The Big O – 1/2 [Roger The Negotiator/Dorothy Dorothy] – Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to the next season of Throwback Thursday! After being on the list for years it’s finally happened, Bruce Wayne and his giant robot finally got picked. That’s right, it’s the Batman The Animated Series knockoff, The Big O! Now without further ado lets dive in! Also in case it wasn’t obvious, that was a joke. Even if some of the staff worked on both.

Starting off lets talk visuals. By now many of you should know that I absolutely adore cel animation. There’s just something more… real about it, something that pops, where you can tell that each frame is hand-made. Combine that with a film noir atmosphere and an art deco aesthetic and The Big O has a winning formula. Seriously, I cannot understate how much I love its use of heavy blacks and contrast. There’s nothing complex about the designs, no ludicrously detailed fabrics or faces. Just simple colors, heavy contrast, and strong direction. And to top it all off? The effects work. My god the effects work. From explosions to debris and dust clouds, they all move so cleanly. While we don’t know how it will hold up as we go, I know it switches to digipaint in season 2, I can’t help but love The Big O’s style.

Getting into the actual narrative, we’re going to cover both episodes 1 and 2, “The Negotiator” and “Dorothy Dorothy”, at the same time. I’m combining the 2 because together they make for a complete introductory arc for us, basically touching on everything we need. So with that in mind, what’s the first thing worth pointing out? Well as much as I was joking before, The Big O is basically anime Batman with a giant robot. Roger is so clearly based on Bruce Wayne that their designs are almost 1-to-1, Norman is Alfred, Dastun is Gordon, Dorothy is the sidekick, and Paradigm city is Gotham, etc etc. I don’t mean this pejoratively of course! Batman the Animated Series is without question one of the best animated TV shows ever made. The comparison is a compliment! My only concern here is whether or not Big O can become more than a knockoff.

So with that in mind, how are things looking for mecha Bruce Wayne this early? Well in my opinion, the forecast is… interesting. The core of the show is obviously a Monster-of-the-Week with giant robots as the monsters. Maybe it’ll throw some surprises in there, give us a Kaiju or an in-person normal sized fight now and then, but the formula is clearly established: Roger is going to beat up multiple giant robots. In some ways this is a strength, it means Big O doesn’t have to devote every week to some single overarching story, it’s allowed to have one-off episodes to explore certain characters or ideas. That’s good! Batman did that! On the other hand, it’s a lot more awkward to fit in a giant robot fight every week than it is Batman beating up a criminal. Hell it felt a little awkward just in episode 2!

The big question then is, will Big O be able to balance this? Can we get consistent, weekly giant robot fights while still keeping the noir mystery that is so intrinsic to Big O’s DNA? For now it’s to early to tell. We’re only 2 episodes in, we just met the entire cast, we’re still getting to know the city and its people. That said if I had to guess, I’m hopeful. Big O is already setting up something of a rogues gallery, with Beck being its first member. If it can bring him back, start connecting his story to Roger and Dorothy personally the same way many of Batman’s villains are meant to be reflections of himself, than it shouldn’t be to hard to make the weekly robot fights work. If they get ignored however… Well we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

Speaking of Roger and Dorothy, lets talk about the cast for a moment! We’ve already been over how Roger is a blatant reference to Bruce Wayne in basically every way. So instead lets talk about his place in Paradigm city. Unlike Bruce, Roger actually has a job! He’s a, or possibly the, Negotiator! This was… A bit odd, honestly? How often do you need a 3rd party non-police affiliate to negotiate with criminals? And speaking of police, his relationship with them is odd too, as they appear to know he pilots Big O. In fact everyone seems to know he’s different, judging by his car, his watch, how people look up when he enters the street. He’s a known figure! This is a big difference compared to Bruce, who largely used his playboy persona to offset any suspicion he caused as Batman.

This is weird to me because one of Batman’s primary narratives was that of “Is he Batman or Bruce”. Now I get it, Roger isn’t Bruce, this isn’t Batman, I should stop comparing the 2 so much. But I do so because it raises a lot of questions about where Roger’s story might go. For example, while he doesn’t have the cowl or this question of identity, he does still the Big O and it’s larger than life, literally, power. Is this his cowl, is this how he sees himself? Is it perhaps what he wants to be? Or is there really nothing deeper than that playboy he presents to the world? My point is, The Big O has a lot of space room to play with Roger’s character, and I really hope it does so. I don’t want him to just be a playboy, I want their take on Bruce and how the power Roger wields affects him.

As for the rest of the cast, as much as I joking compared them to Batman’s earlier we don’t actually have much to go on. The police chief, Dastun, appears to be an old army/police buddy of Roger, though even they jokingly question those memories it seems. Meanwhile Norman is really just a convenient butler. The only other character with any kind of story is Dorothy, who isn’t all that emotive just yet. Still, I find Dorothy really interesting, as well as where Big O could go with her. There’s the obvious route of figuring out her emotions and becoming more and more human, Roger has already mistaken her for one multiple times just by her appearance. As cool as that Pinnochio-esque route might be though, I’m far more interested in Roger’s closing remarks and where that road might lead.

I’m of course talking about his passing comments regarding Wayneright (heh) and Soldano. One was her actual father, as well as her maker. Yet despite this he of all people knew she was fake, an imitation of someone he had already lost, a nightingale. The other meanwhile only raised/cared for her, as much as you can for a robot anyways, yet on his deathbed called her his “Daughter”. It’s a cool idea to play with, this idea of which was Dorothy’s actual father, as well as how she feels about it and family in general. Will she come to see Roger and Norman as family, on top of developing human emotions? Or will she be more connected to those robots, those Megadeus, as they seem to be called? I don’t know, but I think she easily has the most potential. Guess we will have to wait and see.

Finally we come to the overarching story of these two episodes, the “plot”. This was easily the most awkward part of the introduction. Roger being sent to negotiate the return of a rich man’s daughter, that ending up an android, which ends up as a robot fight, which turns into him following Dorothy and getting involved in the death of both of her fathers. The basic concept is fine but I feel like the details, such as Soldano and Wayneright who were barely even characters, could have been explored and fleshed out a tad more. Still even with those issues it sets the tone for the rest of the series rather well. A quick dose of tragedy, the death of 2 parental figures, as well as the introduction of the Megadeus. It does what it needs to do, just not elegantly.

So yeah, all in all I quite enjoyed these opening episodes. They weren’t perfect, like I said above it was a tad awkward at times. But it got what it needed to across, and I absolutely adore The Big O’s aesthetic, so it all worked out in the end. So long as it can balance the Monster-of-the-Week robots with some solid character progression I’ll be happy. I don’t even need some deep, full-length spanning plot, that’s not necessary. Instead Big O just needs to deliver on the characters and their journey through Paradigm city. Plus, even if that fails? We still get some noir art deco giant robot fights. So… win-win either way right?

Anyways, here’s hoping Big O can stay strong. I know the transition between seasons has some hiccups, but I’m honestly really looking forward to this. I remember watching Big O on Cartoon Network as a kid, but I never knew what it was really about, I couldn’t appreciate it. Here’s hoping that’s changed.