The Big O, Episode 26
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS POST CONTAINS OPEN SPOILERS FOR THE BIG O.
Everything was Tomatoes. The End.
I saw The Big O for the first time over a year ago, and I was immediately captivated by it. How could one not be? The show is a classy mashup of Batman, film noire, Asimovian Science Fiction and mecha anime that meshes in a marvelous, unexpected way. The hero, Roger Smith, is dashing and debonair, the heroines, Dorothy and Angel, are wonderful foils, and the villains Schwarzwald and Alex Rosewater are as captivating as they are threatening.
The set up and follow through of the first season was sublime. Following that same Batman premise, Roger used his mech to fight monsters and solve crimes, all while looking great in his suit. The second season, however, left me in quite a bit of confusion. There were extended metaphors, the first episode began with an Evangelion-esque introspection by the protagonist, and the series' finale raised more questions than it could answer, its visuals at first offering me no end of frustration and agitation.
I believe, putting it simply, that all these tomatoes got to my head.
However, time moved on and those seeds remained planted as I went to watch other shows and have other experiences. I don't know how many of you are gardeners, but it happens to be one of the few things that really gives me pleasure, that truly satisfies me during my listless summer days. And yes, that means I tend to separate a section of my garden for the sake of a tomato crop. The funny thing about tomatoes is that they're an extremely virulent plant, or perhaps they simply get along quite well with the climate here in the Pacific Northwest. In the process of tending my garden, I've learned that tomato seeds can and do endure the intense heat that composting produces. When that compost is then mixed back into the soil, the tomato seeds can and do take root and grow up without any special attention. And so the questions The Big O left behind, fittingly like tomato seeds, survived my own negligence toward them over this span of time.
This last semester I had the opportunity to take a class on foreign literature, during which we saw Fritz Lang's expressionist film
Metropolis during a unit on symbolism. And I warrant that this experience was of the utmost experience because
The Big O is a series rich in symbolism and because
The Big O draws heavy influence from Metropolis for these symbols. There are a number of shared symbols and concepts immediately apparent, for instance the presence of a robot woman of critical importance to the plot, the separation of those who have and those who have not, Allan Gabriel's robotic hand, and most important of all, the design of The Bigs, specifically O and Venus.
The first image presented is the android Maria, from
Metropolis and the second is the face of Big Venus, from
The Big O. Note the similar crest to the head, as well as the prominence of the nose, mouth and eyes but replacement of ears with the mechanical. I'll go into the importance of this a little later, but I trust that these points are enough to illustrate the connection I'm talking about for the time being.
It isn't my intent to go through every single symbol in the show. Some of them are plain as day, like the horizontal hourglass mounted on a cross inside Big Fau, but I do want to take the time to see if I can't paint a lucid picture of what is going on in the end of the second season. To do so, I'm mostly just going to do my best to tie together my understanding of the concepts that were so heavily featured therein.
1. The Tomatoes. This one's actually fairly simple, I think, considering the amount of time spent on it in the second season. The Tomatoes are a metaphor used by Gordon Rosewater to explain his experiment. This experiment was conducted after the Calamity in an attempt to graft Memories into children. The children in the experiment were Tomatoes. Note that most of these children were in their early twenties at the time of the first season, when Alex Rosewater had the R-D assassinate them for speaking out about their memories. These children are the
second batch of tomatoes. I'll get to the first, later. Presumably, when the experiment was a success, the children were disbursed into the city until the memories were cultivated. The metaphor explains the main idea behind it all: in Paradigm City, tomatoes are a crop which had to be grown "synthetically." The natural stock had been lost during The Calamity, and so these new, synthetic tomatoes were not as good as actual tomatoes are. However, by continuing to farm them again and again, the tomatoes might one day regain their old flavor. Thus, by planting the memory fragments into children, they might one day grow into full fledged Memories again.
