Sumeragi Subaru
Actor: Tonesaku Toshihide

Something is slightly different about Tokyo Babylon 1999’s Sumeragi Subaru. He seems angrier and less restrained than he is in X or the START side-story of Tokyo Babylon, which raises the question as to whether or not this is the result of the actor’s character interpretation or scripted, given a time-frame relative to the end of the Tokyo Babylon manga. Though still severely depressed, cripplingly solitary, awkward, and gentle, this Subaru seems more alive than the manga version of himself. He radiates weariness and pain, having spent an unknown number of years in a microcosmic hell, the all-consuming focal point of which is Seishirou, the man who broke his heart and murdered his sister. Though now a mere refraction of the once-innocent youth he once was, he is still kind and self-sacrificing, and takes a personal concern in the affairs of those who may be hurting themselves and others, even at great personal risk, and even if he is shunned by those he tries to help and his kindness is completely ignored.

Subaru is the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi Clan, a sect specializing in ‘white’ onmyoujitsu, and makes a living doing various forms of exorcism and supernaturally-related work in Tokyo, sometimes by civic employment, and sometimes working through independent sources. Though he is never shown smoking in the movie, he chain-smokes Mild Sevens, he takes comparatively little pride in his dress now that Hokuto is dead, and, though the marks are never shown in the movie, he bears the mark of the Sakurazukamori’s prey on the backs of his hands. In Tokyo Babylon 1999, Subaru wears pedestrian clothing (button-up shirts and jeans, tennis shoes, etc), as opposed to his manga post-Tokyo Babylon outfits consisting of long coats, turtlenecks, and combat boots. According to Pei Lee’s synopsis, Subaru is twenty-one years old during Tokyo Babylon 1999.

In Tokyo Babylon 1999, Subaru exorcises a girl named Haruka before being consulted on the Kanayama murder case, something in which he takes a fevered interest after he learns that the Sakurazukamori is responsible for the murder. When Haruka offers Subaru a gift in thanks for his exorcism, he is awkward and, as Seishirou points out, ‘rather cold’. The (ugly-ass annoying) ghost he exorcised from Haruka claimed to be able to see Subaru’s hatred weakening his power, and told him that he would soon meet the man he hates; this memory tortures Subaru throughout the film, and he has a nightmare about the ghost after talking to Seishirou at his apartment. He tries to persuade the seven girls to stop casting the Seven Stars Spell, while Seishirou only wants to kill the girls as nuisances. Subaru has the stomach to block one of the girls’ attacks from over the phone, but refuses to react in kind when he is face-to-fate with them, allowing them to blow him through a window instead of using his vastly superior powers to defend himself. Seishirou observes, upon finding Subaru unconscious in the window glass, that he “has not changed at all” from the way he was in Tokyo Babylon. Throughout the movie, the seven girls refer to Subaru as “the enemy”, and despite their attacks and outright rudeness, he refuses to let them fall victim to their own karma curse and the Sakurazukamori.

Subaru’s powers in the movie are limited to his mantras; he does not throw ofuda, have a shikigami (familiar), or draw pentacles in midair, though he does have a pentacle-sigil blanket he uses during exorcisms. I suspect this is budget-related.

Subaru’s explored vice in Tokyo Babylon 1999 is hypocrisy. He tells the girls that one is not supposed to use powers out of hatred and that one has no right to punish others, though he ignores his own advice where Seishirou is concerned. Hokuto channels herself through Haruka to tell Subaru that she does not want him to avenge her death, and that she wants him to stop using his powers out of hatred, as he told the girls not to do. In the final scene of the movie, Subaru tells Amano Heita, his personal assistant, that the he, like the girls who had been lead down the wrong roads with their hatred, needs to find his way back to a ‘right path’.

Sakurazuka Seishirou
Actor: Shihoudou Wataru

Like Subaru, something seems off about Seishirou in the Tokyo Babylon 1999 adaptation. It is no easier to see what makes him tick than it was in the manga, but this is through no deftness on his actor’s part. He can be mistaken for any stock, unflappable villain in the movie. The smirk, the blind eye, the condescending attitude, the perpetual calm and amusement, and all of the surface qualities are intact, but the substance beneath the surface has been sapped. Given his limited screen-time and zero character development, he’s definately passable, but Seishirou is an easy character to pull off on the surface and a damned hard one to pull off well, and this Seishirou does not hit the mark in the latter department.

While Subaru is a near-altruist, Seishirou is utterly self-serving and irreverent of human life. Seishirou is the Sakurazukamori, the one current member of a 'black' onmyoujitsu clan of assassins who bury their victims under a sakura tree. He is, essentially, that bad thing that happens to good people. He is a veterinarian by day in the Shinjuku district, an occupation he chose so the weakened animals left in his custody could take the impact of his karma curses in his stead. Seishirou’s right eye is blind (or a prosthetic, which is what I like to assume), an injury he sustained defending Subaru during Tokyo Babylon. Though the marks never appear in the movie, Subaru’s hands are marked with Seishirou’s pentagram, and the marks make it easy for Seishirou to find Subaru when the need arises. Like Subaru, though he is never shown smoking in the movie, he chain-smokes Mild Sevens, and, as he does in X, he wears a black suit and sunglasses; whether or not he wore a trenchcoat in one scene is undecipherable, and I have no idea what tacky pattern is on his tie in the parking garage scene, but I pray to all gods it isn’t snakeskin. According to Pei Lee’s synopsis, Seishirou is thirty years old during Tokyo Babylon 1999.

In Tokyo Babylon 1999, Seishirou murders Kanayama and attempts to kill the seven girls for causing trouble with the Seven Stars Spell. He antagonizes Subaru at Subaru’s apartment and fights with Subaru in the parking garage at the end of the movie. He observes after finding Subaru unconscious from not deflecting the girls’ relatively weak spell that Subaru “has not changed at all”, and tells the girls that the world is defined by power, not justice, before starting to kill them and Subaru stops him. When he asks Subaru if he would “like to become like your [Subaru’s] sister”, Subaru gets pissed and blasts Seishirou in the face with a sharp mantra, knocking his sunglasses off and splitting his lip. It is, sadly, the coolest part of the movie, and he had it coming since Tokyo Babylon anyway. In an interesting gesture, when Haruka walks into the garage possessed by Hokuto, Seishirou closes his eyes and looks away from her as if he is ashamed; whether or not manga Seishirou would ever do this is a mystery, but if anybody would make him do that, Hokuto, the alpha-seme, would, and you all know deep down in your hearts that she could.

Instead of stabbing people through the chest with his hand, Seishirou assassinates people in the movie by holding out his hand and telekinetically choking them; think of the scene in the original Star Wars where Darth Vader chokes an admiral through the communication screen. He makes Kanayama hallucinate that he is being eaten alive by maggots before killing him. Seishirou does not throw ofuda, have a shikigami (familiar), or use pentagrams, and not a single sakura petal appears in the entire movie, let alone Tree-san.