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"Well, I still love Tokyo... even as it is now. Where else on earth do so many people enjoy their descent into destruction?" |
The year is 1990. The city is Tokyo, a busy megalopolis where people are caught in dreams, anonymity, loneliness, sadness and crushed hopes underneath the fevered rush for success and wealth.
Sometimes the high-pitched emotions and acute despair manifest themselves into ghosts and curses. Enter Sumeragi Subaru, 13th head of the Sumeragi clan and a 16-year-old onmyouji. He uses his spiritual power and genuine compassion to help people, exorcise trapped spirits and undo maledictions. In this modern world, where nothing is truly black and white, this is hardly easy, especially because of Subaru's tendency to care too much for people. His twin older sister Hokuto is there to help him, to cheer him up, and to make him wear eccentrically fashionable clothing.
Sakurazuka Seishirou is a 25-year-old gentle veterinarian friend of the twins, who professes to love Subaru. Hokuto thinks that making them a couple would be a marvelous idea, even though - or maybe because - she believes that Seishirou is the mysterious Sakurazukamori, an assassin onmyouji said to protect Japan from the shadows. And as their adventures go back and forth, the series mixes a mood of upbeat cheerfulness with dark social commentary and a deceptively naive tone.
Tokyo Babylon is a seven-volume manga series by CLAMP. It had two OVA movie adaptations, both independent of the manga, and one Live Action Adaptation which takes place some years after the manga. It's also a Prequel of sorts to X 1999, where the characters of Subaru, Seishirou, and Hokuto act the rest of their adventure and reveal their last secrets.
In 2020, news about a second Animated Adaptation started spreading. Sadly, it was cancelled due to plagiarism issues-
- Abusive Parents: Inverted - at some point, Subaru befriends an old man who's verbally mistreated by his daughter Sachiyo, since she sees him as a burden due to the family's poverty. Then the old man is fatally hit by a car while trying to get Sachiyo's favorite food, bleeds to death in Subaru's arms, and Subaru calls Sachiyo out on her shit. She breaks down in tears upon realising the truth, and later she and Subaru make peace in front of the old man's grave.
- Almost at the end, a young girl asks Subaru to check on a mentally unstable mother that she knows because she's afraid she's doing this to her baby son and may end up killing him. She does, in fact she beats the kid in a twisted attempt to punish herself after her cheating husband left the two of them. Subaru walks into thew woman slapping the baby, restrains her and makes sure the police will handle the rest.
- Action Girl: Hokuto may not be as spiritually talented as Subaru is, but she's a pretty good martial artist and can use minor spells.
- An Aesop - The main theme of the series is that no one knows what's in the hearts of people, and no one can judge others' pain and suffering.
- Born Lucky - Winds of Destiny Change - Horribly played with and possibly deconstructed in the first OAV, where Shinji Nagumo uses his supernatural luck to cause several accidents... of which he comes out unscathed, but his co-workers and superiors come out dead
- Break the Cutie - Poor Subaru is easily the cutest character in the manga, and gets broken so bad he's still hurt several years later.
- Many of the people Subaru deals with are already broken cuties, like Midori.
- Canon Welding - Like most of CLAMP's works, it's been tied and referred to their other works, mainly X 1999, XxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle.
- Cherry Blossoms - Subverted in that they're mostly used for creepy effect.
- The City - For once, Tokyo isn't particularly the center of the universe.
- CLAMP - One of their first and most significant works, and has been retroactively tied in to many of their later series.
- Contemplate Our Navels
- Creepy Cool Crosses - Most notably on Subaru's clothes.
- Crossover - With X 1999.
- Cryptic Background Reference - Various references to the "Bet", eventually explained in the end.
- Cult - A sect is featured in one of the "Save" case.
- Dead Older Brother - Kazumi Asou from the first OAV is the younger sister of one of Shinji Nagumo's victims, and she's hell-bent on Revenge.
- Horribly subverted in the second OAV, where the Dead Little Sister is the Serial Killer's first victim, whom he strangled to death when they were playing as children without even really noticing.
- At the very end, Hokuto's Heroic Sacrifice - Thanatos Gambit makes her this.
- Dead Person Conversation - Used several times. Of course, it is part of Subaru's job to have these, and he usually recognizes them for what they are.
- The Eighties - Although set in the early nineties, the atmosphere is more reminiscent of the Eighties flavour - especially the official soundtrack.
