So, after a certain little show came out , it was rather popular for mecha shows to have a psychological or philosophical bent, rather than just acting as vehicles to sell toys or model kits. Not that they couldn’t still push merch in a lot of cases, but lots of folks wanted to cash in on the success of what remains one of the most dominant anime franchises. We’ve seen entries like this before, most particularly RahXephon, the 2002 attempt to do… exactly what its predecessor did.
In 1999, however, we got a series that did clearly aim somewhere in the same spectrum, but that was also clearly doing its own thing. The Big O clearly owes some to Evangelion, but it’s also drenched in film noir and presages Demonbane more than it does RahXephon.
Speaking of Noir, while the visual style of The Big O is rather unique for anime, Western viewers might think it resembles the classic 90’s “Batman: the Animated Series”. There’s a good reason for this – Sunrise, the studio that did Big O (And last week’s review topic among many other things), had previously been a subcontractor of Warner Bros, specifically putting work in on Batman. So when the time rolled around to put together an original mecha concept, somebody decided to give Bruce Wayne a big robot.
And what a robot it is. Before even trying to get into the plot of this thing, it’s worth talking about the style. The look and feel calls to mind older futurist works (now retro-futurist) like Metropolis by way of the post-apocalyptic. The show takes place in Paradigm City, a realm of towering Gothic and Deco Architecture and giant domes, most of which are at least partially broken down because, as the show often reminds you, Paradigm City is a city of Amnesia – at some point in the past everyone lost their memories, and had to carry on as best they could after being dropped into an existence they knew nothing about. Thus, the advanced yet run-down Paradigm City is as much a mystery to its residents as it is to the viewer.
The robots, called Megadeuses, have the same period design lines, but perhaps more importantly they feel like giant robots. The titular Big O and all its fellows move like they have immense weight, and the controls are delightfully analog, with a pilot having to swing a lever along a long track in order to have the machine wind up and punch. They’re massive, even to the point of being ponderous, but still move well enough to frame some good fights around. This is, perhaps, felt nowhere better than with Big O’s signature finisher weapon, a heavyweight piston-driven punch that tends to destroy what it hits and whatever’s behind it with a massive shockwave.
But, if you get past the architecture, the classic cars, and the dystopic ontological mystery for a minute, what’s the plot?
The Big O stars Roger Smith, Paradigm City’s supposed top negotiator. To be fair, he usually does try to talk things out with any mark that can be reasoned with. This, however, seldom gets him anywhere, forcing him to use wits, gadgets, and when things get a little too hot (about once an episode) his personal unstoppable giant robot, Big O (summoned via radio watch. Because gadgets are cool.)
For the most part, the show has a strong Monster of the Week vibe to it – Roger will be hired for some often nebulous job that can be tangentially called a negotiation, pokes around, and ultimately encounters a Megadeus-level threat to declare showtime and get with the punching on. Because of this, I feel like it’s more important to address the themes and recurring characters before getting into where the story actually goes.
In the first episode, we meet most of the major players. There’s the ever-frustrated police chief Dan Dastun, who has a cordial but somewhat strained relationship with Roger. There’s Norman, Roger’s butler and the man who actually maintains Big O. He’s pretty cool, though largely trading in the dissonance between his polite butler demeanor and the amount of hard work he can get up to or ordinance he can carry.
Introduced newly to Roger we also have R. Dorothy Wainwright (Dorothy, as she’s usually called), the mechanical replica of a scientist’s daughter who acts as the flat-affected but still very characterful foil to Roger. And we have Beck, a loud and loony eccentric of a crook who could give Demonbane’s Doctor West a run for his money in the excited shouting department, and who becomes one of the show’s recurring antagonists.
As the show progresses, we introduce a few more regulars. There’s Angel, a mysterious lady of considerable beauty (not quite a femme fatale, but leaning that direction) who is usually after the precious substance of Memory, contrary to whatever Roger is looking into that week. There’s Alex Rosewater, the head of the ruling corporation of Paradigm City and an obvious slimeball however long it takes him to evolve into an actual antagonist. And there’s the mad visionary Schwarzwald – formerly reporter Michael Seebach, now a maniac in mummy wrappings and possibly my favorite of the rogues gallery for just how over the top he’s allowed to go.
As I said, we do spend most of our time just battling fairly random monsters of the week that don’t build on much of anything that came before or contribute much of value to what comes after. Roger grows closer to Dorothy, Angel grows closer to Roger, Alex schemes, Beck escapes from prison to get revenge now and again, and Schwarzwald shows up (with his own true Megadeus, Big Duo) to drop some cryptic ravings. All in all, it’s a fairly fun little core loop. Along the way, we slowly but surely learn more about Paradigm City – how Memory can be an obtainable thing hidden away in the dark corners of the city, how there seems to be more of the world outside that nobody on the ground knows about, and how the Megadeuses might be related to some great and terrible time in the past when Paradigm City became… what it is now.
