東京Babylon | Tokyo Babylon – Opening (HD)

This year, CLAMP’s 東京Babylon turns 30. It has aged beautifully, due to many themes that are as relevant today as they were after the economic bubble burst: loneliness and yearning for connection, individualism and agency, miscommunication, consumerist culture at odds with tradition, and a recurring motif of duality… Curiously, this manga first reached foreign audiences in the form of a two-part OVA that only featured bits and pieces of the original. By then, Tokyo Babylon had concluded its run in Japan, but it would take another decade for the English translation to appear; meanwhile, Subaru and Seishirou reappeared in X and Tokyo Babylon 1999, CLAMP’s first live-action adaptation. X would receive its own anime film and series, but a proper screen version of Tokyo Babylon is long overdue. So, to celebrate its 30th anniversary of publishing, I took it upon myself to envision what a 東京Babylon series intro would look like.

Tokyo Babylon belongs to CLAMP, soundtrack is ‘Strange Stuff’ by Matt Harris from YouTube Audio Library (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary_download?vid=01d9a17349f16cd5), footage and editing mine.