The Big O

(from my old collection of anime reviews circa 2003) Sci-fi retro mecha film-noir. Season 1: This show oozes retro cool, and feels very much like the animated Batman. Stylish, intriguing, it's set in a city where everyone's lost their past memories. Dorothy is great. Season 2: Still interesting, but not nearly as nice as the first season, largely because the mystery of the situation is "solved" in an unsatisfying manner, and much too slowly at that for a cop-out ending. While I understand the show is largely about mecha, I thought the other bits had enough potential that it would stray from this. But alas it doesn't, and the fixation gets a bit tedious. The music gets a bit repetitive, but the voices are nice. Not enough character development, which was its strength in the first season, but still decently entertaining.