BABYLON

Analysis of the Anime Babylon. Contains Spoilers

Preface

After a long period of drafting and rewriting this article, gathering as much information as possible, and re-watching some episodes, I can say that I am ready to write a substantive analysis of a contemporary and complex anime called Babylon, which most of you have likely seen. I felt the way the suicide debate was handled among politicians was extremely irresponsible. I want to extend a huge thank you to a friend who suggested I analyze it, after I had been wrestling with my own thoughts for a long time. Please, enjoy this with a cup of coffee or tea.

The Anime's Theme

The anime revolves around the questions of good and evil, the philosophy of suicide, and the problem of not knowing the answers. It also delves into many other psychological perspectives that keep the story elevated; we can say that it is full and compelling.

The Issue of Suicide and Legalization

The new mayor clearly encouraged suicide in the first one or two episodes. This led me to believe that the policy he wants to implement is not just about legalization but about the promotion of suicide. Then, if we were to legalize suicide, the argument is akin to saying, "we legalize narcotics like cannabis, and that increases the number of users, so we should legalize suicide." This is a form of escalation. I don't believe the function of laws is to correct society, so in my opinion, it doesn't matter if suicide is a crime or a deliverance. What is needed is a public policy that spans all levels of society, along with broad social support to help those who have suicidal thoughts. This should have been the real discussion in the story.
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Anyone who contemplates suicide is sick and needs help—"moral" help. It is simply a matter of respecting a person's will. "A person has the right to do what they want with their own body, so they can take their own life."

On this issue, some refer to the philosophy of ethics and moral virtue:

Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics is a broad term for theories that emphasize the role of character and virtue in moral philosophy rather than the fulfillment of one's duty or acting to produce a good outcome. A virtue ethicist would likely offer this kind of moral advice: "Act as a virtuous person would in a situation that can change your role and behavior."

Since its revival in the twentieth century, virtue ethics has developed in three main directions: "Eudaimonism," agent-based theories, and the ethics of care.

Eudaimonism bases virtues in human flourishing, where well-being is equated with performing one's distinct function well. In the human context, Aristotle noted that our privileged function is reasoning, and thus a "life worth living" is one in which we reason well.

Agent-based theory emphasizes that virtues are determined by common-sense intuitions that we, as observers in society, judge as admirable qualities in others.

The third branch of virtue ethics, the ethics of care, was primarily proposed by feminist thinkers. It challenges the idea that morality should be based solely on justice and autonomy; its adherents argue for including more traditionally feminine qualities.

In the end, even these reflections are used. But it doesn't work that way for a person who wants to take their own life. They lack full mental and emotional capacity; they are weak and need support, help, and care. Seeing the characters commit suicide with happy faces was disturbing.

In Japan, this is a public health issue and should be treated as such, not as a debate on "banning or not banning the individual's right to kill themselves." I never saw a single doctor offer an opinion on this issue. Moreover, they should have included some messages in the opening about this very sensitive topic. Dr. Rawan Ramzi says, "Suicide is a word like cancer. We don’t like to say it; talking about it makes us uncomfortable. For the past fifteen years, I have taught resident psychiatrists and medical students how to assess a person’s suicide risk, and there is an inescapable stigma associated with it. After all, if you don’t have suicidal tendencies, feeling suicidal seems meaningless. Things will get better, right? People also feel that their questions will somehow make things worse—that by specifically asking if someone has a plan to kill themselves, they will push them to start planning. Remember that silence, not the struggle of a difficult conversation, is the problem."

I have these criticisms because the anime initially appeared very realistic, discussing suicide, politics, justice, and law in a good way. But that led me to at least expect to see how doctors view the issue of suicide.

The Question of Justice, Good and Evil, and the Ending

When the issue escalated globally, the debate about justice, good, or evil was genuinely fascinating in the anime. In my opinion—and this is what the ending was trying to convey (remember, I am only clarifying the essence; I still think this issue is a big stretch, but this is what I believe):

I think the message the final episode tried to deliver, while still very flawed, was much better than what they did in Episode 11. It can be said that continuing in evil is a bad thing, and therefore everything is meaningless—but it is said that evil is necessary even for us to know what is "good." There is no complete black without white, and vice versa.

I believe many of the issues this anime tried to tackle after episode 7 were too convoluted for it to work. It has flaws. No, it's not perfect, but I greatly enjoyed it from beginning to end. And I am sure, no matter how impressed many of you among the Kurdish audience were, you still got something out of it, just as I learned more from writing this discussion. So, let's say, the anime Babylon is not one to be added to the ranks of the best in history, but it is certainly among the unforgettable. So, remember that.

The field of ethics (and particularly Metaethics), despite people calling this "high school philosophy," is handled more justly in this anime in its applied form—an attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological assumptions and commitments of moral thought, speech, and practice—than in any other anime I have seen. It does more justice to it than epistemology (the theory of knowledge) does. Of course, this does not mean that it handles metaethics well, only that it is pursued much better than anything else.

Metaethics uses a different approach from a first-person perspective. It aims to show that moral knowledge is possible, not by defending or attacking "doctrines," but by guiding the reader on an intellectual path that begins with complete skepticism about moral views. I will try to show in a series of detailed and planned steps how to escape these obstacles, moving from thinking about acting in one's own self-interest, to thinking about acting according to social expectations, to thinking about acting according to moral standards.

First, remember that this series has told us for basically all 12 episodes to always keep thinking about what is right. That is the answer the writer came to, but the writer doesn't just expect you to accept it: continue to think about it.

Second, here is the chain of reasoning presented in the anime for the conclusion that "to continue is good." Killing is undeniably bad. If killing is bad, then life must be good. But what makes life good? The writer concludes that life is good for its own sake: life is good regardless of what a person experiences or what they do with their life.

This is not an irrational answer. If you say instead that life is good because of something other than life itself, and killing is bad because life is good, then killing would not be bad in cases where that other thing that makes life good is absent. Thus, if life is good because of, say, happiness, then it would not be wrong to kill people who only have a painful future ahead of them. Most people believe that is simply false: killing people is bad even when other good things are not present.

He calls Magase an evil person before killing himself, which reveals that Magase's goal throughout the series was to corrupt and defile Zen—much like the son of the Sibyl System's director, whose name I don't recall but will mention later, who constantly elevated individual psychopathy—to make him do something evil, and she believed she had succeeded. But it is very clear that the writer just wants us to keep thinking about it.

I don't actually understand why people thought Magase would be some evil mastermind. The show very clearly indicated that she represented evil as a metaphysical entity (just as Satan exists, which is why Magase was literally depicted as the devil).

Perhaps those who hate it were just expecting the anime to be something other than what it was?

Magase only reaffirmed her own solution to the question of good and evil. To continue is good. To end is evil. The president was seen as good because he wanted to continue thinking about it. To convey this message to the world, Zen killed himself to appear as the complete opposite—"the coward who killed a good person and then ended his own life." He knows the world will now see him as an evil person, even if he is not.