Review: ‘The Big O: The Complete Collection’ on Blu-ray

There is a weird thing that happens as you get older where you become nostalgic about parts of your life that were actually horrible. You’ll romanticize the art and aesthetic of the timeframe, despite how fucking terrible it was, and you’ll find resonance in things other people are flatly incapable of liking. It’s hard for me to fairly review The Big O, most likely, because of that exact phenomena. Because of that nostalgia, and my love of re-buying things I love over and over, I found myself holding a copy of the new high definition Blu-ray re-release of The Big O and informing my daughter that this would be the next show we watched during our nightly Family Anime Hour.

The Big O is a show that was largely inspired by the classic Batman: The Animated Series of the nineties. Bizarrely, it was also animated by the same studio that was contracted to help animate that classic series, so it not only is inspired by that classic steam-punk and noir Batman vibe, it resembles a cross between late 90’s anime fused with that style of art. For those already familiar with The Big O, I can tell you that the Blu-ray reissue presents this material more crisply than ever before. The show looks, and sounds, fantastic.

The only real misstep I can point to at all in this presentation is the classic theme song, a gratuitous rip off of Queen, has been replaced by a different song by the same composer, a 60’s garage rock-up which I honestly do like better than the original theme, but some fans might find off-putting if they are a purist. English and Japanese voices are available (with subs for the Japanese audio, naturally). If you haven’t seen the series with the original Japanese cast, I thoroughly encourage you to do so… The performance of Dorothy, in particular, is much stronger in the original audio.

I’m somewhat of a layman when it comes to anime, but I’ve never really seen another show I can compare directly to The Big O… it’s not like most mech-based shows that I’ve seen in that these are not graceful machines kicking the shit out of each other… these are huge, industrial monstrosities with more in common with early Godzilla films than any futuristic space-war bots. When The Big O shows up, he’s stomping around, falling into buildings and probably doing as much damage as the “villain.” The narrative, meanwhile, focuses less on the bots and more on confused, scared and frequently impoverished people struggling to come to terms with a reality they don’t understand, while being manipulated by people with more power and influence than they can begin to realize.

As the show works towards its (many would say baffling) conclusion, you’ll find yourself struggling to find answers for more questions than the series is EVER going to grant you closure for. I loved debating the meaning with folks, and thumbing through the opaque symbolism of the finale. It just made me love the show more. This is a show that thrives on a moody aesthetic, and these fan theories are as fun for me as watching the show itself.

When the second season was picked up, Cartoon Network had the option for a full twenty six more episodes, but couldn’t justify the expense to make them, so, much like Firefly, the series finale builds to a new beginning that never really gets to start. Given the jump of several years between the first and second season, I haven’t TOTALLY given up, especially since there seems to be a new wave of interest in this classic series in the wake of the Blu-ray reissue and as they say, the show must go on.