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I want to make it clear that I am not personally advocating for this approach to discussing mental health issues, necessarily – as an educator, I have plenty of personal experience with young people who suffer from mental illness, and I don't think making suicide pills accessible as an over-the-counter drug would be any kind of solution for them.

Historically, Eugenicists have advocated for this kind of solution to various mental and physical health issues. The thing is, this type of decision is extremely final and cannot be taken back. A far larger percentage of the population attempts suicide than actually succeeds at it (by approximately an order of magnitude, and something like 25:1 for young people specifically), and the vast majority of survivors ultimately end up preferring to have remained alive. It can be reasonably assumed that most of those who do not survive would similarly have changed their mind given adequate time and care.

An aside about organ donation: I have no idea about Japanese law, but in the US, at least in my state, organ donation from a suicide is perfectly ok.

Now, from what I have seen of this show, the author likes to contrive twists just for the sake of more twists. So I personally have my doubts. But we need to hear from someone who can get the law in Japan.

My only point about the show now: if I had known it was a horror show and not a police thriller, I never would have started watching. Just not my kind of show.

“ To prevent suicides aimed at donating organs to family, it is determined that no priority donation of organs to the deceased's family will be carried out in suicide cases.”

More generally: I’m not so sure I like the direction it’s taking either, although many things still hinge on the way they’re ultimately resolved.

I myself loved how Shinobu blowing his brains out was animated to be analogous to an actual ejaculation, tying up the while death = ultimate release metaphor very nicely.

Nom De Plume De Fanboy wrote:

An aside about organ donation: I have no idea about Japanese law, but in the US, at least in my state, organ donation from a suicide is perfectly ok.

Suicide and organ donation has become a controversial issue when it touches on euthanasia. As far as I know, euthanasia for organ donation is only legal in Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands. As you might imagine, many doctors who specialize in organ transplants are understandably nervous about this whole issue.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2019/05/02/organ-donation-physician-assisted-suicide-death-disability-column/3628448002/

The law Sven quoted is an interesting one. It appears to ban suicides for organ donation within a family, but leaves open the question of whether this would be legal if the two parties were unrelated. Can someone kill herself to donate an organ to, say, the child of a friend?

Like I said in the other thread, I was also disappointed in the last episode to the point of dropping, unless the reviews for the last will be glowing. The death of ponytail guy was already both heroic and tragic, and with the death of other guys was already statement of the great threat and terror Magase brings. Then immediately after Hiasa, who had relation with the Zen as they were both cold to each other due to mutual misunderstanding of their intended roles, but grew to understand each other, was stupidly killed by dumb hopeless atack on Ai, in very cruel way, that was purely for the purpose of having Zen suffer. She might as well be Zen's pet dog in this scene. She was one of the few interesting characters and practically only woman that turned out not to be Magase, except for the wifey I guess.

Zen also was complete moron, he should immediately order his team to implement anti-Magase countermeasures A through F as soon as he mysteriously lost contact with the first few guys, she murdered one of them just to taunt them all on the his phone, they should be ready for her.

I hoped Magase would've turn out to have some weird morality/worldview due to her ability, that would make her understand other humans in different way then normal people do, but she just went the old dumb "We are not so different, you and I" villain route. Sure, Zen had enjoyed Hiasa for the good and interesting human being she was, and Magase enjoyed butchering her to make some nonsense point to Zen, but that's the same, right? and they killed off Hiasa by turning her into moron and then torture toy just for that..

Well, I'm seriously bummed out about Shinobu being sent off. But he looked deliriously happy about it, so I guess he got a better death than Hiasa. Somehow I found the drawing the dotted lines to be more disturbing than the cutting on said lines, but I'm not sure why. I guess the dread from wondering what she was doing was worse than knowing.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

Well, I'm seriously bummed out about Shinobu being sent off. But he looked deliriously happy about it, so I guess he got a better death than Hiasa. Somehow I found the drawing the dotted lines to be more disturbing than the cutting on said lines, but I'm not sure why. I guess the dread from wondering what she was doing was worse than knowing.

Shinobu was good and will be missed, but at least he managed to defy Magase for short time and give Zen advice. Was bummed me out most about Hiasa death was how useless it was.

So I, someone who isn't watching Babylon but got interested thanks to TWIA's recent pan of it, was reading the Wikipedia summary for the most recent episode, and...

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Later [Seizaki] receives a call from Magase on Sekuro's phone in which she calmly explains why she is evil as she apparently dismembers Sekuro while she is still alive.

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she apparently dismembers Sekuro while she is still alive.

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apparently dismembers

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apparently

What did they mean by this?

There wasn't any "apparently" about it from what I saw.

As a social scientist by training, I tend to hedge my bets verbally when writing. But there's no reason to do so when it comes to describing Magase's actions here.

Talk about jumping the shark... The change of focus for the international was pretty ridiculous.

Sherris wrote:

Talk about jumping the shark... The change of focus for the international was pretty ridiculous.

What went from being a mystery has turned into a boring show bunch of people talking about suicide. It even looks as if the show could become some creator's fantasy of the US president committing suicide.
It's really gone downhill. If it wasn't so close to the end I would drop it. I might wait until the last episode and see how it turns out before watching the rest.

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For the past two episodes, though, I've found it increasingly difficult to take Babylon's pretensions seriously, and I think a lot of it has to do with the story bringing its particular brand of ridiculousness to my home turf. It's a bias that I can't really ignore or escape, since the nuances of the Japanese political and cultural conversation have doubtless been mangled by plenty of anime that have come before this one, but as an American, it is much more difficult for me to overlook the story's flimsy setup in the context of a setting I'm more personally familiar with.

Yeah I feel you, James. As a Chinese American, this is exactly how I felt about Mahouka lol. Like I know we talking about fictionalized materials, but there is clearly a threshold for suspension of disbelief, especially when it comes to politics when it is easy for authors themselves to insert their own political viewpoints. I respect freedom of expression like anyone else, but do I treat every words spoken with equal seriousness and consideration?Heck no.

Show has jumped the shark. First two arcs were good. Third arc is just silly.

The use of "apparently" is something you see regularly, probably: Japanese has what's called "obligatory evidentiality marking", which means relevantly that it distinguishes between "known because of absolute knowledge" and "known because you've worked it out from evidence".

(this is the basis of the difference between shinitai and shinitageru, amd also all the -rashii and -sou da forms).

Translating this is tricky unless you know exactly what's going on linguistically and have really outstanding target language skills and you know enough of the context to get a clear idea of exactly what's intended. In this case... maybe "is seen to" would work? but there's no good simple answers.

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EP. REVIEW: Babylon