The Big O Retrospective Review | A Misunderstood Masterpiece

[Music] the big o is a fantastic woefully underrated philosophical film noir drama whose discourse has been largely poisoned i've spent at least a decade frustrated not because people ask questions like what does the big o mean but rather because they act as though it doesn't mean anything because it's confusing and metaphysical people believe its themes are aimless and its identity purposeless i'm here today to set the record straight not only does the big o mean something but that something is great and i can prove it it's show time [Music] the big o takes place in paradigm city a city of amnesia 40 years ago everyone lost their memories everyone occasionally darkened fragments of these memories suddenly reappear in people's minds almost always leading to disaster no one's exactly sure what great cataclysm might have occurred to erase the past but everyone important wants to know everyone important is obsessed with those missing memories once them found and seeks them as the answer to all life's mysteries everyone except roger smith that is roger smith our protagonist doesn't think much of his forgotten memories or the world that was left behind unfortunately as a negotiator in paradigm city something of a mediator crossed with a detective he often finds himself confronting deeper and deeper secrets tangled within the societal and existential constructs of this reality he has a set of principles and morals he adheres to and clearly considers himself a stoic but his convictions and beliefs will be mercilessly tested and strained along the course of his journey such as the fate of a protagonist after all in true irony roger wants nothing to do with the memories of the past but he's haunted by frequent visions of a world long forgotten if only the other characters could see how horrifying these revelations are what they do to the human mind perhaps they wouldn't seek them so ravenously why is roger a negotiator why does he own a mansion why can he pilot the massive mech called megadeoses in universe known as the big o these questions gnaw at him when he wants nothing more than to leave them be perhaps the siren call will eventually pull him in roger is accompanied by r dorothy wainwright a machine whose past like rogers is equally shrouded in mystery being an android her capacity for human emotion and compassion is brought into question as well as what it means to love androids are different from humans in that unlike us their memories are tangible and can be stored in disks this is used throughout the series to question what memories truly are and what makes a human being the rest of the cast is largely comprised of roger's antagonists people who treat human memories like they're tangible physical things like they're a treasure to be grasped in the pursuit of power or absolution or an answer to the human legacy most prominently we have alex alex rosewater is the ruler of paradigm city he owns paradigm corporation and controls virtually everything that goes on he sees himself as a god with all the egotism and vanity of one alex is jealous of roger because roger can pilot the big o and alex doesn't yet have a megadeus of his own how can such a lowly negotiator have a big toy like that when the god doesn't throughout the series alex plans to revive his own machine of war big foul because he believes wielding its power is his birthright as the series progresses more and more is revealed about alex's psyche and we see him have temper tantrums and meltdowns peeling away the facade of dignity and revealing the entitled brat beneath alex believes more than anything that the memories he seeks will only prove him right alex's father gordon rosewater is the supposed architect of the world he's either missing his own memories or simply pretending to have lost them some many years ago he recreated society after the great cataclysm by implanting false memories into synthetic children raising them to live out their lives exactly as the people who had died 40 years ago or at least that's what it says in the book he wrote the book apparently also implies that the great cataclysm was caused by a war of the megadeos these massive machines which often reappear with fragments of memory however when confronted with the book gordon himself only says it's lies it's all lies that everything he wrote was a mere falsehood then we have the union the union led by a woman named vera believe that they're personally owed the memories sleeping inside paradigm city they're foreigners who were cast out into the desert after the great cataclysm and they demand their just dues more than that though they seek context for their suffering and they believe only the lost memories can provide it one of the union members known only as angel and a couple other aliases as she sees fit is roger's opposite and in many ways his counterpart angel desperately wants the memories from 40 years ago because she wants to know who she is like roger she's torn between two worlds do the memories matter do they not can she even go on without them angel switches allegiances beliefs and generally proves herself to be terminally unreliable throughout the series as she desperately seeks to validate her own existence we eventually learn this is because she's the living representation of human memory as fickle and beholden to doubt as possible finally there's schwarzwald a reporter who previously worked on paradigms payroll unlike every other antagonist schwarzwald seeks the memories for one reason and one reason only he wants to know the truth he finds knowledge its own reward and he's sickened by the humans of paradigm city who either distort the truth to obtain their ideal like alex or who hide from the truth to live in ignorance like roger he deliberately reawakens machines and powers beyond his comprehension with the intent to strike fear into the hearts of the citizens in paradigm city to force them to confront the truth and uh all right i almost forgot someone the big o himself the big o is a