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Re-watching Big O


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Forgot how bad the dialogue was....nostalgia is real though

 

Which version are you watching? The only one I've been able to watch has the actual content relegated to a corner of the window and is speeded-up ridiculously!

 

If you found one that runs at normal speed and fills the whole window, let me know...

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Which version are you watching? The only one I've been able to watch has the actual content relegated to a corner of the window and is speeded-up ridiculously!

 

If you found one that runs at normal speed and fills the whole window, let me know...

The show was just released on Blu-ray by Sentai Filmworks.
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The show was just released on Blu-ray by Sentai Filmworks.

 

Right, right, I get that, but...

 

I saw it on youtube and thought, "why not"

 

I forgot how much I liked the noir feel of the animation and music

 

I was watching this back in my early teens....time flies

 

See what I'm saying?

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Which version are you watching? The only one I've been able to watch has the actual content relegated to a corner of the window and is speeded-up ridiculously!

 

If you found one that runs at normal speed and fills the whole window, let me know...

 

yeah, this version is good

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZJOSlgodgA&list=PLgf6FjoX48LrzBGG8v7IVMelHUySmxhbR

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Just finished and it's as much of a non ending now as it was when I first watched it...can someone explain it to me?

 

The best explanation I've seen is ....

 

It'd been hinted at the whole time in Gordon Rosewater's cryptic lines, and loads of terms and names in the series are references to Computer Science and theatre (Paradigm, Big O, the show must go on etc)

As I remember it, the idea was that Paradigm WAS a computer simulation similar to the matrix, a "stage" as it were.

 

The 'cataclysm 40 years ago' happened, but not 40 years ago, devastating much of the world. Nobody has any real memories of what happened because it was an indefinite amount of time ago, and ever since, new iterations of paradigm have been made (the machinery underneath paradigm and metaphorically the stage lights above it) again and again (hence the flashbacks roger has about beck in Roger's house as a bank). The metaphor for this is Gordon Rosewater's tomato crop, which he says is synthetically reproduced with "only the sweet memory of the original". The idea is that by breeding the best tomatoes again and again they will eventually get sweeter and more natural until eventually they're indistinguishable from the real thing. The memory fragments that characters have are literally what remains the original people from before the cataclysm, implanted into them. When things aren't right, the system tends toward destruction, normally involving the megadeuses, which is why there are persistent memories of a robot war wherein these giant sentient robots destroy humanity- this never actually happened, but the system is designed in a way that the robots are the only constants and act as check devices central to every iteration, wherein if things go wrong with the "tomato crop" (the simulation and the people inside it), eventually the system will tend toward their use, overuse, and eventual destruction, causing Big Venus, the 'Director' program, to reset the simulation- this explains the strange scenes in the theatre sets hidden underground: Angel is actually closer to a program than a human, which is why we see that all of her memories of her childhood have been falsified. In the finale, when Alex Rosewater and Roger are fighting they practically destroy paradigm and with two of the megadeuses out of commission, the situation becomes untennable and the simulation gets reset by Big Venus: In the penultimate scene, we see a weird metaphorical scene of Angel, the "show director" in a control room, resetting the simulation before she's paused by Roger and Dorothy. The explanation for this is that, in the journey of the series, he has performed his role in the show perfectly and by the end of it has come as close to the original Roger Smith as is possible or necessary, and Angel knows this now, meaning that Roger will go unchanged. Big Venus then resets the simulation, wiping Angel and Roger's memories of the events and allowing them, indistinguishable replicates of the original people (Gordon Rosewater's natural "tomatoes"), to continue performing their roles unaltered as the simulation runs again and again, waiting for the rest of the crop (the population of paradigm city, such as Alex Rosewater, who was a perfect expression of a glitch in this system that needs to be 'negotiated with', because his reluctance to be "another one of Gordon Rosewater's tomatoes" was what drove him to obtain Big Fau and wage war for domination of Paradigm City) to catch up with them, until the megadeuses are no longer necessary, everyone is as they once were prior to the cataclysm, and paradigm city can continue human civilization as it would have. This is why the final scene is exactly the same as the first scene of the first episode, wherein we are told that Roger (now identical to the original Roger) performs the much needed job of negotiator (between the unknown past of the people of paradigm city and the future of the simulation) in Paradigm city, and will continue to do so (the show must go on) until the people of the city no longer have need of his services, and the past and the present have "come to terms".

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The best explanation I've seen is ....

