Around 1995, Japanese animation (anime) began pouring into North America, Europe and across the globe in video form. Most of these titles were unknown outside of Japan and never covered by animation journals. Whether a title is highly popular or very obscure, a high-quality theatrical feature or a cheap and unimaginative direct-to-video release, they all look the same on a store shelf. Therefore, Animation World Magazine will regularly review several new releases (including re-releases not previously covered) that have merit and about which our readers should know.

The Big O. Volumes 1 - 4. © Sunrise Inc.

The Big O. Volumes 1 - 4.
TV series, 1999 - 2000. Director: Kazuyoshi Katayama. V.1, 4 episodes/100 minutes. V.2 - 4, 3 episodes/75 minutes each. Price & format: bilingual DVD $24.98. Distributor: Bandai Entertainment.

The Big O, 13 TV episodes, appeared on Japan's WOWOW cable channel from October 13, 1999 to January 19, 2000. It began in America on The Cartoon Network's Toonami bloc on April 5, 2001. Fans instantly noted its resemblance to both America's recent Batman Beyond and Japan's 1992-'95 OAV series Giant Robo. Director Katayama was the animation director on Giant Robo; and Sunrise, The Big O's production studio, has been a subcontractor for Warner Bros.' Batman: The Animated Series and other Batman/Superman TV cartoons.

The Fleischer/Famous Studio's old Superman theatrical cartoons might also be acknowledged. The Big O actually fits into Japanese cartoonists' recent love affair with "retro chic" or "steampunk" style science-fiction, with a 1930s look of giant circuit breakers, slamming pistons, vacuum tubes and noisily sparking electric arcs. Other popular examples during the past decade have been Steam Detectives, Kishin Corps and Giant Robo itself. The Big O may be set a hundred years in the future, with Asimovian androids almost indistinguishable from humans (with an R. for "robot" in front of their names), but it is a visual feast for connoisseurs of Art Deco, double-breasted suits, and the type of swank night clubs seen in 1930s movies, complete with a cocktail-lounge blues score. The plot of humanity rediscovering itself after being struck with total amnesia also goes back to the 1930s; the 1934 sci-fi novel Rebirth, by Thomas Calvert McClary.

The real star of The Big O is not its main hero, Roger Smith, but its setting. Paradigm City is a glass-domed city, which for the past forty years has been struggling out of the darkness of its inhabitants complete memory loss. Each episode is both an individual adventure and part of a serial, which gradually reveals what really happened to the city's inhabitants. There are clues that the truth is more bizarre than anyone suspects. The architecture and clothing styles are 1930s but there are both giant humanoid vehicles (the "giant robots") and intelligent androids. It is mentioned in episode 1 that nobody uses the city's old subway system any more, but it is not revealed until episode 4 that people cannot go into the subways; they have been psychologically conditioned with an unreasonable fear of going underground.