Saturday, July 6, 2013

The Big O Showtime: Electric City


Giant Electric Eel monster? What the hell?

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. There's a few new things introduced in this episode I should talk about first. Like the opening credits. They're all right, I like the newspaper effect they're going for, but the repetition of silhouettes moving across the screen gets old fast. And I wish the theme song had more lyrics than "Big O" repeated over and over.

One of the strongest elements in the show so far is the repartee between Roger and Dorothy. Their bickering is wicked entertaining and it all comes from their characters rubbing against each other. This is present in the opening scene where they get some humorous back-and-forth. And Norman, Roger's butler who's been mostly in the background, gets a good line or two in here as well. Good writing here.

Two other elements are introduced this episode that don't have much impact here, but I think will have more of a presence down the road. First, the Paradigm Group. Apparently this is some kind of shady corporate entity that controls most of the city. Roger talks about them with obvious disdain, saying they only care about the domes which I guess are just for rich people, so we can assume whoever these guys are they aren't exactly on the up & up. Like I said, they don't do much in this episode but this is definitely some world-building that's going to come back.

Then there's Angel, the blonde in the pink Emma Peel getup. She's a mysterious one. Initially she gives Roger his job for the episode, saying she's from the Paradigm Group and using a fake name. But she shows up later while Roger's investigating, admitting that she lied to him and was using him for something. To turn the power for the city back on, I guess. And it's not exactly clear if she does work for the Group or not, so I'm not sure what the writers are trying to do with her. She does has a distinctive design though. That's usually a sign in animation that a character will be recurring, so I bet she shows up again. If nothing else, Wendee Lee does a good job voicing her, playing up the mysterious spy babe angle, and with Steve Blum playing Roger it's cool to have a mini Cowboy Bebop reunion.

Now about that giant eel. Yeah, at the climax of the episode the Big O ends up fighting a giant electricity-eating eel monster. What. The. Fuck? I know we're only three episodes in, but this doesn't really fit with what the show's established. It does look cool and the fight shows how hard it would be for a human-shaped weapon to fight a serpentine monster, but all I can think is how weird this is.

Seriously, WTF?
Like I guessed yesterday, it's because of a Memory. Specifically the one of an old guy Roger has some nice moments with. He was a scientist before the event 40 years ago and the Memory caused him to create the giant eel monster. Angel even brings a sample of it back to the Group. Between this and Dorothy's Memory-inspired creation, what sort of crazy science were they up to 40 years ago? Was stuff like this normal? Roger calls the monster a Titan, so I assume there are more monsters like this. This is one thing I really hope they elaborate on because seriously, what the hell?

One last thing, not only is the monster called a Titan but some of the civilians tell Roger it's a god. This, along with people referring to Big O as "Megadeus" (which they pronounce "deuce") indicates a theological element that hadn't been present before. If they continue with it, I'm interested in seeing where it goes. It could add some cool symbolic depth to the story. We'll see where things go tomorrow in Episode 4.

No comments:

Post a Comment