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

Almost everyone has their own holiday media tradition this time of year. For most, it’s usually a movie introduced to them by a loved one when they were young — usually something along the lines of a Christmas Story, Home aloneor It’s a beautiful life. Something that broadly captures what you might call the “spirit” of the season. For me, my Winter Holidays media tradition is rewatching one of my favorite episodes – if not my favorite episode – from one of my absolute favorite TV shows: the 1999 neo-noir mecha anime The big O.

For those unfamiliar, here is some necessary background information. Co-designed by designer Keiichi Sato (Tiger & Rabbit) and animation director Kazuyoshi Katayama (Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still) under the pseudonym Hajime Yatate, The big O follows Roger Smith, a freelance negotiator and private investigator who lives and works in a post-apocalyptic metropolis called Paradigm City. Forty years prior to the events of the series, civilization was destroyed in a catastrophic war between giant robots (known as “Megadeuses”) that ended in the wake of an unknown event that mysteriously wiped the memories of everyone on the planet.

Credit: Sunrise/Sentai Filmworks

While occasionally acting as an intermediary between Paradigm’s military police and the city’s criminal elements, Roger secretly hires himself out as the vigilante pilot of a gargantuan black robot with club fists and purple laser eyes called the Big O. With the help of his butler mechanic Norman and his android sidekick Dorothy Roger battles a rogue gallery of villains bent on exhuming and reviving the technology that once destroyed the world for their own nefarious ends.

As far as anime premise goes, The big O‘s is particularly intriguing; one given to the show’s writers, led by series lead writer Chiaki J. Konaka (serial tests), the freedom to explore a wealth of stories that touched on everything from the stark class divide between the city’s elite and its impoverished populace, to the ephemeral permanence of love without memory. In relation to this essay, it’s also a premise that begs an equally intriguing question: How do you tell a Christmas Carol set in a post-apocalyptic world where nobody remembers anything from 40 years ago?

Credit: Sunrise/Sentai Filmworks

The answer, revealed in “Daemonseed,” the 11th installment of the series, is simple: Christmas is no longer Christmas but “Heaven’s Day” – a holiday created to celebrate the anniversary of Paradigm City’s founding . The episode begins with Roger walking through a busy mall days before the city’s holiday to pick up Dorothy, who he believes is running errands. Unbeknownst to him, Dorothy buys a Heaven’s Day gift for Roger, who despises the holiday for its artificiality and for its tacit celebration of the Paradigm Corporation, the monopolistic organization that effectively rules the city with impunity. When Alex Rosewater, the chairman of Paradigm and the true antagonist of the series, receives a letter threatening disaster on the eve of Heaven’s Day, Roger is hired to help the military police apprehend the culprit and start a suspected attack on to prevent the city.

What I love about this episode, both as a Christmas episode and as a standalone story, is how much it reveals something new, not only about Roger’s character and his beliefs, but also about the world of the series itself. After meeting Rosewater, Roger learns from his friend Maj. Dan Dastun that a second undisclosed letter was also sent to Rosewater citing a passage from the biblical Book of Revelation. At this point, the series drops a metaphorical bombshell on its audience: Neither Roger nor Dastun – or presumably anyone in town – knows what the Book of Revelation is, save for a few and perhaps the most powerful members of Alex Rosewater’s inner circle . It’s a deceptively brief exchange that hints at big implications, one that frames the Paradigm Corporation’s role as an entity analogous to that of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, preserving knowledge that would otherwise have been lost while disseminating that knowledge selectively and is suppressed in the service of one’s own interests.

Credit: Sunrise/Sentai Filmworks

Aside from his contribution to the world building of The big O, Despite its menacing-sounding title, “Daemonseed” is a heartwarming and at times quietly moving episode that explores why people celebrate holidays in the first place and lands on an unspoken emotion that runs deeper than any concern of consumer culture. While searching for the author of the letter, Roger and Dorothy encounter Oliver, a struggling street saxophonist, and his blind friend Laura. Roger tracks the picture printed on the letter to a ruined church just outside Oliver and Laura’s apartment and learns that the elderly in the neighborhood regularly gather there to sing, although no one seems to know exactly why or what they are singing about.

“She said the old men don’t know what they’re singing when they sing,” Roger says to himself as he stands in the shadow of the church tower. “But they just keep singing the songs from the book.” While Roger seems to resent that behavior, believing all memories of the world 40 years ago are a nuisance that plagues the present with the kind of questions that only make life harder make, the scene itself is one in which the show invites the audience to stop and reflect on these very questions, no matter how difficult they may be. What is faith without memory? Is the reciting of these songs and rituals an act of foolish nostalgia in itself, or does it address a deeper and more essential need that underlies the human compulsion to seek the company of others and to offer gifts in the spirit of community? For me, it’s an episode that raises all of these questions and more, no matter how many times I come back to it. That’s a big part of why I feel so compelled to revisit it this time of year.

And beyond those broader existential questions, “Daemonseed” is still an episode of a giant robot anime and as such you can be sure to see a giant robot smash the shit out of a giant evil Christmas tree. As I mentioned earlier, “Daemonseed” is an exceptional sequel to The big Obut one of my absolute favorite parts that I haven’t touched on yet is how the climax of the fight during the episode’s finale features one of the few instances where Roger’s opponent isn’t a mechanical foil for Big O, but an organic one.

At the beginning of the episode we see a crazy man in a Santa Claus outfit meet Oliver on his way home. This man is the culprit behind the letter to Rosewater, and after learning that Oliver will be in the city’s central dome on Heaven Day, he gives Oliver what appears to be a strange emerald gemstone. Only later does it emerge that this “gem” is actually a seed housing an invasive organism destined to destroy the dome and everything around it. The scene in which the Daemonseed is awakened is spectacular, as tentacle-like tendrils squirm out of Oliver’s pocket while he’s apparently playing his saxophone, before transforming into a colossal pulsating mass of destructive power.

Credit: Sunrise/Sentai Filmworks

The fight between Big O and the Daemonseed is one of the most breathtaking in the show’s first season, with Roger exhausting almost every weapon and tactic in his arsenal as he attempts to fend off this creature. However, the battle ends in a stalemate, with the Daemonseed falling apart after achieving its true goal: destroying the dome that surrounds that part of the city that is obscuring the sky above them. The final scene itself is a touching coda, in which Oliver tearfully reunites with Laura, bystanders marvel at the sight of the massive tree as snow falls from the crack in the dome, and Dorothy and Roger exchange gifts while Oliver plays a saxophone Cover of “Jingle Plays Bells” in the background.

Not only is “Daemonseed” an inventive take on a Christmas episode, it’s one of my all-time favorites and one that I enthusiastically recommend to anyone curious about the series. It might not be the best standalone introduction to the anime – I still contend that the first and second episodes are the best place to start – but it’s a great episode nonetheless, which illustrates the many qualities that make you who you are The big O one of my favorite animes to this day.

The big O is available for streaming HIDE.