Forum - View topicBig O, It's Show Time!
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joel_s95387
Posts: 1804 Location: California... The Village Hidden In The Porn |
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I've been watching Big O every night and I think it's an awesome show that no one talks about. All the people/anime fans I know hate the show. "The robots are slow", "The story sucks" is all I hear when I used to ask them if they saw it the night before. The complete collection DVDs are still available at my local Best Buy and they have been since their release dates because no one buys them. Tonights show was awesome, Episode 12, and I was just wondering if anyone else likes Big O since I'm the only one where I'm from that does. I havn't seen the 2nd season in a while and I can't remember most of it but I rememeber not liking it too much myself because I was lost, I hadn't seen the last couple of episodes of the first season, but the first season is gold IMO.
If Big O was shown after Gigantor, Big O would feel like the greatest show ever. Was the Gigantor show ever famous? I remember the box sets being released but even those sold before Big O. Ye Not Guilty |
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Fiction Alchemist
Posts: 438 |
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DELETED.
Last edited by Fiction Alchemist on Thu Sep 08, 2022 7:36 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Starwind Amada
Posts: 981 Location: Easton, PA, USA |
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Big O - just think of it as Batman with a Gundam. Then it'll seem cool to you.
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Glory Questor
 Posts: 456 |
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It's not just "Batman meets Gundam" -- it pretty much fits right in with RahXephon and Evangelion in the "think about it" Giant Robot genre.
Look at the setup: A city in ruins and a populace with no memory. In 40 years, they learn how to operate their machines again, and soon flashes of memory begin to surface. Pretty much everything is a blank slate. The mysteries as to why Paradigm City and its people are this way form the core of how it revolves around Roger Smith. While only hinted at during the first season, it's at the end of the second season that the whole mystery is finally revealed, and the revelations are as mindblowing as the aforementioned other Giant Robot shows. (btw, can someone explain why there are fans pushing for a Season Three? After seeing it, I thought Season Two wrapped everything in the story up nicely.) |
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ShellBullet
 Posts: 1051 Location: I hit things, with my fist. |
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Agreed, there is no reason to revisit the Big O universe, everything was wrapped up with the second season, and I doubt it was ever a big merchandising machine, obviating that reason...
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Necros Antiquor
 Posts: 571 Location: Funny in a car crash sort of way |
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IMO, the first season of Big O seemed to mainly set-up and establish clearly the mysteries, atmosphere, and characters of the series with some important plot points thrown in at certain points. On its own, it was an amusing series, but it wasn't fulfilling. Once they got the second season they had hoped for, they were able to complete the story in a much more fulfilling manner, and all the "useless" fights of the first season suddenly have some relevence.
I also thought that the second season wrapped up nicely, and I think it would be wrong to continue it. To be fair, that Save Big O website (forgot what it was exactly) pointed out a lot of things that were unanswered, even beyond the conclusions you were supposed to draw for yourself. Drawings from the official Big O companion booklet were shown that depicted extremely detailed drawings of the Behemoth (why would they plan it so carefully compared to other enemies?) and a very suspiscious cross-section shot of Paradaigm City that showed, spoiler[in addition to the lights above the city and the abandonded subways underneath the city, massive, gigantic machinery and gears far below the surface]. That certainly piqued my interest. However, the show wrapped itself up too nicely to bring up these points again, and I can only reference the fact that the director was hoping that he would get two new seasons instead of one to finish his story. (I believe something to that effect was said on the Save Big O site.) |
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totalgeek
Posts: 307 Location: Raleigh, NC |
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I enjoyed Big O and in fact it is what turned me on to Anime. However, I don't think it bears repeated viewings (at least not more than 3).
The reason I didn't LOVE the series (and only LIKED it) is because I'm pretty tired of giant robot shows. I watched Voltron and Robotech back in the day, and I'm just not into the formulaic nature of 95% of all giant robot shows. While I understand the show is called "Big O", I would have preferred more time be devoted to the overall story (which I thought was really interesting) and less time to the robot vs robot battles. Every episode I would watch with fascination for the first part of the story, then as soon as the 20-minute mark hit I'd hear Roger yell, "BIG O! SHOWTIME!" and just turn off the TV for five minutes or so. Big O could have had a greater impact on Anime if the story had gotten more attention as opposed to looking like episodes of Batman with a giant robot battle edited onto the end of every show. |
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bahamut623
 Posts: 1463 |
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This show is pretty old, but its one of the best, if not the best anime(at least top 3) I have seen. Also one of the best giant robot shows. I love this show, but I'll stop myself cause i could go on for hours about it.
