The Big O Showtime: Roger The Wanderer

Before I start, a big shoutout to Paradigm City.com for providing the images in all these reviews. The most comprehensive Big O fansite on the web, check it out.

Season two starts right where we left off, with Roger engaged in combat with three strange megadeuses. All the while our supporting cast raise more questions about the setting and our mysterious protagonist. You know, how did he meet Big O? How do we know there are no people outside of Paradigm City? Is anything we know actually true? etc. etc. It's actually a pretty effective way to get us back into the show, reminding us of the core ideas of the show and reacquainting us with the cast. But things take a turn for the worse when one of the attacking megadeuses bites off Big O's damn arm. Before we know it, Big O is getting zapped with lightning bolts and Roger has a tomato-related freakout and he wakes up in... 40s New York?

GODDAMNIT, EVERY TIME I THINK I'VE FIGURED OUT THIS DAMN SHOW THEY THROW ME ANOTHER FUCKING CURVEBALL!!!!!!!!!!!

My god,  I'm not bitchin looking anymore!

At least Roger is as confused as I am. He has no idea how he got there or why he looks homeless. It's very disconcerting to see our usually well-dressed leading man looking like a bum all episode. He starts wandering around New York, only to find his house. It's a bank now, managed by Beck of all people. But Beck's not Beck, at least not the Beck we know. And he doesn't recognize Roger either. The same thing happens when he sees Dorothy, a human Dorothy!?!?, later who doesn't recognize him either.

Just what the hell is going on? Well, here's where things go post-modern.

So while trying to figure out what's going on, Roger thinks back to the first time he met Norman and Big O. Now I think what happens is that Roger quits the police, picks out an abandoned bank building to live in and Norman's already there. Norman tells Roger about Big O and tells him to activate it. I say I think this is what's going on because Roger's flashback is presented as a stage play. In visual media like anime presenting events in things like stage plays or on televisions is a visual cue to the audience that those events may not be necessarily true. This is reinforced right after the stage play flashback when Roger sees his past life as a Negotiator as a comic strip in a newspaper. And given how we've already been questioning what is real, this is just pulling one more foundation out from under us.

This is the worst production of Cabaret I've ever seen.

Now suffering from ontological trauma (well more than usual), Roger decides he must be an actor. Everyone in Paradigm City is. There aren't the people they think they are, just playing parts from Memories. He was never Roger Smith, he was just an actor who thought he was Roger Smith. And funny thing is, on a meta-level that's true. After all, Roger Smith is just a character. Just ink and paint on cels, voiced by Steve Blum. So this scene could be interpreted as Roger becoming aware of his own fictional nature. Taken out of his usual environment (or setting) and with no script to guide him, Roger is lost and begins to question who he is more than he ever did back in Paradigm.

But the audience is confused enough already so thankfully this doesn't last long. Angel who's not Angel picks up Roger, calling him Major for some reason, and takes him underground. This causes him to have another panic attack like way back in Episode 4. Roger realizes he's been trying to deny something about himself. So he accepts his possibly fictitious nature and decides that if Roger Smith is the part people want him to play, then he'll play it gladly. I like this, it really fits with Roger's previously established character. He survived in Paradigm City by deciding it didn't matter what Memories he had lost or who he used to be, he was going to be Roger Smith because that's who he was now. So his possibly learning that he's fictitious and Roger Smith is just a part he plays but deciding to play the part anyway makes total sense with his established character. It's also a very postmodern idea to give up the search for objective truth and embrace a self-created identity.

Hi, I'm Crispin Freeman. I'll be your new recurring villain. 

Anyway, this snaps Roger back to reality. Or the reality the show had established. Or... we're back in Paradigm fighting the three megadeuses. Even having gone through an existential crisis and being down an arm, Roger defeats them easily. Rosewater the Younger is quite happy about this, sending a weird guy in pinstripes to retrieve them. All according to his mysterious plan presumably. Two things. One, Rosewater calls these gifts and Dastun said they were foreign Megadeuses. So we can infer that there is life outside of Paradigm City, despite what we've been told, and whoever's out there is apparently helping Rosewater. Two, did Rosewater want this to happen to Roger? I don't know but I have a theory.

I think what might have happened to Roger is had a Memory experience. You know those things that drive people crazy. Having your life and past revealed as nothing more than play-acting would be enough to make someone crazy. So maybe Roger was experiencing a Memory reveal but was able to accept his fictional nature and so didn't go crazy. Maybe. I still don't know why Rosewater would want to do that to Roger though. I had another theory I was going to go into, but my brain hurts enough for now. Overall, this was an interesting look into Roger and raises many philosophical questions about the setting and show. It's a lot to chew on and there aren't any easy answers, so I don't think it's a very good season opener or introduction to the show. But if you've been following the show it adds more depth to the proceedings, even if we're just falling deeper down the rabbit hole. Hopefully we'll come up for air and get some answers soon.