- Evil Phone - Features in one of the cases
- Eye Scream - Well, it's CLAMP. What did you expect? In fact, one of the most infamous eye-related injuries takes place here - when Seishirou loses one eye protecting Subaru from a grief-stricken mother who wants to forcibly harvest one of Subaru's kidneys for her Ill Boy son who needs an urgent transplant.
- Additionally, Subaru's newfound friend Kuniko gets struck in the eye with an art spatula when she's being bullied.
- Flashback Nightmare
- Foreshadowing - Book 3. Take a guess to what.
- Forgotten First Meeting - Subaru meets Seishirou as he cradles his kill, and they end up making a promise. Years later Subaru only remembers this as a vague dream, and has little idea why Seishirou has suddenly appeared in his life as a suitor. Unfortunately the memory isn't a very happy one, once it's revealed.
- Functional Magic - Onmyoujitsu, mostly dealing with curses and counter-curses, kekkai (protective barrier), exorcism, maboroshi (illusion worlds), shikigami (spirit familiars) and other traditional spells.
- Heroic Sacrifice Hokuto pulls one at the end.
- Idiot of the Week
- I Just Want to Be Special - The girls who abuse magic.
- Kick the Son of a Bitch: Seishirou does this to some of the people that use magic to harm others, if mostly because he doesn't want them to get to Subaru before it's time.
- Kill the Cutie Hokuto.
- Lampshade Hanging - Hokuto often inquires as to whether Seishirou is connected to the Sakurazukamori clan, and Seishirou follows up by immediately changing the subject - which Hokuto follows up by telling him he is changing the subject. To make sure we caught that, apparently.
- Mind Control Eyes
- Monster of the Aesop
- The Ophelia: Mrs. Touno, the lady whose husband left her for another woman, and lost it so badly she started beat her baby boy in a twisted way to punish herself for it.
- Offing the Offspring: As said above, a girl tells Subaru to check on a very unstable mother so she won't do this to her kid. As it turns out, she's a Cute Ghost Girl who was at the receiving end of the trope, when her mother went the Murder-Suicide way with her after her father died and left a huge debt behind.
- Ominous Latin Chanting - In this case it's ominous Sanskrit chanting.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You
- Onmyodo - The main magic tradition utilized in the series.
- Outliving One's Offspring - A case deals with a single mother whose daughter Mai was abducted, almost raped and then strangled to death, but the culprit was declared legally insane. She tries to create an Inugami in an attempt to get her revenge, and Subaru has to struggle hard to stop her so the curse used for such things won't hit her back.
- Parental Abandonment - The only 'parent' is the grandmother, who lives in Kyoto. Subaru and Hokuto live on their own in Tokyo.
- Rape as Drama - Midori, a schoolgirl who's so horrendously traumatized after being raped that she falls into a coma. Subaru has to dive into her consciousness to rescue her. She turns out to have been a long-lost Childhood Friend of his, and his First Love.
- Ripped from the Headlines - Several cases were obviously inspired from recent or common society issues.
- Star-Crossed Lovers - Subaru and Seishirou
- Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: One case features a girl named Kuniko Hashimoto, who is totally ignored by her classmates when they're not treating her like shit. She first appears when the class is organizing a trip; she sits alone, and when the teacher asks the other students if someone will join her, nobody wants to. When Kuniko transfers to a new school... she's bullied there too, with some girls tossing volley balls at her in PE class; Subaru arrives there too and tries to help her deal with it while investigating the school itself... She gets struck in the eye with art tools just as Subaru is about to face the culprit - the School Nurse. She gerts done in by Seishirou.
- Theme Naming - All the main characters are named for stars and constellations.
- Tokyo Tower
- Twist Ending - Somewhere between The Untwist and the Wham! Episode, Sure, everyone was expecting for Seishirou to be the Sakurazukamori, but few would expect his reasons for sticking around and the amount of cruelty he displays.
- Unfinished Business - Usually only requires a visit from Subaru the traveling psychologist.
- Where Are They Now? Epilogue - One of the Annex chapters.
- Will They or Won't They? - Will Subaru succumbs to Seishirou's advances as Hokuto urges him?.
- The World Tree - A rather ominous cherry tree.
- Yamato Nadeshiko - Grandmother Sumeragi is an older, harsher version.
- Mirei from the OAV is another, with Psychic Powers to boot. So was her mom. Who pulled an Heroic Sacrifice to save her daughter's life and help her and Subaru catch a Serial Killer.
- And Miyazaki from the same OAV is a male example, possibly the one that other CLAMP male YN's Fujitaka and Aoki have their common inspiration. No wonder he and Mirei have the same powers and end up together.