The ending is kinda confusing at first. I watched it a second tiem after reading spoiler[Descartes] in philosophy (the name itself isnt a spoiler, but if you know who he is, it could be a major spoiler. If you dont know his name, wait til after the show if you wanna look him up) and it made perfect sense. And the fact that it applied so closely to something i learned in school made it really interesting. |
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Super Arrow
 Posts: 334 Location: Australia |
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Incidentally didn't some of the Crew from Batman: The Animated Series have a hand in this?
You FAIL at Mecha.
Fans want more even when that would defy all logic. See: any Dragonball Z after Namek.
I'm not a "Robotech" expert but Macross is far from formulaic. |
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totalgeek
Posts: 307 Location: Raleigh, NC |
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What I meant by formulaic is that most giant robot shows seem to have twenty minutes of story and then have 5 minutes of robot battle at the end of the episode. While 20:5 seems like a good ratio, I feel like the robots interfere with what was becoming an interesting plot. Rather than spend the five minutes to resolve the plot they decide to end the episode with robots beating the crap out of each other. It is like the animators had ADHD. I wouldn't mind giant robot battles if they just weren't so gratuitous in their execution. Rather than fighting in almost every episode, they should only have the robots fight every few episodes. But, then, I guess that would defeat the point of it being considered a show about robots. |
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Necros Antiquor
Posts: 571 Location: Funny in a car crash sort of way |
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Well, in a typical story structure, the plot builds conflict during what is called the rising action. This conflict keeps building and eventually has to be resolved in the climax, and then there's a bit of downtime after the climax called the falling action. Many animes conform in some way to this story structure, even shows like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: SAC. To put it in perspective, let's say you're sitting around. Someone walks over and starts poking you in the head, and you tell them to stop. This is conflict. They keep poking you for about 5 minutes, even though you try to ignore them. Your tension rises, conflict flares even greater, and suddenly, you just punch the guy out. This is the climax. Then, the guy passes out and you walk away. This is the falling action (and sets up the possibility for a sequel where the guy comes back! Oo!) See how that was natural? Big O usually made sense in that way, though there were, of course, creative deviations from this standard. Also, I have to point out the last episodes were a mixture of giant robot battles and major plot revelations at the same time. |
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.Sy
Posts: 1266 |
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In the early days of my fandom of anime, I watched the show and I admit I liked it. However, it's not the type of show that really leaves a deep imprint in my mind. I did however especially like the voice-acting for the show. Roger Smith's voice fit him perfectly, and the same could be said for Dorothy. The biggest pet peeve I have with this show is the poor animation quality, and sometimes even poorer quality drawings. Sometimes the art was alright, but other times, they seemed to be hastily scrawled. There was this one scene where they showed a woman's hand peeking out from beneath a blanket (she was on a stretcher and presumably dead), and the fingers were drawn like spikes. Yeesh. As for the plot, I think I've already said that it just didn't leave a deep imprint. A lot of shows get very intense even if they start out with a quiet atmosphere, but I just didn't see Big O breaking out like that. I have the timer set up for next week to include Big O, so hopefully this time I can catch the ending.
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Kouji
 Posts: 978 |
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I only saw some of the first season of Big O when it was aired on Toonami and it's been a while since I've seen it so I don't remember a whole lot about it, but I remember liking it a lot when it was on. I liked the whole Batman-style mystery thing to it. It made it a more interesting than your usual mecha series to me. Even though I never saw the Japanese version to compare it to, I thought it had a very good dub, even edited. The voice artists seemed to fit the characters really well and I don't recall ever cringing while watching it. I would like to see it again someday, especially the second season, but right now there's too many other anime series out there that I care more about seeing.
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