Welcome all, to week 2 of The Big O! This week we get to travel outside the city, as well as beneath it, and meet both a new villain and femme fatale. There’s plenty to talk about this week so lets dive right in!
First up we have episode 3, “Electric City”. Much to my surprise, not 3 episodes in, we’re already taking a peek outside of Paradigm City, getting a look at the outside world. And what do we find? In some ways, regression. The people of Electric City have started to believe in myths and legends, refusing to power the dam out of fear of angering a god. Yet that doesn’t really work when you learn not only that this god is real, but in fact manmade. The consequences of science gone to far perhaps, back before everyone lost their memories. Knowing that, this is more like oppression than regression. These people, trapped under the thumb of a parasite that’s siphoning off what little power they have, holding their city back from its true glory. It makes you wonder a bit if Paradigm City is in a similar way.
Getting back to the episode, the core of it is Roger being hired to investigate a power plant/dam and get it up and running again. The locals rebuff him, he investigates, gets knocked out, someone else sneaks in and turns it on, we meet the God, kaiju fight, bada bing bada boom episode done. This is all solid enough. I especially liked that our Monster of the Week was a giant kaiju sort of thing rather than another robot. It adds some spice to it, as well as changing what we can expect down the line. Big O isn’t just going to be robot on robot violence. And even if they are robots, maybe they will be more creative than bipedal giants you know? It shows that Big O isn’t afraid to get creative with the designs/fights, and that’s cool.
As for what’s going on outside the fight, the big one is that we meet Angel, Big O’s Cat Woman. I’m not to sure what to think of her yet sadly, she hasn’t done much. Tricked Roger into this job as a distraction so she could turn on the power plant, sure. But she ended up needing to be saved and, in the end, really only drew him into a conflict that probably could have been avoided. Still she appears to be good at infiltration, changing names and jobs like other people change clothes. My hope is that she remains a consistent part of the cast, eventually meeting Dorothy and it becoming this big ensemble thing. And it already looks like that’s happening as she shows up in episode 4 as well, if only briefly. Suffice to say, she’s fine but we haven’t gotten much to love yet.
Speaking of Dorothy, this episode also kicks off what I think is going to be her primary arc. Remember last week when I said I hoped Big O really dived into what it means to be human for her? Well that’s happening, as the episode kicks off critiquing her music for lacking the “passion” a human might. How she plays it robotically, perfectly, just like it’s written on the sheet. It’s imitation, nothing more. Yet at the end, despite not being around for the rest of the episode, we hear her playing the blues. It’s still an imitation, still robotically perfect. Yet she’s playing it because she wants to, because she feels like she should. It’s a small thing, sure. Almost inconsequential. And the progression happened off screen. But it’s happening. And it gives me hope that it will continue to do so, eventually making its way into the limelight.
This brings us to episode 4, “Underground Terror”. Where episode 3 took us outside of Paradigm City, episode 4 takes us underneath it. We explore the very tunnels Big O travels through, as well as the darkness beneath. This was… interesting. Big O wasn’t terribly clear about it, but it seems as if these tunnels have an almost supernatural effect to them. Anyone who walks them is forced to confront their past or is driven mad, explaining why no one lives there and why the Big O is so well hidden and it’s arrival is always so imposing. In a way it’s like a communal PTSD. Like before the event that wiped everyone’s memories they were huddled down there, like a bomb shelter of sorts. Only the event was so great and traumatic everyone blocked the memories, with revisiting the location triggering them once again. It’s kinda cool!
Beyond that, this episode also introduces a new villain, Schwarzewald. This guy is like a mix between the Riddler and the Joker. He has an insatiable desire to know the truth of what happened to Paradigm City, to expose it to the world. Yet in his quest for it he was seemingly driven mad by it. Personally? I like this guy! His design is a bit wacky with that triangle head of his, but much like Joker is a foil for Batman, Schwarzewald feels well positioned to become a foil for Roger. His goals are ultimately noble, to bring the truth of the city to light, but his methods are anything but and the consequences if he succeeds might be worse still. Meanwhile Roger, despite being ultimately good, is sort of maintaining the status quo with his actions and actively avoids reflecting on his past. I can only hope Big O does more with this, because I assume he isn’t dead. Not that easily.
Moving on, in his quest to find Schwarzewald Roger stumbles upon an expo-hall, a “City of Tomorrow” deal of sorts, in the tunnels. It has a banner, a miniature replica of Paradigm City and even an “archetype” of what would eventually become the Megadeus’. To create all of this, it’s clear that Paradigm City was once a bastion of technology, a place at the forefront from innovation. However it most likely lost all of that at the same time its citizens lost their memories. It makes you wonder a bit what Schwarzewald was looking for down here. Big O is a tad unclear on that, did he want to control the archetype or perhaps figure out what it was? I’m not sure so if you have any ideas leave a comment below, I’d love to chat about it. As despite the rest of it’s brilliance, Big O can be obtuse at times.
As for Dorothy’s place in all of this, Big O continues a bit of her humanization this episode as well as her strange connection to the Megadeus’. It seems that it wasn’t just her sister, Dorothy 2 or whatever, the she could connect to but all of them? At the very least the archetype which, upon detecting her, woke up. This isn’t even something Schwarzewald was prepared for it seemed, as it lunged for against everyone’s control. This is interesting because it means that while she can communicate with them, they are still their own beings sort of. The archetype was moving of its own free will, with its own goal. Does that mean the Megadeus’ have some kind of limited sentience? Is that “Ye Not Guilty” thing every time Big O powers on not just a tag-line but an actual judgement of Roger by Big O, deeming him worthy to pilot it? I don’t know, but the more Big O reveals the more questions I have, which is good this early on.
Finally this episode also revealed the existence of the Rosewaters, a family that controls the Paradigm company and, by extension, Paradigm city. While they didn’t do much this week, Big O is clearly setting them up to be our “big bads” of the show. From requesting Roger retrieve Schwarzewalds manuscript, something they don’t want published, to watching over the city from their ivory tower. Everything about them screams “villain”. I assume that as we go our episodic stories will involve them more and more, just as episode 4 did with requests coming directly from them. Maybe sometime soon we will even get to meet one of them in person and learn precisely why it is Roger is so hesitant to work for them. Is it just not wanting to get involved? Or does he have some past experiences we don’t yet know about? Only time will tell.
All in all these were 2 very solid episode. Big O continues to look great, I love the heavy blacks, the heavy line work, the art deco and noir stylings. And the fights are still great, with plenty of big bombastic movements fitting these giant powerful machines. If anything I’m surprised just how quickly Big O is pulling us into some kind of larger narrative. I thought for certain that it would be filled with a few smaller arcs before diving into a grand finale sort of thing near the end. Instead it appears to be structured such that every “little” investigation all ties back to a single central story. That’s dangerous, as it means Big O has to plan things out well in advance. But if it can pull it off than Big O’s narrative might be much stronger than I was expecting.