Things gear up slowly as Alex Rosewater advances his plans, and the forces in the shadows around him come more to the light. The overall factions seem to be Alex, representing the elite and aiming to make his perfect society with the power of the Megadeus Big Fau. Then there are a group of foreigners, from which Angel is a not-quite-loyal agent, who are there to mess things up out of revenge for Paradigm City treating them badly in the past. Their leader is… honestly not much aside from terrorizing Angel, but one of the henchmen of the faction is a cyborg psychopath called Alan Gabriel who seems to play all sides for the opportunity to hurt people, and who is pretty memorable. Lastly, you have the common people of Paradigm, as supported by Roger and represented essentially by Dan Dastun, who are just trying to survive.
We get implications that Roger may be a clone or design child produced by Alex’s father, Gordon Rosewater, who has retired from evil corporate nonsense to be a farmer, shockingly without any premeditated misdeeds involved. There’s a subplot where Dan Dastun is haunted by a dream of his childhood only to see it play out from multiple angles. Schwarzwald practically blankets the city with his tracts, but it seems he’s doing it from beyond the grave as credible evidence is that he’s been dead for some time since his last appearance.
The truth of all of it is more complicated and artsy. Especially artsy. Schwarzwald seems to have discovered the absolute truth of the setting, and ascended to some higher state of being since he’s strongly implied in the final run to still be working through mysterious publications and Big Duo (even judging against Alan Gabriel when he tries to pilot Big Duo for the finale). Roger pursues the truth and finds that the world may not be real, Angel may literally be an Angel, Gordon Rosewater (thought killed off by his son) is alive, and so on. Alex, surprisingly amounts to fairly little, and the final beats all lead Roger towards a negotiation with, for the lack of a better term, god, as all the world is gradually revealed to literally be a stage, Paradigm city models beneath an endless ceiling of spotlights when the clouds part to reveal them. It’s actually quite reminiscent of what SSSS Gridman would do with its setting many years later. After the negotiation, Paradigm City is seemingly renewed in a state… similar to the one we know, but on more of a “good end” timeline.
But, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it seems like the esoteric philosophical mecha shows are doomed to have endings that are some variety or another of unsatisfying. There are a lot of mysteries in The Big O. Most of them are eventually solved (though some solutions make more emotional sense than logical sense, like the ones around Dastun), but the solutions don’t end up amounting to much. It’s the eternal problem with reset endings that RahXephon also suffered, even if it is less grating here. Not up on Steins;Gate’s “essentially a reset but it did all matter” level, but it’s not as bad as RahXephon.
Honestly, the worst part is that it really does feel like the writers were scrambling at the last minute. Paradigm City was so weird and so specific that it would have been incredibly hard to tie it all together without appealing to a higher power. I think the story probably would have been stronger if it left those matters more ambiguous (with the boot message for the Megadeuses being “Cast in the name of God, Ye Not Guilty”, the idea was certainly there), but at the same time I see why they went with the essentially unseen supernatural puppetmaster staging the world. And, at the very least, Roger’s own struggle does matter, even if the conflict between Paradigm and the Outsiders or Schwarzwald’s search or Dastun’s stand essentially are cast aside.
Though I have these issues though, I don’t think they overwhelm my perception of the show as a whole. It’s mostly Monster of the Week, with great setup and a payoff that’s only a little disappointing. The entire thing is style over substance, but it’s not entirely without substance, it just puts the style first. Alex Rosewater, Alan Gabriel, Beck, and especially Schwarzwald are pretty memorable rogues. Roger is a delightful cad, and Dorothy is possibly the most fun I’ve had with a flat affect character, since her frequent trolling of Roger is often exactly what you want to see. Dan Dastun has a lot of material for the frazzled police chief, the music is epic, the feeling of scale is impressive, and if it’s style over substance… really, when the style is so good, wouldn’t you kind of want that to be what comes first?
On the whole, I actually think The Big O holds up pretty well. It’s got style, action, style, characters that are fun to watch, style, some esoteric themes that actually stick among the ones that might not, style, a plot that at least holds together better than many of its peers, and style. That really is about as much as you could ask.
For me, The Big O earns a big B – a quite solid grade that means I would recommend going back and giving it a look. It’s far from perfect, but it does hold up and deliver at least a few things I don’t think will be found better elsewhere. Do yourself a favor and at least look at it.