Ai Magase

Kanae Kuyo

True EvilEmbodiment of Evil

Telekinesis

Shapeshifting

Tormenting and breaking Zen's mind.

“ I'm an evil person. I think that's the only difference between you and me. Hey Mr. Seizaki. Do you think it's impossible for people who like dogs and people who like cats to be compatible? I don't think so. If we understand each other, I'm sure we'll be able to understand the charm. We're the same. There are people who like good things, and people who like bad things. That's the only difference, the one and only difference. So, Mr. Seizaki, think about it. I want you to think about why I'm doing things like this. And I want you to understand. I don't want you to think there's no meaning to it just because an evil person is doing it. I don't want you to think that a good person couldn't understand. There's a meaning to evil. But I know it's selfish of me to say I want you to understand that soon. It's because you've been raised in a good society surrounded by good things. You're a good person through and through Mr. Seizaki. You've never thought about something bad right? You have no idea what evil is, right? So please thinking about it today. Please try confronting evil for the first time in your life. „

~ Magase explaining her warped philosophy when torturing her victim to death.

**Ai Magase** (曲世 愛 *Magase Ai*) is the main antagonist in *Babylon*. She is a mysterious yet beautiful woman who manipulates several powerful figures who got involved in the "Shiniki Initiative Conspiracy" by disguising herself as several beautiful women to do her bidding. Befitting the "Whore of Babylon" theme, Ai Magase is a warped, psychotic individual who intends to sow the seeds of chaos across the world starting by manipulating one of Shiniki's mayoral candidate, Kaika Itsuki, to legitimize suicide law, a law that is considered taboo even for Japanese people. She is also the archenemy of the protagonist of the anime, Prosecutor Zen Seizaki, due to her being responsible on his apprentice's death and her willingness to ruin Seizaki's life as much as possible.

Ai Magase is voiced by Satsuki Yukino who is best known voicing Mion Sonozaki and Shion Sonozaki from *Higurashi: When They Cry*, Kagome Higurashi from *Inuyasha* and *Kaname Chidori* from Full Metal Panic.

## Appearance

Befitting the Whore of Babylon theme, Ai Magase herself is depicted as a beautiful woman who loves to disguise as several other women in order to manipulate people to commit several heinous acts or at the very least, acts that are considered taboo in the society such as suicide. However, Ai Magase's most consistent appearance is that she is a beautiful woman with a long hair that has a combination of dark blue and purple color, a magenta eyes, pink lipstick and a black or nearly dark blue dress. In her junior high school days, Magase wears a regular sailor fuku uniform and has a ponytail hair.

Each of Ai Magase's disguises had one similarity with each other which is the creepy and off-putting smile that she put everytime she disguises as another person. Her most prominent disguise are the likes of Emiko Hiramatsu and Kanae Kuyou. As Emiko, Magase appears as a woman in Mid to late-20s, has a long black hair and a businesswoman suit. As Kanae Kuyou, she is a young woman with a seemingly stoic behavior on her face, a long green hair and wearing a white dress with a white shirt tucked inside of it.

## Personality

Ai Magase can be described as a mysterious yet dangerous woman. This is because Ai Magase is a manipulative sociopath who willingly tried to spread misery and mayhem across the world by making several powerful figures or other people bend knees to her to get what she wanted. Even during her childhood days, according to her adoptive uncle, she has an irresistible yet charismatic aura surrounding her that made people wanting to commit depraved acts or at the very least making them traumatized.

In addition, Magase can also be described as a woman with a warped point of view of the world and morality itself, using it to screw with other people including Seizaki himself. Despite her claims saying that she wanted to become a hero that could make other people happy, in the end, Magase embraces her evilness with the atrocities that she had done just to make one person suffer. She also has no hesitation to use several taboo subject such as suicide law while twisting the morality of it so that she could see the world burn in the end.

## Biography

### Past

Not much is known about Ai Magase's past. However, according to Magase's adoptive uncle, Kurauzu Sakabe, Magase was adopted by his brother when she was 7 years old from an organization that supported adoption method due to his brother's inability to have a child. It is stated that Magase is a terrifying sociopath with seductive powers ever since she was a child.

This was revealed when she started to shown her evil tendencies when she was 15 years old. During that time, Magase seduced 7 middle school boys in her own school which resulted on them getting a counseling by Sakabe himself. Most of the students who were counselled by Sakabe were revealed to be traumatized by Magase due to them being figuratively "raped" by her despite never performing a sexual intercourse towards them.

The incident also happened with Sakabe during his attempt at counselling Magase as everytime he saw her, he always got aroused by Magase due to her appearance, her voice, her movements and her eyes that has an excessive smell like a strong perfume as if she beckoned him to do immoral things towards her despite being his adoptive niece.

