Paradigm City is a community lost in time. Forty years ago the entire population suffered an abrupt case of amnesia... Nobody who was alive at the time remembers what happened before then and those born since have nothing to go off of other than various clues that theyve picked up through media and pop culture artifacts. With no real context to help them decide whats fiction and whats not hard information has been scarce and memories themselves have become a valuable commodity. As humanity usually does though the people moved on never questioning why high society is kept under domes or why theyve been cut off from the supposedly desecrated outside world. Humanity has strived and thrived even under these conditions but there were always going to be problems and for some problems you need a negotiator. Enter Roger Smith a debonair playboy with a silver tongue for dealing with crises and a giant robot in reserve should things get out of hand. What he doesnt know is that with the help of a sarcastic android and a network of underground connections hes destined to be the unlikely hero who unravels the mystery of Paradigm city once and for all. The Big O was produced by Sunrise one of the most prolific and successful studios in anime history. Theyre made up of over a dozen substudios and as such theyve been churning out countless anime since the seventies at a rate of about 37 titles per year on average. I dont know whether you can call it genuine talent good luck or just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks with an absurdly high success rate but Sunrise has been behind several bigname anime series. Not only are they the primary home of the Gundam franchise but they also brought Cowboy Bebop Code Geass Escaflowne Outlaw Star GinTama Inuyasha and even Love Live into the world. Their DNA is tied pretty strongly to the realm of shonen action and mecha anime especially with all the classic genre fare they produced in the seventies but theyve proven over five decades of work that they have the ability to knock any genre you throw at them out of the park. Thats not to say they havent made any stinkers but they also bought and killed Studio Xebec so the odd dud here and there can be excused. Its easy to look at anime like this one which was produced just before the dawn of the year 2000 and call it out for looking a little cheapespecially with its archaic aspect ratio but that context is important. As far as I can tell Big O is entirely handdrawn and it faced a lot of the technical limits of that specific era. There isnt a whole lot of detail in the background through most of the series but rather than letting the environment feel barren director and storyboard artist Kazuyoshi Katayama made sure that what little detail we DID get would be just striking and memorable enough to grab our attention away from their surroundings keeping our eyes occupied while not really leaving enough of an impression to feel jarring. The next time youre watching episode 1 and you see the closeup of the open briefcase take a good look at how uniquely each stack of dollars is drawn bent and faded in different ways that you just wouldnt get if you were using CGI to fill in the case more efficiently. Youre not technically supposed to notice something as subtle as that its just supposed to impress you on a subconscious level. The same thing goes for the animation which can appear stiff and lifeless in some shots but its never too egregious and the effect never lasts very long. Theres usually something moving on screen whether its the subject of the shot whiskey in a glass or even just a puff of smoke or wisp of fog and while that should be more noticeable than the subtle details are the overall style and aesthetic of this series do it a world of good. The handdrawn cells act as the perfect canvas for a film noir design scheme using pitch perfect lighting effects and the exact blend of dull and bright colors that either stand out or blend into the dark shadows whenever needed. Its hard to complain about a lack of movement when every shot just looks so damn beautiful. Ive complained before about anime using weird camera angles but in those cases an anime would use fast shots and unpredictable framing to distract the viewer from long stretches of dialogue. Big O on the other hand uses its errant shots the way film noir should using dutch angles to convey tension distant perspectives to imply a conversation might not be as private as it appears etc. The only place the visual quality really drops in a noticeable way is with the giant robot fights but those are also the moments when the series picks up the pace with fast movement and quick shots so you probably wont notice unless youre as anal about that kind of thing as I am. The design is also really unique at least to the anime medium. The best way I can describe the character palette is like a slightly grittier and grainier Leiji Matsumoto. To be fair thats not a completely accurate comparison so heres a better one: This looks like Batman the Animated Series and theres a reason for that... Sunrise Studio 6 who produced Big O also did some animation work for Batman and while I cant find a direct link between the two its clear to see that there was some inspiration taken from that particular early 90s classic. The music for Big O has a heavy leaning towards jazz dominated by the piano and saxophone and ranging from smooth to sleazy to melancholic and pensive again only really slipping into the heart pounding orchestrations youd expect from a shonen action serieswith a slight electronic edge when Roger slips into his iconic mecha. Even so its not married to that divide and it can surprise you with a perfectly chosen orchestral arrangement during certain fights. For the English dub theres no shortage of seasoned and highly respected talent attached to this title but the best decision that was made in the entire process of creating this show was casting Steve Blum as the main character. Maybe this is blasphemous I dont know but Ive kind of started to think of him as the Tim Curry of the anime world... A voice and delivery everyone loves a range that deceptively potent and more often than not he winds up being the best possible candidate for most of the characters he winds up voicing. He speaks for himself but Id also be lying if I didnt recommend this dub on the strength of Lia Sargent who pulled double duty as both the voice director and as Rogers sidekick Dorothy. Its no small task playing a robot in a way thats both convincing and engaging but she gives Blum a run for his money. Dub highly recommended obviously. I feel like to at least some degree were all storytellers at heart. Theres little thats more appealing than the idea of having an entire universe in your hands one whose narrative you exclusively control and it starts when were old enough to know what stories are. If you had Star Wars Transformer and GI Joe figures as a kid I can guarantee that at some point you had Jedi knights swinging their lightsabers alongside their guntoting soldier allies to stop Megatron. It was your story anything goes and you had no reason not to throw everything you liked into it even if you were just entertaining yourself on a rainy afternoon. When youre an adult this sort