esque, technology with vacuum tubes, computers with lots of wires and typewriter like keys, and retro-looking giant robots. If Cyberpunk, Raypunkm and Diselpunk, combined and made a desaturated noir detective story, this is what you'd get. It's fantastic.
The characters stand out the most. Each is mature, acts like an adult, and there's a real sense of mystery and paranoia in the city they live in, as people both don't remember what happened 40 years ago, but some mysteriously do seem to recover fragments of "memory" which often makes them a target. Most of our main characters seem to have a more mysterious past than the viewer, or even the characters themselves, realize. And most of the characters are terrified of finding out what is truly in that hidden past. Each character both is what they are now, but also an enigma because of what lies hidden within them.
Our hero, Roger Smith is a professional negotiator by day, secret giant robot pilot by night. Slick, black suit wearing, and genuinely gentlemanly. The two ladies in his life are android named Dorthy, a mysterious blonde woman named Angel. His best male friend is an old police Colonel former comrade, and his butler. The mecha battles are fantastic. One of the things I usually hate about mecha anime, is that the giant robots usually don't move and feel like they actually are huge and have mass. In the Big O, the mecha are huge, lumbering, slow moving, and pneumatic and mechanical in their feel. These are not Gundam race cars. These are slow lumbering tanks. And the result is fantastic as you really feel a sense of weight and power behind them when things are damaged and destroyed.
But the mecha is in some ways not the primary aspect of the story. As you work your way through the episodes, you keep getting little hints of the wider mystery of this world and characters and more reveals. In season 2 things start to really ramp up with the story.
The music is fantastic too, with some of the most memorably soundtracks of any anime. Tracks are recycled, but tastefully so, and it always adds to the tension and excitement.
Overall, I highly recommend this anime, a true noir, and not to be missed for a mecha. Even if you don't like mecha (and I usually don't), you will probably like this.