2. The Memories. So what, exactly, are Memories? I confess the show is never quite clear on it, so I think it would be most profitable to think of them as that self-same power source upon which all heroes in mecha operate. Whether it's the Light of your Soul, or Getter Rays, or Spiral Energy or just plain old Shonen Heart, it is clear that Memories are what make the world of Big O go round. As an added link in this concept, consider that the finale of the series places a great amount of focus on the fact that Memories are best found in human form. Just as the Spiral Energy is at its peak in human shape, Memories are clearest when inside humans, and yet, as Gordon points out, they are fragile things which are subject to human fraudulence and indulgence. The actual point is to make a point about what our memories mean to us, and what it means to be shackled to or break free from our pasts, but within the work itself it is best to consider that they are both your actual memories and a source of power and information. In
Metropolis, it is Maria's memories which allow her android to so fully take her place, and it is the memory of Hel, the protagonist's mother, which fuels the ambitions of the principal villains.
3. The Union. The concept of foreign survivors and powers is introduced late into the first season of The Big O. There's a lot of debate over who and what they are over the course of the series, but it ultimately boils down to this: The Union is
the first batch of tomatoes. Based on what Vera and Gordon talk about, these are the children who were rejected by Gordon and cast out, even beyond the domes and into the wastelands, to perish and die. Gordon implies to Vera that they may not exist at all, but his sanity is in question at that point, and it's hard to argue with the hand the Union has played in the series. It's clear that Alex makes a deal with them to get the parts necessary to make Big Fau, and equally clear that he breaks that deal, leading to Vera's arrival in the city. The finale itself takes place during the Union's assault upon Paradigm as retribution for Alex's betrayal, and Alex's own use of that assault to begin his reconstruction of the world in his image.
4. Alex Rosewater. It's unclear to me if Alex Rosewater actually was Gordon Rosewater's biological son or not. He is presented as being considerably older than the rest of the second batch of the tomatoes, and possibly older than the first batch. What is clear is that Alex was a resounding success. Alex's memories enabled him to pilot Big Fau, rendering him a Dominus, which is the show's term both for pilot and ruler. Note that all of the Domini have the power to exert great influence over the people of Paradigm. Schwarzwald's words stir up their hearts, Roger's actions the same, and Alex's sheer might cows them into obedience. Angel's power as one grants her the power to destroy the city and world itself. Alex betrays the Union not simply out of political spite, but because they are also children of Rosewater, the same as him and the rest of the tomatoes, and he cannot tolerate anyone other than himself being Gordon's child.
5. Roger and Angel. Last of all comes Roger and Angel. Gordon specifically says that the two of them are
not tomatoes. He claims that Angel is a memory, and says he has a contract with Roger. What contract? To speak to the director of the world's stage and negotiate with them for the sake of mankind. Or rather, to talk to God and negotiate with Him for mankind's survival. What follows is largely speculation, but here is what I think that really means.
I. Gordon Rosewater lied, and the contents of his book,
Metropolis, are the truth. The Calamity of Forty Years Ago really was a war of giant robots. During that great conflict, the Big Series of Megadeuses produced its fourth and most powerful archetype: Big Venus. We see in flashbacks frequent shots of the Big Three during this calamity, but scenes of Big Venus are shown only briefly during the final episode, wherein Big Venus is seen attacking Paradigm City. Gordon Rosewater's contract, then, was to ask Roger to beg Big Venus to spare the city. According to Roger's speech at the end of the series, it is likely that he, Roger, then wiped all of his own memories and in so doing all other memories in the world of the series. The assault was forestalled, Paradigm City was transformed into a gigantic stage, and the remainder of the world ruined. The final destruction was stalled and memories erased in the hopes that, free from them, mankind could avert its destruction and Roger could stop Angel.
