Stephen's Scribbles #1: "The Pleasing Decay of Paradigm City" (Patreon)

Nearly 15 years after The Big O premiered in 1999, Kazuyoshi Katayama, the series director, sat down with mangaka Hiro Sono for an interview. The two found a cozy café tucked away near the banks of the Samida River. As they sipped their coffees, Katayama discussed the show’s origins. Tellingly, he didn’t focus on characters or story decisions; instead, he repeatedly referred to its “style” and “image,” suggesting that the creative team prioritized aesthetics above all else. Which makes sense.

Since its debut, fans have lionized The Big O for its unique atmosphere and ponderous approach to storytelling. Bobduh, an animation critic, praises its “intelligent, aesthetically thrilling fusion of visual and narrative design.” Katayama and his creative partner, Keiichi Sato, were inspired by the pulpy “sci-fi films from the 1950s and 1960s” and wanted The Big O to feel retro. Hence the gadgetry and goofy robots.

However, perhaps The Big O owes more to the visual stylings of Western Romantic art than twentieth century pop culture. While the connection might seem arbitrary, The Big O shares a lot in common with aesthetic categories that dominated Europe over two centuries ago. Specifically, it employs a quality known as the “picturesque” to express the feelings of poignant isolation and haunting melancholy that permeate Paradigm City and contribute to its distinct mood.

“A Civilization Without a History”

The “picturesque” is tough to define. Unless you majored in art history or avidly read Byron or Shelley, you might lack the necessary context. Even critics well-versed in this stuff have difficulty labeling it. From the Italian pittoresco, which translates to “from a picture,” the picturesque captures the comfort one derives from quaint scenes in nature. Imagine hiking through a forest only to stumble upon a solitary cottage. Rabbits dart in between moss-eaten fence posts as a steady stream of smoke wafts from the chimney. The sun is rapidly setting, but for a moment you feel comforted by this delightful sight. That’s picturesque.

Unsurprisingly, artists who wanted to evoke this feeling gravitated to ruins, which formed “an important element within the visual vocabulary of the picturesque” (Tiffin 525). The European countryside, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was dotted with medieval structures—timeworn castles, hollowed-out monasteries, ancient abbeys—slowly being reclaimed by nature. These crumbling structures captured the public’s imagination. There’s something indescribably pleasing about dilapidation. As Paul Youngquist and Orrin Wang point out, “ruins invited spectators’ reflections on transience, death, and decay.” They provided an environment that encouraged idle contemplation, a place where travelers could feel the passage of time without interruption, establishing an almost spiritual sense of ease.

Romantic writers often incorporated the picturesque into their stories to appeal to a fervent readership. Think back to high school English and you’ll be reminded of similar scenes. Touring the Swiss countryside, Victor Frankenstein spots “ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains” and “cottages…peeping forth from among the trees.” The “principal feature” of Edgar Allan Poe’s titular Usher House “seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity,” its walls discolored and overspread with fungi. Even the narrator of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter waxes poetic about the “decayed wooden warehouses” and “public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture” that lined the streets of Salem, Massachusetts.

But what do these intellectual concepts have to do with The Big O? A lot, in fact.

In the first of his many monologues, Roger Smith introduces viewers to Paradigm City. “One day forty years ago,” he begins, “everyone here lost their memory of everything before that day.” The totality of human culture and knowledge was erased in an instant due to some mysterious event. The survivors, unmoored from the past, had to relearn existence all the while trying to make their way in a now unfamiliar world. The creative team at Sunrise used the conceit of collective amnesia to visually calibrate The Big O.

Paradigm City occupies a liminal space, positioned between a forgotten past and a nonexistent future. Its inhabitants live in a perpetual present without the comfort of nostalgia or the prospect of a better tomorrow. This world inhibits growth. As a result, people—and places—stagnate.

Outside the domes that house and protect the rich, the infrastructure of Paradigm falls deeper into disrepair. The once towering skyrises crumble against the inexorable march of time; bombed-out buildings, pockmarked and punctured with holes, sink further into obscurity. But even though these environments are bleak and desolate, there’s something quietly pleasing about them.

The locations Roger visits in his role as a Negotiator are imbued with a lost history. Time factors heavily into The Big O’s symbols and visual motifs. Roger keeps a series of hourglasses in his study. Norman routinely fixes the grandfather clock in the hall. Broken clocks, no longer ticking, punctuate the cityscape. These patterns are by no means accidental. They serve to highlight an existential loneliness that permeates a city wrecked by time.

This was all familiar territory for Masaru Ota, the show’s art director. Notably, he was also a background artist on Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96) and helped give Tokyo-III that eerily relatable yet otherworldly feel. Approaching The Big O with a similar eye, he created environments fit for idle contemplation. Whether it’s the denuded forest that surrounds Instro’s dilapidated family estate or the coastal buildings that have slipped into the sea, we’re encouraged to divorce ourselves from the immediate action to better appreciate the atmosphere.

This emphasis on visual storytelling was such a smart choice. Many episodes of The Big O start in media res and thus place viewers in an uncomfortable position of ignorance. The draw, the captivating force that pulls us through the circuitous narrative, is a desire to unravel the mysteries of Paradigm City. Roger mentions that the citizens are able to cope with the trauma of memory loss “only because they’ve gotten into the habit of not thinking about it.” But that doesn’t apply to the audience. In fact, one of the principal joys of The Big O is working through its many enigmas, even if we’re not always provided with concrete answers.

Like the decrepit castles that captivated and inspired past writers, The Big O provides viewers similar spaces to feel time’s inevitable passing and ponder life’s ineffable mysteries. And in a world that values on nonstop consumption, those quiet moments are invaluable.

Works Cited

“Anime x Tokusatsu: The Big O.” YouTube, uploaded by CHO Japan, 30 August

2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51efiPMmg5Q

Bobduh. “The Big O – Episode 5.” Wrong Every Time, 22 May 2020, wrongeverytime.com/2020/05/22/the-big-o-episode-5/.

Tiffin, Sarah. “Java's Ruined Candis and the British Picturesque Ideal.” Bulletin of

the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 72, no. 3, 2009, pp. 525–558.

Youngquist, Paul, and Orrin N.C Wang. “The Romance of Ruins.” Romantic Circles, Romantic Circles, romantic-circles.org/gallery/exhibit/romance-ruins.