Due to this, Sakabe then tries to have Ai getting counselled at the hospital where he worked which she accepted for half a year although it was revealed he did this because he is unable to control his lust everytime Magase is around. Due to this, Sakabe had no choice but to close his clinic and ran away to Kyoto to prevent himself committing more immoral things thanks to Magase's strong influence.

### *Babylon*

In the present day, now grown into a 23 year old beautiful woman, Ai Magase then took interest towards the Shiniki Initiative conspiracy due to the fact that Shiniki itself is a new province in Tokyo that has the purpose for testing new laws in order to build new nations and bring prosperity towards human race. To that end, she decided to disguise herself as several women and become a willing prostitute towards the powerful figures that were involved in the Shiniki Initiative Conspiracy in order to further her plans to cause chaos and mischief across the world.

One of her victims of seduction was Shin Inaba, the anesthetist of a drug company called Supiri after the company itself and Inaba created a drug known as Agras that were used on 4 universities which resulted on the protagonist, Zen Seizaki, and his apprentice, Fumio, investigating the drug case due to Inaba's actions that accidentally roped them into the Shiniki Initiative conspiracy.

It was soon revealed that thanks to Magase's seduction, Inaba ended up murdering himself in ecstasy while also causes the sealed document that he owns about a secret drug having several blood stains, hair, skin, fingernails and the letter "F" that were written repeatedly on the paper.

The utter reason why Magase seduced Inaba is because he tried to created a drug known as "Nyux" which is a painless suicide pill that could make people naturally fell asleep and never wake up. Trying to investigate more about the Shiniki Initiative conspiracy that killed Inaba, Fumio then tries to follow Magase who tried to sell her body towards one of the powerful figures that were involved with Shiniki Initiative. However, this resulted on Fumio meeting his impending doom as he ended up killing himself with ecstasy much like what Inaba did and resulted on Seizaki getting shocked after seeing this.

Determined to investigate more about Fumio's cause of death and suspecting he was murdered instead of committing suicide with his own volition, Seizaki then began to investigate the people who were involved in the Shiniki Initiative as he suspected them to murder Fumio just to further their own agenda. During his investigation, he ended up meeting with Magase in a hotel who disguise herself as a woman named Emiko Hiramatsu.

Bringing her to the police station for interrogation purposes, Magase answers several questions that Seizaki had provided about what she had done in the hotel. However, at the same time, Magase also screws with Seizaki by telling him several philosophical babbling. Suspecting that Seizaki will forced her to sign the record of confession, she decided to get along with it with an exchange that Seizaki told her about his personal life which led them into discussing some values and morals. After Seizaki left Magase with another officer, Okuda, she then easily duped Okuda which drove him insane and leaves the building without trouble.

In Episode 3, it was soon revealed that Magase also seduced one of the mayoral candidates of Shiniki, Kaika Itsuki, so that he could implement the suicide law and enforce the Japanese people to accept it. To that end, Magase willingly manipulate 60 people including Okuda to commit suicide by jumping from Shiniki City Hall building in order to show the example of the suicide law can bring prosperity towards other people. Despite only 3% of the Japanese population that supports it, the victims of suicide increased 4 times than normal which reaches more than 200 people thanks to Itsuki's implementation of suicide law. This also resulted on a mysterious named Taiyo getting traumatized and expressing his grievances in the internet after seeing his father supporting the suicide law.

In Episode 5, after Seizaki and his new assistant, Hiasa Sekuro, investigate more about Magase's past, Seizaki also orders one of the detectives, Tsusui, to investigate more about Magase. Finding out about this, Magase then seduces Tsusui to kill himself by getting run over by a truck in ecstasy while stealing his phone to call Seizaki. During the call, she claims that she wants to bring happiness towards other people like a hero in RPG Games who tried to bring happiness towards other people that were oppressed by the demon king despite other people never understands his way of thinking.

After Itsuki proposed a debate about the suicide law in NHC Television studio and most of the other contestants failed to win it after Itsuki reveals his intentions to cure his ailing son, which is revealed to be Taiyo, with the suicide law, the police force then began to implement Seizaki's plan to kidnap Itsuki into action by separating him from his wife and Taiyo.

Unbeknownst to the police force, Magase disguise herself as Itsuki's wife and manipulate all of the police force to kill themselves in ecstasy while kidnapping Sekuro much to Seizaki's shock. Receiving a call from Magase in the police department, it was revealed that Magase embraces her evilness towards Seizaki so that he could experience a hardship by meeting a pure, unadultered evil while gleefully tortures Sekuro by chopping her limbs with an ax before killing her which resulted on Seizaki driven to insanity.

After suicide law was met with a great support by 48% of the Japanese people, due to Magase's desire to see the world burn, it was revealed that she manipulate several powerful figures across the world to implement suicide law for her own amusement. Before going to the United States, it was heavily implied that Seizaki was given a present that contains two eggs in order to find out which one is good and which one is bad just to screw with him as one of the eggs contained a human eye.

