The Big O Showtime: We Have Come to Terms

Going into The Big O, I wasn't sure what to expect. Most of what I knew focused on Batman parallels and the mind screwiness. But for something legendarily weird and confusing, I found it very easy to follow along. If you'd been paying attention anyway. But even besides watching the puzzle of Paradigm City unfold, I found the show very enjoyable. It had everything you could want. Memorable characters, fantastic music and good giant robot fights.

But let's be honest, it's the crazy mystery stuff that everyone remembers. And the thing that's most interesting to talk about. I've brought up Philip K Dick a few times in these articles, but this really feels like something he would write. Mostly because of the Gnostic themes and the determinism vs. free will stuff but also in the questioning of memory, distrust of large controlling organizations, and the humanity of machines. All of this gives the series a more sophisticated feel than most anime, that haven't explored these issues and themes in depth before.

I want this action figure so bad now

If nothing else, I have to thank this series for introducing to R Dorothy Wayneright. Admittedly, I am a sucker for emotionless robot girls but Dorothy quickly became my favorite character for just how much she went against the stereotype. Most robot girls, not just in anime, are only there for fanservice and comic relief. Most often as the butt of jokes. But kudos to the writers for taking the high ground with Dorothy, making her a character in her own right and using Roger as the butt of her jokes. That's another great thing about her, Dorothy's snarky as hell. I'm also glad they didn't put her into a romantic relationship with Roger as it would have felt cliche. Platonic relationships between men and women are rare in fiction, and even more rare between older men and younger women, so it was a welcome change that Roger and Dorothy were always on an equal level with each other and had a love for each other. It just wasn't a romantic love. Their relationship was made clear in Episode 18 when Dorothy had to rescue Roger from Beck, the same thing he did for her back in the first episode. Honestly I could write a whole essay on why Dorothy is awesome. But we have other things to talk about.

I mentioned that the show has a lot of Gnostic themes to it, so I suppose I ought to explain what Gnosticism is. Have you seen The Matrix? Okay, then you've got the gist of Gnosticism. The basic idea is that reality is actually an illusion and humans should strive for enlightenment (called Gnosis) and escape the false reality. That false reality is controlled by a being called the Demiurge, who thinks he is the one true god (he isn't, he was created by another supreme being) and exercises his will over the illusion to keep humanity trapped. By the way, the Demiurge is usually seen as the monotheistic Judeo-Christian God, that'll be important later.

Director at work

Okay, so if you've been following the show you can see how this applies. Seeking the truth (enlightenment to the true nature of reality) and spreading it to others was Schwarzwald's whole motivation. Though he had a lot of Nietzsche too. But yeah, Paradigm City is a stage and all its citizens are actors. Their reality is an illusion by its very nature. Only a few are able to reach enlightenment, and they are seen as mad by the rest. This something that plays into the determinism vs. free will theme, but we'll get to that. The enlightened's ostracization is because of the control of the Demiurge, and in Big O the Demiurge is clearly Rosewater. He is the head of the Paradigm Group, the masters of the city, who keep the population in line and the poor suffering so they won't try to find the truth. And like the Demiurge is seen as the Judeo-Christian God, Rosewater plays into the same messianic myth when he tries to take over the city. We went over this before. And like the Demiurge, he believes he is the true master of reality when he's just another creation of the true god.

And this is where we come to Angel and what happened in the finale. In Gnosticism the actual supreme being is a being called Sophia, a female goddess representing knowledge belonging to a group of divine spirits. Sophia became trapped in the illusory material universe after trying to create on her own. This allowed her creation, the Demiurge, to take control of the universe. The only way for her to escape is for everyone to reach enlightenment. Because she tried to create new spirits alone, Sophia has been seen as a kind of fallen angel much like Lucifer. Clearly Angel is representative of Sophia in the series. She is the writer and director of the show that is Paradigm, who somehow became trapped in the very show she created. It's only when she reaches enlightenment, remembering the true nature of reality, that she is able to return to her divine position. And because she regains her true nature, the illusion ends. The holodeck program comes to a close.

Ebony & Ivory, come together
in perfect harmony

But if Angel is Sophia, the actual person controlling everything, why has Paradigm gone through so many incarnations? Well my theory is that Angel has been trying to force the citizens into enlightenment. She keeps creating Paradigm, hoping the citizens will reach Gnosis and escape but each time a Demiurge arises and they destroy themselves. Meaning she has to start all over. This could also explain why she put Roger in as the Negotiator between her and the citizens. Because he is an unknowing robot, he can exist as a human in the setting and learn what the experience is like from their perspective. Then he can bring this information to Angel and she can change the program enough to bring about Gnosis.

And this brings us back to determinism vs free will. As Angel uses Big Venus to dissolve the current Paradigm, Roger uses his role as Negotiator to do just what I explained. Every version of Paradigm so far has been deterministic. Determinism states there is no such thing as free will, what we think of as free will is actually determined long before by a number of subconscious and social factors. Basically, all our decisions have been decided beforehand by our personal programming. Angel has written out all of Paradigm's citizens fates beforehand, that's how a script works. She's put them in a position, amnesiac in a strange haunted city, where she thinks they have no choice but to seek the truth and reach Gnosis. So when she escapes her own illusion and the rest don't, she feels she has no choice but to start all over.

Roger's girls

This is where Roger's role as Negotiator comes in. As Big Venus ends the program, he explains to Angel that she had it wrong. She can't force people into enlightenment. They need free will to decide it for themselves. You can't just strip someone of their identity, leave them with no ground to stand on and expect them to seek the truth. Like Schwarzwald says in his speech, they'll just cower from fear and slowly destroy themselves. The people need to know who they are, now in the present, then they can move forward and seek the truth. Roger's purpose was to live in the program and learn this. At the end he's negotiating to Angel on behalf of her characters. She can't just start all over again, they'll just be caught in the cycle. Only by allowing the citizens of Paradigm agency can they move forward.

Phew. Lot to decode in this show. But rewarding if you give it the time. And though some questions still remained unanswered, overall I'm very satisfied by how the show ended. It was nowhere near as confusing and infuriating as I'd been led to believe. Though one question does still bug me. If everything was just a simulation, a holodeck play with Angel as its director, who was the Audience?

Thank you, dear readers, for joining me on this journey. It's been a long trip, but a philosophically nourishing one. I hope you've enjoyed it and I've given you some new ideas to chew on. Until next time.