional range of a tea spoon, and Adam who was created to be emotionless. Let's not kid ourselves here, this isn't Kiritsugu bat-caving it out with Kotomine. It's more like watching my left hand fighting against my right hand, and the sad thing is that this actually makes sense once we find out about the truth behind Adam's "birth".

It's your turn to wear the guilty crown

Or has she been wearing it this whole time? Every scene with Eve (Ai Kayano) makes me chuckle a bit, there's something amusing yet intrinsically melancholy about her. Reserved and polite, Eve seems like a fairly unimportant character at first but becomes increasingly complex as the story goes on. Probably the only character in the story with a legitimately tragic past...if only her role isn't somewhat limited to "making Adam fight Setsuna". I won't go into details about other characters, but I tried my best to like Messenger/Remiel (Ryouko Tanaka) who was really a victim of circumstances. In the end I couldn't bring myself to like her as a character, but at least that kimono sure looks good. Why is she even wearing it in the first place though?

Too bad Yumiko, the role of Hitagi goes to Lilith this time

Tokyo Babel is, all in all, a pretty solid game with nothing outstanding yet enjoyable enough to warrant a read. The story paces itself fairly well but with a setting like this, I couldn't help but feel it would have been amazing if they introduced more angels and demons. It's just so entertaining seeing different figures from various cultures interacting with each other. A man can dream. The characters are a bit generic in terms of their personalities and designs, but most of them are still likeable (or dislikable). Even though an integral part of the plot deals with the main character's search for his reason of existence, there is no life story to be learned here. It's just a fantasy story set in a place where it is hard to take it easy. Just that.

そんな装備で大丈夫か？

Probably.