In Episode 11, when the seven world leaders arranged an assembly in a certain building to discuss the suicide law, Magase then disguise herself as another woman known as Kanae Kuyou so that they could pick their stance on suicide law by jumping from the Shiniki City Hall building despite she seemingly hesitant to do so.

However, it was soon revealed that Magase did this so that she could manipulate the United States president, Alexander W. Wood, to do her bidding. After convincing the president to answer her question after fabricating her story towards him, she then manipulates the president to commit suicide by jumping from the assembly building. At the same time, Magase also manipulated the Interpreters and the Police Force inside the assembly building to kill themselves or killing each other.

Due to President Wood's unstoppable desire killing himself thanks to Magase's influence, Seizaki has no choice but to shoot him to prevent him committing suicide much to Seizaki's frustation. After shooting President Wood, Seizaki encounters Magase in the Assembly Hall roof where Seizaki stands while asking him about the good and evil concept and manipulating Seizaki to kill himself. The story ends with a woman resembles Magase encountering Seizaki's son in a certain village and is possibly implied something bad is going to happen.

## Powers and Abilities

Being based on "Whore of Babylon" and is depicted as a mysterious female that loves to sow chaos and misery across the world, Magase had several powers on her sleeves:

* **Charm**: One of Magase's dangerous abilities in the series. It is stated by her adoptive uncle, Kurauzu Sakabe, Magase had an irresistible charm like a perfume that could make other people either committing depraved acts or traumatized just by seeing her. One of the examples of her using her irresistible charm can be traced back during her highschool days when she made her adoptive uncle getting sexually aroused to the point Magase almost beckoning him to do depraved acts towards her which resulted on him running away in shame.
* **Manipulation**: Another one of Magase's most dangerous abilities. Combined with her charm, Magase is able to manipulate innocent people or powerful figures to do her bidding so that they could commit several taboo acts just as she planned. She also uses her voice to make people submit to her as her voice alone could get some people sexually aroused to the point they were fallen into insanity and wanting to kill themselves in which Magase uses this as an opportunity for sowing chaos and misery across the world. In addition, she sometimes falsifies her backstories in order to make people believe her. One of her example of using her manipulation skills is during the present day where most of Seizaki's associates or some powerful figures involved in the Shiniki Conspiracy such as Itsuki were driven insane or getting sexually aroused by Magase's voice to the point they killed themselves just to save their lives. Another one of her example of using her manipulation skills by falsifying her backstories is when she lies to the United States President, Alexander W. Wood, about her motivation on killing herself by jumping from the Shiniki City Hall despite she was seemingly unsure about it. This was used so that she could lure the President into her trap and made him committing suicide in front of a lot of people.
* **Mastery of Disguise**: Magase can disguise herself as several different beautiful women in order to seduce her victims if she wanted to. It is heavily implied that she could shapeshift by her own will which explains her ability to disguise herself as other beautiful women as fast as possible. However, each of her disguises had one similarity with each other which is the creepy and off-putting smile that she put which made some people able to recognize her mask.

## Trivia

* Ai Magase herself is based on the Whore of Babylon befitting with the anime's title. The Whore of Babylon is an evil female bibilical figure who seduces seven kings to commit depraved acts and is also predicted to bring destruction towards the human race. This correlates with Magase's twisted view of morality and her powers who seduce several powerful figures across the world or innocent people to commit depraved acts and in this case, making them killing themselves or at the very least, trying to get suicide law passes despite the taboo it had possessed.
	+ In one scene of Episode 12, Alexander W. Wood depicted Magase as a snake who seduces a couple to eat a forbidden fruit. This correlates with the Biblical and Qur'anic story of Adam and Eve where they were tricked by the devil, who disguised as a snake, to eat the forbidden fruit which resulted on them getting cast away from heaven by God.
* The illustration of Magase in the manga version including in one of the covers had Magase having a strike resemblance with one of Junji Ito's most infamous characters, Tomie Kawakami. This makes sense in context as both Tomie and Ai Magase are depicted as mysterious, yet beautiful women who seduced innocent men to commit several depraved acts and sometimes, using them as expendable tools.
* If people analyze her name, Ai (愛) in Japanese means "Love" or "Affection" which is rather ironic for a character like Magase. However, if you look at her surname, Magase, Maga (曲) in her surname means "Twisted" and Se (世) in her surname means "World". It makes sense due to Ai's strong love on spreading misery and evil across the world which would bring humanity to it's further destruction and how Magase ruins the live of a certain person. The "Twisted World" text was also used as the title for the third half of the anime.
* It is stated that her birth is June 06 and she is 23 years old. If people look closer at her date of birth, it has the unholy numbers of 66 due to June being the sixth month of entire year which could make Magase a parallel of an Antichrist.