of thing is called The Rule of Cool... Anything you like can be a part of a story youre writing because its your story... But depending what youre planning to do with that story you may find yourself dealing with rules BEYOND just whats cool. Sure if youre just writing a fanfiction those rules dont exist but what if youre creating a legitimate piece of commercial media? Well obviously you cant include licensed material without permission thats a given. But whats a bit harder to grasp is that no matter how many elements you add to the story be they genre beats or actual licensed content you have to put in extra effort to make it all fit together. There are elements that clash unless you figure out a way to combine them properly. There are elements you have to add early because they can be unintentionally destructive if they come in without warning. A good example is Samurai Flemenco a show about people dressing up as superheroes in a real life setting... Until the monsters just randomly become real in one episode after which even the most die hard fans say it went off the rails. Bleach had a few really cool elements blended together for a good long while but some of its worst moments came when they tried adding vampires to the mix. RWBY spent its first two volumes throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick and some of it really backfired when they started to take their story and plot seriously three volumes in. But then you have Kingdom Hearts a franchise that merged two distinctly different franchises Disney and Final Fantasy so well that it feels incomplete without both parties being present. You can tell from first glance that Big O was assembled from bits and pieces taken from several other titles. The ones that spring immediately to mind are Batman and Cowboy Bebop but you can probably find a ton of others if you look hard enough. Its the story of Bruce Wayne but with no childhood trauma or incentive to keep his identity a secret having traded his cape and cowl for a giant mecha. He still has Alfred but hes replaced his long chain of child sidekicks with a sassy android lady dealing with complex 1920s style mysteries that always end in overthetop spectacles. A show like this has every possible excuse to not work and yet it all comes together with nearperfect symmetry. Mecha fights in a film noir setting shouldnt work but the giant robots in this show... Theyre called Megaduces by the way which only gets funnier when you realize the main one was named after a euphemism for an orgasm... Look archaic and makeshift enough to fit the time period. Theres elements to the Big Os design in particular that feel more practical than flashy like the design process was bogged by physics issues they had to compensate for and while giant mecha will never technically feel realistic these ones feel believable enough for the series. The fact that the plot of each episode could only technically be described as a mystery when the structure of each one paints it more as a question thatll be answeredand MAYBE with some foreshadowing just in time for a giant mecha brawl that should damage its credibility as a film noir mystery but some of the reveals in these episodes are unpredictable and emotionally effective but even if they werent the overall mystery over how the world got to be the way it is is more than strong enough to make up for this and nearly every episode feeds into that mystery in some way. As a result no episode ever feels pointless or forgettable. Im not going to pretend like you have to homogenize different elements into a story to make them work especially not after making such a fuss over how clashing tones worked in Kotourasans favor but it IS a legitimate method... Everything Big O does makes sense in the universe it created coming together in an irresistibly anachronistic 1920s style scifi atmosphere and it all works as a backdrop for the true heart of the story. As awesome as giant robots fighting each other may be Ive never personally been a fan of that sort of thing.. I dont hate it it just doesnt do much for me... So if that were the highlight of the title I dont think Id enjoy it half as much as I do. Yeah the mecha element is there it is strong and I can see it making any mecha fanboy go rock hard but the real heart of The Big O lies in its two main characters Roger and Dorothy. Theyre not a romantic couple or anything which is kind of a relief but they have outstanding chemistry with each other as an odd pair of friends and colleagues. Theyre both from an archetype that could get boring on its own... Someone like Dorothy could come off as boring and stiff while Rogers smug denial of emotion in favor of cold logic could make him extremely punchable... But they challenge each other at every turn exposing their softer aspects and sanding off some of their rougher edges. They have some of the most charming dialogue youll ever hear the kind of banter most screen writers WISH they could create without having it sound forced. These are the kind of characters who could save a bad anime but thankfully the series is so damn cool that theres really nothing to save. I guess its fair to say this isnt the deepest or most meaningful anime of all time... It plays around with the themes of memory and identity but not in such a way that youd ever find yourself pondering it after the credits... But not every anime needs to have depth. Not every anime needs to be an emotional rollercoaster or a rabbit hole of introspective ideas. Rather Big O boasts a powerful atmosphere whipsmart dialogue and a sense of pacing that should have no problem keeping your attention. And while were at it you dont need adult content to feel mature either. Big O features almost no fanservice theres no foul language in the dub and while it has a decent body count the violence is never too graphic. It strikes the same mood as any number of atmospheric detective dramas you might have watched with your parents as a kid letting you feel grown up because they never pandered or talked down to you yet also remaining relatively PG so you wouldnt get kicked out of the room. In short Big O is just really fucking cool. If you needed proof that an anime could succeed just on execution alone look no further than this. The Big O was originally available from Bandai before going out of print but has since been rescued and rereleased by Sentai Filmworks. This includes the second season which... Well well talk about that in a minute. The manga is not available stateside. Much like Cowboy Bebop before it The Big O didnt do so great in its original Japanese release and wasnt able to truly find its audience until it came to the west. Im not sure theres a solid explanation why but I mean you cant prove Steve Blum DIDNT save them both. It was originally intended to have a 26 episode run but was forced to cut itself off at 13 due to its poor performance. Seeing how popular it was in their Toonami lineup Cartoon Network actually commissioned a second season which... Ill talk about in my next review. Thank God Anilist split them into two separate titles so I can actually do that. On its own the first season of The Big O might not be the deepest anime ever made but its certainly one of the coolest. I give The Big O1999 an 8/10.