living manifestation of the great cataclysm a symbol of the tragedy 40 years ago throughout the series we see pilots in their megadeos at various stages of relationship but roger and the big o have obtained the only healthy equilibrium they respect each other's freedoms and stand for justice together this cast goes on a 26 episode journey to get their world rocked and learn valuable insights about the human condition along the way [Music] let's bite the bullet not everything makes traditional logical sense in the big o some things are left deliberately obtuse or metaphysical to serve the themes of the work but what does make sense a surprisingly large amount it's disheartening to see so many folks dismiss the series as nonsense when more questions are answered than left hanging and a lot of work has gone into laying proper foreshadowing and character development everything needed to understand the character motivations politics and most importantly the philosophy is either explained directly by one of the characters or easy to logically parse given surrounding contexts let's go over some examples what's the red balloon why does it appear after attacks on paradigm it's the calling card of the union who are the union terrorists from other nations who believe their owed a share of the memories sleeping in paradigm city why do they despise alex rosewater well they tried to negotiate a trade with alex but after he received the parts they sent him to make big foul he betrayed his contract with them why did he do that because as mentioned he's a vain little turd who believes the world is his for the taking and he's owed everything he could ever want without compromise why did the three mega deuces sent to deliver big foul's pieces attack roger upon arrival because roger is the union's greatest enemy he regularly destroys and deliberately buries the memories the union are so invested in why did the three mega deuces sent to deliver big foul's pieces later combined into one bigger megadeus to destroy paradigm because alex betrayed the union and the three mega deuces had a double function as a sleeper agent just in case the union was double crossed like that is it hard to follow i don't think so personally but more importantly does it make sense yes the motivations and priorities and behaviors of the characters all check out you can trace everyone's actions and words back as far as you like they still work in context there's a coherent story here if one bothers to connect the dots hearing a deliberately complex and engaging narrative dismissed as incomprehensible is always kind of infuriating the big o is reasonable and logical when it matters when it does finally forego physical traditional logic it only does so in service of its themes let's talk about those themes next [Music] season one of the big o is primarily concerned with anime mecca noir fun times there's surprising depth and intelligence on occasion but it's seemingly a work that exists just to give you a good time and experiment with an unusual setting the philosophy and the mystery is compelling but it's largely episodic then episode 13 hits episode 13 talks about the very thing a proper hero is supposed to be concerned with destiny a story to follow and outline the law of the universe obeying the universe's orders after all is as simple and natural as opening an umbrella in the rain roger who's never known the truth and never seriously thought about his history finds this existentially horrifying what is he meant to be who is he what is his destiny we end season 1 on a cliffhanger as he struggles with his very sense of self then episode 14 presents us with one of the wildest and most emotionally impactful character arcs i've ever seen finding himself on the losing end of a mega deus battle for the first time his adrenaline failing probably going into a fever from an untreated wound recently being assaulted by a dorothy lookalike and having spoken with gordon rosewater to learn details of his history roger breaks he recedes into his mind where a twisted vision of the past plays out he confronts many people and ideas from 40 years ago intertwined with the feverish ramblings of his sick psyche it's the picture of a man undone in glorious full color for nearly 20 straight minutes eventually roger learns what this is all about why he's seeing such horrifying things he spent the whole first season probably his whole life that he can remember playing the stoic straight man but recently due to the resurgence of his memories he's been confronted with terror for the very first time fear dread anxiety feelings of existential hopelessness that he tried to deny and push away at every opportunity and now that they've come knocking again louder than ever he can't run anymore finally seeing this seeing that his greatest enemy is himself and his aversion to introspection roger breaks free it doesn't matter what role he's meant to play it doesn't matter what his memories tell him he is what matters is that he likes being roger the negotiator and so he will end of story all these big questions inside him what am i who am i what does it all mean what is a human who cares it doesn't matter it never did it's all nonsense so make your own story up that's what we all do anyway every day of our lives this episode was also a very loud and clear warning of the show's themes it tells us up front that the validations we seek externally are never as important as self-realization and self-motivation humans are capable of standing tall with or without destiny to drive them some people choose to stand in the rain without an umbrella and that's what it means to be free episode 14 is effectively the big o's thesis it presents its argument that what matters is who we choose to be above all else no matter what life's designs have in store it may as well be the case that nothing happened 40 years ago that said the show certainly expands more on the theme in its finale to demonstrate exactly how serious it is about the scope of its assertions the characters all eventually come to