II. The phrase "a bird which has lost its feathers will go back to the beast which it was before becoming a bird" is uttered several times in connection to Angel and Big Venus. From this, I suppose that, if Roger failed, Angel would return to being Big Venus and resume her destruction of the city. Much of the second season demonstrates a widening gulf between the two, and indeed a world which rejects Angel altogether. This isn't the only hint at Angel's true nature, either. When, in the episode about an angel coming to Paradigm city, Roger sees the debris, it appears to be part of one of the overhanging lamplights. As further evidence, Angel is dressed up as a director of a television show who is watching the events from a distance, making her The Director of the Stage which Gordon Rosewater had spoken of.
III. Upon Big Venus' revival, Roger takes up his contract one last time, now free of memories, and convinces Angel not to destroy the city. The ending scene shows Angel and Dorothy living in Paradigm City after that destruction. Roger still refers to it as the City of Amnesia, and from the wreckage we can tell that the city was either restored to the state it was in after Roger's battle with Alex or prior to the Calamity. Ultimately, everything within Paradigm City was created or influenced by the presence of Angel and Roger as part of Roger's contract with Gordon to dissuade Angel from destroying the City.
Roger's own identity is a source of great confusion, because at one point the finale seems to imply that Roger himself is an android, with a sequence of machines building numerous Roger Androids, but I believe that the true significance of this sequence is to pay homage to
Metropolis in which an android woman takes the place of her human counterpart, and suggest that Roger himself is at that moment fearing the loss of his own identity. The conflict of Maria and her mechanical self is one we can see in the conflict between Angel and Dorothy as well. The clash of living and machine is raised repeatedly in both works.
The film,
Metropolis, ends with Freder, the son of the powerful businessman Joh Fredersen, mediating between his father and the working class, in an ending that can either be uplifting or bleak depending upon your interpretation. One of the key themes of
Metropolis is "The Mediator between the Head and Hands Must be the Heart!" Is it any surprise, then, that the main character of
The Big O is Roger
The Negotiator? The Negotiation in the series may be similarly characterized as being between The Head (Angel, who is the Director, God, and The Memories) and The Hands (The People of Paradigm City, Gordon Rosewater, his farm and his crops). I would argue that, unlike
Metropolis, however, the ending to
The Big O is intended as something more clearly positive. I warn that I misunderstood the ending of Metropolis as such, too, but in this case I think the clarity is derived from the evident catharsis of Angel, freed from her own stresses, and from Roger's speech about how Memories, for all that they prove who and what we are, also bind us to the past and how we are better off without them if those bindings prove restrictive rather than enabling.
I could probably go on at length about other ways in which Metropolis figures into the ending of Big O, but I think I'd like to mull over that topic awhile longer before really addressing it in a bigger way. Maybe I'll even check out
Osamu Tezuka's own take on the work in 1949 or the 2001 anime adaptation loosely based thereon first.
There is one final thing I'd like to cover before finishing up.
6. Why Did It Get So Crazy In the Second Season?
Rather than just tell you it's because Chiaki J. Konaka had lost his marbles for an ancient, incredibly influential German silent film, I think you deserve to know at least that
The Big O was originally a show with very bad viewership in Japan, cutting its run from 26 episodes down to a mere 13. The show was saved, however, due to its immense popularity in the West, garnered because of its running on
Toonami. The Second Season was co-produced by Cartoon Network, and so the addition of their influences, input, and aid no doubt had a factor on numerous things. You'll notice right away a difference in a few voice actors and overall animation between the two seasons. I don't think that Cartoon Network's influence invalidates it, or meddles with it in a significant way, only that I think that the effort required to achieve that second season, and the requirements that came with it undoubtedly played some role in the very nature of the season.
Ultimately,
The Big O remains one of the absolute masterpieces of the Mecha genre, and this second viewing has done no more than increase my love of and appreciation for it. As I said before, I could go on and on about the worth of this work, but, as I believe I have long overstayed the brevity requisite for the soul of wit, I can only hope that this post helps to explain to others what the heck went down in that final season of the show.