Tokyo Babel
Entry posted by Clephas
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Tokyo Babel is scheduled to be released pretty soon, so I decided to replay it. As Propeller is one of my favorite companies and Tokyo Babel has a more or less permanent place in my top fifty (when the number of VNs you've played passes five hundred, fifty is a good place to be, lol), so this doesn't bother me. Tokyo Babel is one of the few purely all-ages titles from Japan on the PC, and it is a chuunige of rare quality that was obviously written with one of a dozen or so pairs of eyes on Masada and the rest on an internal vision that more prudish Christians would probably call blasphemous.
Tokyo Babel is not only the name of the game, it is also the name of the setting, a remade version of Purgatory floating in mid-air, where angels, humans, and demons are working together desperately in hopes that they can convince God to stop squishing the universes. This is not a VN for the excessively religious to play... to be honest, there were moments when even I felt uncomfortable and I've never seriously adhered to any organized religion, though I was raised Christian.
Some of the major characters include Astaroth, Belial, Carmael, Uriel, and many other famous or infamous demons and angels. The three heroines are Raziel, Kugutsu Sorami, and Lilith. Raziel is the angel who recorded all of creation in her book, the Sefer Raziel (this is partially taken from various apocryphal mythology). Kugutsu Sorami is the first character you meet in the VN, whose ignorant untainted perspective gives you your first clear insight into the world from a human perspective. Lilith is the first wife of Adam, who left him and who lay down with demons and produced all the monsters of the world (book of Enoch).
Understand, like a lot of stories using Christian mythology, it uses bits and pieces from Milton's Paradise Lost, medieval literature, Gnostic ideas, and many other elements and branching-off literature that went off in all directions since the genesis of that particular faith. One thing to keep in mind if you are a Christian and were raised to believe that Lilith never existed is that the Bible is not and has never been what we would call 'complete', as each version had bits and pieces grafted on or removed based on what the powerful and influential of an era or region felt was convenient, necessary, correct, and/or all of the above. The Book of Enoch is one of dozens of 'books' not included in the accepted versions of the Bible, that were considered paradoxical in the eyes of the church of the time. So... just keep an open mind when reading up on this kind of thing, because Wikipedia isn't exactly reliable when looking up religion-related facts.
Now, setting philosophical, historical, and other issues aside... this is a pretty enjoyable VN on a lot of levels. Propeller developed its own (fairly hilarious in my opinion) style of humor that is incorporated into the story, and its effect in Tokyo Babel is one of humanizing the characters. I don't think a lot of people who read chuuni really understand how vital a few moments of humor can be in giving life to a character, even in this type of VN. While Masada and his type choose another path, Propeller's writers generally choose to use humor as one of the elements of their characterization. On another level, this VN is chuuni crack. The protagonist is a self-hating guy with a dark past and a deathwish seven billion kilometers wide, but he also has an even stronger sense of responsibility toward those he comes to care about, which is seen in the heroine routes. The situation is one fit to drive even the most optimistic mind to despair, and there are bad guys behind the curtains, waiting to push everyone in the abyss.
In other words, this is one of those VNs that has almost an infinite capacity for fun in a chuuni sense of the word.
The art style of this VN is... unique. In some ways, it feels like an elaboration on Propeller's previously-preferred style, but it was actually done by a completely different artist from their previous works and it does show in a lot of places. In particular, the vivid designs you see on the more monstrous demons and monsters in the VN shows this off very well. Leviathan (the giant serpent) and the Seven Beasts from Setsuna's sword are two of the more distinctive examples of this art-style, and ones that honestly impress me even today.
Sound-wise... I'll be straight. There is no such thing as a bad Propeller sound track... well, until Sougeki no Jaeger anyway. Tokyo Babel's isn't as good as Evolimit's, but that's kind of like saying that Sasaki Kojirou wasn't as good a swordsman as Musashi (token weabooism, lol). Generally speaking, the songs in this VN vary to a surprising degree, ranging from techno tunes, to rock, and even a few hymn-like ones. The one thing that unifies them is that none are poorly used, lol.
Now... down to the story. I've already described the basic concept above, but now I'll get into structure. This VN is split into three major routes after a pretty short common route (the trial ends about the same time you are supposed to head into the heroine routes, from what I've heard). Raziel's route is the one that keeps you furthest from the 'deepest truths' of the VN, and having played her route is pretty good preparation for Sorami's route, as Sorami's route reveals some things that might make it hard for some people to read Raziel's route and take it for what it is. Raziel's route has a bad end that is seriously... bad. However, it is also a highly-detailed and reasonably long diversion from the 'good' (this is debatable) ending. Sorami's path has a good ending (bittersweet but technically a good ending), a normal ending (really sad...), and a bad ending (like Raziel's, it is fairly long). Sorami's path has a different focus on the events in Tokyo Babel than Raziel's, and I've heard some people describe Raziel's, Sorami's, and Lilith's paths as the Angel, Human, and Demon paths in that order... However, that is a pretty generalized statement and one that doesn't really feel correct, lol. Lilith's path... is the true path. I'm going to be blunt. If you are silly enough to try to do Lilith's path first, you'll deserve your inability to figure out a third of the references in the path, because it is constructed so that the information from the previous two paths feeds directly into the events in that one. In other words, if you haven't played the other two paths, Lilith's path has a lot of potential for being confusing. Lilith's path has three distinctive bad ends, one true end, and one 'Setsuna' end, which is a branch-off from the true one. Lilith's path has some of the best battles in the VN, and there are no secrets left in shadow by the end, which makes it a great way to end things.
A few thoughts about Propeller as a company... Propeller doesn't really produce that many overwhelmingly attractive heroines. I'm pretty sure that this is deliberate, as there is a definite tendency toward the story being more important than the heroines in these VNs. For people accustomed to the extreme character focus that defines a lot of VNs, this has a potential to be problematic... Take Ayakashibito, for instance... how many of you really, seriously were obsessed with the romantic aspects of the VN (if you read it)? There are even heroines in Propeller games that are actually deliberately made to seem bland (the elf in Bullet Butlers, for instance) or somehow unattractive for situational/emotional reasons (Kaori in Ayakashibito). This is a part of their style, which calls for heroines to not take up the whole of the limelight in the VN, and it is one of the reasons I honestly find their VNs so enjoyable, other than the sheer chuunige nougat that makes my mouth water.
Overall, while Tokyo Babel is no Dies Irae, it does have a high level of quality, as well as being one of the few chuunige to dare to avoid the 'perfect happy ending' that has become standard even in many VNs of the type in recent years (for some reason, bittersweet endings are less popular these days...). It can definitely play on your emotions at times (especially the endings), and there is just enough humor to keep the VN as a whole from being unbearably heavy. Of course, if you dislike gloomy protagonists who don't really understand other people very well, there might be some abrasive moments in this VN for you... but Setsuna comes by that particular set of flaws honestly, so I never held it against him, lol.
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