 

It'd been hinted at the whole time in Gordon Rosewater's cryptic lines, and loads of terms and names in the series are references to Computer Science and theatre (Paradigm, Big O, the show must go on etc)

As I remember it, the idea was that Paradigm WAS a computer simulation similar to the matrix, a "stage" as it were.

 

The 'cataclysm 40 years ago' happened, but not 40 years ago, devastating much of the world. Nobody has any real memories of what happened because it was an indefinite amount of time ago, and ever since, new iterations of paradigm have been made (the machinery underneath paradigm and metaphorically the stage lights above it) again and again (hence the flashbacks roger has about beck in Roger's house as a bank). The metaphor for this is Gordon Rosewater's tomato crop, which he says is synthetically reproduced with "only the sweet memory of the original". The idea is that by breeding the best tomatoes again and again they will eventually get sweeter and more natural until eventually they're indistinguishable from the real thing. The memory fragments that characters have are literally what remains the original people from before the cataclysm, implanted into them. When things aren't right, the system tends toward destruction, normally involving the megadeuses, which is why there are persistent memories of a robot war wherein these giant sentient robots destroy humanity- this never actually happened, but the system is designed in a way that the robots are the only constants and act as check devices central to every iteration, wherein if things go wrong with the "tomato crop" (the simulation and the people inside it), eventually the system will tend toward their use, overuse, and eventual destruction, causing Big Venus, the 'Director' program, to reset the simulation- this explains the strange scenes in the theatre sets hidden underground: Angel is actually closer to a program than a human, which is why we see that all of her memories of her childhood have been falsified. In the finale, when Alex Rosewater and Roger are fighting they practically destroy paradigm and with two of the megadeuses out of commission, the situation becomes untennable and the simulation gets reset by Big Venus: In the penultimate scene, we see a weird metaphorical scene of Angel, the "show director" in a control room, resetting the simulation before she's paused by Roger and Dorothy. The explanation for this is that, in the journey of the series, he has performed his role in the show perfectly and by the end of it has come as close to the original Roger Smith as is possible or necessary, and Angel knows this now, meaning that Roger will go unchanged. Big Venus then resets the simulation, wiping Angel and Roger's memories of the events and allowing them, indistinguishable replicates of the original people (Gordon Rosewater's natural "tomatoes"), to continue performing their roles unaltered as the simulation runs again and again, waiting for the rest of the crop (the population of paradigm city, such as Alex Rosewater, who was a perfect expression of a glitch in this system that needs to be 'negotiated with', because his reluctance to be "another one of Gordon Rosewater's tomatoes" was what drove him to obtain Big Fau and wage war for domination of Paradigm City) to catch up with them, until the megadeuses are no longer necessary, everyone is as they once were prior to the cataclysm, and paradigm city can continue human civilization as it would have. This is why the final scene is exactly the same as the first scene of the first episode, wherein we are told that Roger (now identical to the original Roger) performs the much needed job of negotiator (between the unknown past of the people of paradigm city and the future of the simulation) in Paradigm city, and will continue to do so (the show must go on) until the people of the city no longer have need of his services, and the past and the present have "come to terms".

this is the only explaination that makes sense
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Nice write-up, and I'll buy a lot of what it's selling.  The one bit that doesn't completely jive with how I view the series is the bit about Paradigm existing to keep incrementally improving the "tomato crop" of people until they become an exact match of the people from before Paradigm became...whatever it is now.  Not that I think it's wrong or anything, but I just can't recall a whole lot of narrative support for it.  I've felt for a long time that episode 14, "Roger the Wanderer," contained some of the most important material for piecing everything together.  There's a great line Roger has in there: "It feels like I'm behind the times, or maybe it's the other way around."  I think that's us getting a glimpse of the "real" Paradigm, before the catastrophe and domes and artificial holographic stage.  Maybe that's just me though.

 

Man, back in the ancient buried days of forums past I wrote what to be like a 5000-word essay on the show, in which I probably said nothing useful whatsoever.  I wonder if that still exists anywhere...

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"The second season was scripted by Chiaki Konaka with input from the American producers.[7][10] Along with the 13 episodes of season two, Cartoon Network had an option for 26 additional episodes to be written by Konaka,[11] but according to Jason DeMarco, executive producer for season two, the middling ratings and DVD sales in the United States and Japan made any further episodes impossible to be produced.[12]"

 

I also read something about how after the Big Venus reset Dorothy was going to be human, so her and Roger could be together.

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