The Big O’s Christmas episode understands the spirit of the season

Round this time of yr, nearly everybody’s received their very own go-to vacation media custom. For many, it’s normally a movie launched to them by a beloved one at an early age — usually someplace alongside the traces of A Christmas Story, Residence Alone, or It’s a Fantastic Life. One thing that, by and enormous, captures what one may name the “spirit” of the season. For me, my winter vacation media custom is rewatching one in every of my favourite — if not my favourite — episodes from one in every of my all-time favourite TV collection: the 1999 neo-noir mecha anime The Massive O.

For these unfamiliar, right here’s some mandatory background. Co-created by designer Keiichi Sato (Tiger & Bunny) and animation director Kazuyoshi Katayama (Big Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Nonetheless) beneath the pseudonym Hajime Yatate, The Massive O follows Roger Smith, a contract negotiator and personal investigator who lives and works in a postapocalyptic metropolis generally known as Paradigm Metropolis. Forty years previous to the occasions of the collection, civilization was destroyed in a cataclysmic warfare waged between big robots (generally known as “Megadeuses”) which ended within the wake of an unknown occasion that mysteriously wiped the reminiscences of each human being on the planet.

Picture: Dawn/Sentai Filmworks

Whereas often appearing as a mediator between Paradigm’s army police and town’s prison ingredient, Roger secretly moonlights because the vigilante pilot of a huge, piston-fisted black robotic with purple laser eyes referred to as Massive O. With assistance from his butler-mechanic Norman and his android sidekick Dorothy, Roger battles in opposition to a rogues’ gallery of villains who want to exhume and resurrect the expertise that after destroyed the world for their very own nefarious ends.

So far as anime premises go, The Massive O’s is an particularly fascinating one; one which gave the present’s writers, led by head collection author Chiaki J. Konaka (Serial Experiments Lain), the liberty to discover a wealth of tales that touched on every thing from the stark class divisions between town’s elite and its impoverished populace to the ephemeral persistence of affection within the absence of reminiscence. Because it pertains to this essay, it’s additionally a premise that raises an equally fascinating query: How do you inform a Christmas story set in a postapocalyptic world the place nobody remembers something previous to 40 years in the past?

Picture: Dawn/Sentai Filmworks

The reply, as revealed in “Daemonseed,” the 11th episode of the collection, is easy: Christmas is not Christmas, however moderately “Heaven’s Day” — a vacation created to rejoice the anniversary of Paradigm Metropolis’s founding. The episode opens with Roger strolling by way of a bustling purchasing middle days earlier than town’s vacation celebration to select up Dorothy, who he believes is out working errands. Unbeknownst to him, Dorothy is looking for a Heaven’s Day current for Roger, who despises the vacation on account of its artificiality and for its tacit celebration of the Paradigm Company, the monopolistic group which successfully guidelines town with impunity. When Alex Rosewater, the chairman of Paradigm and the collection’ true antagonist, receives a letter threatening a catastrophe on the eve of Heaven’s Day, Roger is employed to help the army police in apprehending the wrongdoer and forestall a suspected assault on town.

What I really like about this episode, each as a Christmas episode and as a stand-alone story, is how a lot it reveals one thing new not solely about Roger’s character and his beliefs, however concerning the world of the collection itself. Following his assembly with Rosewater, Roger is instructed by his pal Maj. Dan Dastun {that a} second undisclosed letter was additionally despatched to Rosewater that cited a passage from the biblical E book of Revelation. It’s at this level that the collection drops a metaphorical bombshell on its viewers: Neither Roger nor Dastun — or presumably, for that matter, anybody within the metropolis — is aware of what the E book of Revelation is, save for a choose few and maybe probably the most highly effective members of Alex Rosewater’s internal circle. It’s a deceptively quick alternate that gestures towards main implications, one which frames the function of the Paradigm Company as an entity analogous to that of the Catholic Church throughout the Darkish Ages, preserving information that will in any other case have been misplaced whereas selectively disseminating and suppressing mentioned information within the service of its personal pursuits.

