The Big O

The Big O is a mech anime that follows Roger Smith, Paradigm City's top Negotiator. He provides this much needed service with the help of an android named R. Dorothy Wayneright and his butler Norman Burg. When the need arises, Roger calls upon Big O, a giant relic from the city's past. The series is designed as a tribute to Japanese and Western shows from the 1960s and 1970s. The series is done in the style of Film Noir and the score is an eclectic mix of styles and musical homages.

The Big O premiered October 13, 1999 on WOWOW satellite television. It finished its run on January 19, 2000. The English language version premiered on Cartoon Network's Toonami on April 2, 2001. Originally the 26 episode series it is now, low viewership in Japan cut it down to the first 13 episodes. However, positive fan response internationally resulted in a second season co-produced by Cartoon Network, Sunrise, and Bandai Visual consisting of the remaining 13. Recently, The Official Toonami Tumblr stated that The Big O and FLCL will likely air on the current Toonami on Adult Swim.

Plot
Forty years prior to the events of the series, disaster struck. The world was turned into a vast desert wasteland and the survivors were left without memories. The story takes place in Paradigm City, a corporate police state run by the Paradigm Corporation. The town is recognized for its geodesic domes, giant structures that house the wealthier citizens and segregate the poor.

The Big O deals with the nature of memories. A memory is a record stored in the brain of an organism, but in Paradigm City memories can mean much more. "Memories"  embody the lost knowledge of its residents, and can take the form of records from before the Event, forgotten artifacts from the previous era or manifest themselves as recollection, hallucinations and recurring dreams.

The first half of the series is episodic (Much like Cowboy Bebop). Each Act revolves around different citizens of Paradigm dealing with the resurgence of lost Memories and how they manage to go on living without knowledge of what did or did not happen. The final episodes introduce elements that come into play during season two like the existence of people outside of Paradigm City, the nature of the Cataclysm that destroyed the world and the "Power of God wielded by the hand of man."

The second season takes an arc-based approach. Instead of self-contained stories like in season one, season two features a continuous storyline. The second season makes Alex Rosewater, CEO of the Paradigm Corporation, a direct antagonist to The Negotiator and introduces The Union, agents of a foreign power working within Paradigm.