understand through abstract terms that they're living inside a television series a fictional work created for the entertainment of others there probably was no great cataclysm paradigm isn't real the union isn't real the city isn't real none of it it's all a stage and they're all unwilling actors the memories everyone sought are empty nothingness that only exists to move the plot forward and this is the point at which most folks give up trying to understand the big o but i'll detail their folly to you right now using the show's own words schwarzwald and gordon alike touch on a key revelation to understanding the big o said in two different ways schwarzwald quotes hobbes in saying memory and imagination are but one thing which for diverse considerations have diverse names gordon goes into it more explicitly saying memories by nature are unreliable they'll degenerate and become fraudulent well inside people's minds people subconsciously create these stories called and it's true our human memories are only imagined recreations of events often misremembered in whole or in part fickle and subject to whim yet somehow they form a sense of identity for many memories command us tell us who we are decide our purpose in other words they are another destiny that binds us when we start to doubt our memories or misunderstand our past we tend to break in a variety of ways this show explicitly details the many ways that human beings could cope with the complete eradication of their memory living in a world without context and our protagonist roger smith has the right idea he manages to stay sane because he understands we're more than our memories a statement he expressed first way back in episode 14 where he loudly and proudly screams exactly that all right i'll give you my answer fine people are not ruled by their memories it's a sentiment we hear again in episode 26 repeated multiple times by multiple parties the purpose is clear to demonstrate our over-reliance on something as fickle as memory and show us that it's possible to live in spite of our past rather than be controlled by it the show bleeds memories with other abstract ideas into an amorphous mass and the characters all react with incredulity and heartbreak all of them except roger smith because he finally understands that's just our reality that's just the world we live in there's no need to fall apart over it the world shattering revelation that memories are intangible affects everyone differently but it hits angel the hardest engulfed in an identity crisis on the level of rogers from episode 14 she's tasked with piloting the final big big venus and directing the next reboot of the big o's universe roger's job his final negotiation is to convince angel to make a world of compassion and love with her new might so he stands on the edge of oblivion pleading with her not to worry though we may lose our memories angel it'll be all right we still have our freedom the freedom to love ourselves for who we truly are big o and a big venus embrace negotiations are complete and a new universe is born this time one without megadeos where angel lives happily alongside roger and dorothy and that's the big o by showing us a world without memories the big o holds a mirror to us all it shows us how reliant we are on such an abstract fallible concept like memories how every decision we make is weighed upon by mere imagination memories aren't tangible and they're insufficient to base our entire personhood and all our future ambitions on so live now as the person you want to be go on believing there is a you not because destiny or your memories tell you so but because you choose to because you love yourself [Music] howdy you've made it to the end of the video or at least the part of the video where the main content is over and i get to talk to you about other things uh some odds and ends first the uh the footage in this video was taken from the big o dvd box set you can get the big o in much higher quality and i do think the blu-ray release looks absolutely gorgeous especially the remastered first season so that's worth looking into if you want to watch it um also i would recommend watching the english dub that's a rarity for me but the guttural passion in the delivery of the english dub just far outstrips any of the acting in the japanese version if you've watched the final scene in japanese you really aren't experiencing it to its fullest potential and i have a discord server now i'll put a link down down in the description to that a discord server is a new thing for me but we'll see how it goes i just figured i'd try the idea out i'm not super attached but we'll see also there are some pieces of the show i neglected to draw attention to in this video like the class struggle subplot and its commentary on how power and memories affect people differently depending on their status upbringing and personal contentment it's good stuff though lastly there are some people out there who think the ending is only bizarre because the network wanted to leave room for a third season and no no you just aren't grasping it the ending is the culmination of the show's purpose if you cared about the ending making perfect sense you're exactly like alex or angel or the union you're placing too much weight on something that ultimately doesn't matter and the show is a criticism toward that ravenous black and white mindset the biggo's narrative is concluded and its theme's fully explored that doesn't usually happen by accident and now it's time to talk about my patreon i have several lovely supporters and i'll be listing them for you now my wonderful supporters are ipompus anonymous jay marth sinclair mighty minimalist power rangers sam anderson sum calmianto and waposa there's a link to the patreon in the description thank you all so much for your time and the thoughts and i'll talk to you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Addy Lovestar

Views: 13,708

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Id: oqVJGa_68e8

Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2022