Picture: Dawn/Sentai Filmworks

Except for its contribution to the world-building of The Massive O, “Daemonseed,” despite its ominous-sounding title, is a heartwarming and at factors quietly shifting episode that probes on the query of why folks rejoice holidays in any respect, and lands on a unstated sentiment extra profound than any concern of client tradition. Whereas looking for the creator of the letter, Roger and Dorothy cross paths with Oliver, a struggling avenue saxophonist and his blind girlfriend, Laura. Tracing the picture printed on the letter to a destroyed church simply exterior Oliver and Laura’s condominium, Roger is instructed that the aged within the neighborhood recurrently collect there to sing, although nobody appears to know why or what it’s precisely they sing about.

“She mentioned the outdated males, after they sing, don’t know what they’re praising,” Roger says to himself whereas standing within the shadow of the church’s steeple. “However they only proceed to sing the songs within the guide regardless.” Whereas Roger appears to dismiss this habits, believing that any reminiscences of the world previous to 40 years in the past are a nuisance that afflict the current with the form of questions that solely make life tougher, the scene itself is one through which the collection invitations the viewers themselves to pause and mirror on these very questions, troublesome although they is perhaps. What’s religion within the absence of reminiscence? Is the act of reciting these songs and rituals itself an act of silly nostalgia, or does it communicate to some deeper and extra important want that underlies the human compulsion to hunt out the corporate of others and provide items within the spirit of communion? For me, it’s an episode that prompts all these questions and extra, regardless of what number of instances I return to it. Which is a big a part of why I discover myself so compelled to rewatch it round this time of yr.

Picture: Dawn/Sentai Filmworks

Picture: Dawn/Sentai Filmworks

And past these broader existential questions, “Daemonseed” remains to be an episode of a large robotic anime and as such, you’ll be able to relaxation assured you’re gonna see a large robotic beat the shit out of a large evil Christmas tree. As I’ve touched on earlier than, “Daemonseed” is an distinctive episode of The Massive O, however one in every of my absolute favourite elements that I haven’t but touched on is how the climactic battle throughout the episode’s finale options one of many few cases the place Roger’s opponent just isn’t a mechanical foil to Massive O, however an natural one.

Early within the episode, we see what seems to be a crazed man in a Santa Claus outfit cross paths with Oliver whereas strolling dwelling. This man is the wrongdoer behind the letter despatched to Rosewater, and after studying that Oliver will probably be contained in the central dome enclosure of town on Heaven’s Day, he offers Oliver what seems to be to be an odd emerald gem. It’s solely later that it’s revealed that this “gem” is in truth a seed housing an invasive organism designed to destroy the dome and every thing round it. The scene of the Daemonseed being woke up is spectacular, as tentacle-like vines writhe from out of Oliver’s pocket as he clearly performs his sax earlier than morphing right into a colossal pulsating mass of harmful energy.

Picture: Dawn/Sentai Filmworks

The battle between Massive O and the Daemonseed is among the most beautiful within the collection’ first season, with Roger exhausting almost each weapon and tactic in his arsenal as he makes an attempt to fend off this creature. The battle, nevertheless, ends in a stalemate, with the Daemonseed disintegrating after having completed its true aim: destroying the dome surrounding that part of town that obscures the sky overhead. The ultimate scene itself is a touching coda, with Oliver tearfully reuniting with Laura, bystanders marveling on the sight of the huge tree as snow falls from the fissure within the dome, and Dorothy and Roger exchanging items whereas Oliver performs a saxophone cowl of “Jingle Bells” within the background.

“Daemonseed” isn’t simply an ingenious tackle a Christmas episode, it’s one in every of my all-time favorites and one which I enthusiastically suggest to anybody curious concerning the collection. It is probably not the most effective stand-alone introduction to the anime — I nonetheless preserve that the primary and second episodes are the most effective place to begin — however it’s nonetheless a terrific episode that exemplifies the numerous qualities that make The Massive O one in every of my favourite anime to at the present time.

The Massive O is on the market to stream on HIDIVE.