Underbase : NSX : Index
Was this page useful, or did a search engine steer you wrong? What would you like to see? Drop me a line!
Last updated 6-apr-2001
PARADIGM CITY is a city of amnesia. 40 years ago, everyone lost their episodic memory; those with mechanical skills were able to survive. Today, those memories sometimes return, usually with disastrous results. ROGER ---- is a wealthy private professional negotiator, a go-between in cases of ransom. He's also the secret pilot of BIG O, a Megadeuce-class giant robot remaining from the prior era, which he transports via the city's disused subway tunnels.
Anime, half-hour, TV-Y7-FV. Aired on The Cartoon Network's "Toonami" block starting 2-apr-2001.
Hostage ransom, Dorothy, Beck. Father. Rocket money briefcase. Informant. Visit from MP general. She asks for his protection. Go to factory, find hole in floor, man in control room. Beck arrives, fires missile; lock-on warning. Dorothy draws fire. Car missiles. "Roger ----: you are a louse." Robot attacks bank, tentacles, printing plates. Old man in street. Dorothy seems oddly drawn to robot. Calls Big O ("Forged in the image of good. Ye not guilty."), battles it, pile-drives chest. "So long -- Dottie!" MPs try to arrest, drops out of sight.
Subway, Big O transport. Informant, Nightingale. Dorothy and Waynewright at Nightingale Club, Roger sneaks in, Beck. Kidnap, taser. Dorothy I active again. Punches face, finds Dorothy II in use as power regulator, pulls her out. Traces remote control, grabs van with Beck, drops it to MPs. Dorothy joins household to pay off contract. She looks at her dress, at Norman's jacket, at Roger's dressing gown. "Your sense of fashion, Roger: really reeks."
Assaulted by strident piano music from the parlor, the sleepy Roger groans under his covers. He slams open the door from his bedroom and (in grey pajamas, robe unfastened, hair mussed) confronts Dorothy. "The scrambled eggs Norman made you are cold. You stayed in bed fifteen minutes longer than usual." And that's justification for *this*?
At the table, she mechanically lifts a cup; he declares that she's just mimicking human behavior, which is why her piano playing will never move anyone. "No one is ever happy to hear an alarm bell," she says mysteriously, and the lights go out. Norman leaves to activate their private generator, and she opens the headband-disk-tray in her forehead, which is brightly backlit. Norman returns with a lantern and announces he's admitted a guest -- an important one, since he did so without permission.
In the greeting room, the guest fiddles with Roger's collection of hourglasses. It's a lady in a pink suit, her white-blonde hair in a bun, wearing grey-tinted glasses. Her card declares her to be CASSEEY JENKINS, on contract with the city's power company.
Driving to his assignment, Roger considers its details. Why would a negotiator be hired to ensure a hydroelectric power plant is brought back online? The residents of the run-down town bordering it, Electric City, are obstructing the power company. He would normally never accept a job from Paradigm, the company that just happens to run the city; they don't care if there's a steady power supply outside the domes. Was it named Electric City *before* the plant was built? --Would be ironic if so.
Drives up to the city welcome sign (in English) and the dam, filling a valley. He sees the water-intake towers on the reservoir side, and finds the gate secured with a heavy chain and padlock. He's confronted by a taciturn crowd in heavy coats and hats. One man, wearing a rose jacket, steps forward, who tells him "the titan will rain down his lightning of wrath" if the plant is reactivated.
Walking along the dam's top, Roger sees a man leave one of the intake towers, and surmises there's a secret way in. He spots a house on the hill overlooking the lake. He crunches through the snow (and regrets leaving Dorothy behind; she'd be useful) towards it, sees one lit window, combs his hair. (A man with a rifle lurks behind a tree). He finds outside cellar stairs, pulls a flashlight: a locked door. There are footsteps behind him, and he's clubbed with the butt of a rifle.
He awakes the next morning, bound in a chair in the cabin. "You sure like to sleep in, don't ya, fellow?" asks the old man. "I have trouble getting up without a piano," quips Roger in reply. The man struggles with a pair of pails of water, and Roger politely helps him; he'd easily loosed his bonds. While asking the man why he lives up here, not in the town, Roger makes breakfast: scrambled eggs and bacon. (Needs pepper.) Later, the man chops wood while Roger stays inside [still a prisoner?]. Stepping across a rug, he hears the telltale creak of a trapdoor. Downstairs, he finds a smashed operating theater, a huge glass tank with a shattered front, and a photo of the old man much younger. Suddenly a bank of electrical conductors comes alight, meters swinging into activity; electricity arcs across the room. Roger exits, and finds the chopping abandoned, the old man staring terrified across the lake. "Somebody started the turbines. You had friends here!" he accuses. They find the cellar door pried open. The man's ready to confront the intruders, but Roger tells him to leave it to the pros.
In the pipe-lined tunnel, Roger finds his employer, dressed now in a pink catsuit, her hair down, sans spectacles. "You were just using me, Miss Casseey," he observes. "Call me Angel," she says sweetly, and confirms she's not with the power company. The howl repeats, a burst of energy flows along the pipes, and the tunnel starts to leak. The get out; the old man is gone. Angel points to lights moving under the lake.
The residents of Electric City are also watching, fearful now that the turbines have been reactivated. Clouds gather. Oddly, the transformers themselves are inactive; where is the power going?
Sprinting along the shoreline, Roger and Angel see a spiked fine cutting through the water, and he recalls the big tank in the lab. From the lake rises a GIANT ELECTRIC EEL, which draws power to itself from the dam. Angel flees, declaring her job over. Roger calls Big O; Norman answers his wristcomm; as instructed, he shipped the machine to the dam's vicinity last night. Roger runs onto the dam, and Angel passes him in her pink sedan. "If you survive, let's get together sometime," she says, and speeds off. Too busy to reply, he leaps off the dam -- into Big O's waiting hand.
The giant eel notices Angel's car, and fires electricity at it. It arcs across the metal body, and Angel screams in pain, then recovers, only to see it looming over her. She desperately forces the door open, falls out -- and the eel reacts to something unseen. Megadeuce (as she calls it) emerges from the road (and her car falls into the crater). While the residents watch, he lets the eel coil around the right arm; it zaps him. He elbow-piledrives it and it backs off, absorbing more power. He punches -- and is met by a disk-shaped forcefield spanning the eel's open jaw. It then distends its mouth, swallows Big O to the waist, and shocks it again.
Overmatched, Roger primes Big O's CHROMEBUSTER weapon, then stops. The old man, in a rubber suit, is rowing to the intake tower in a rubber dinghy. He climbs a ladder -- aha, he must be shutting down the plant; *that's* the connection. The eel grabs Big O with its serpent-tongue, and starts building power across its jaw -- and then the dam shuts down, and the eel follows. Roger tears loose from the tongue, steps back, and fires Chromebuster (a forehead weapon), incinerating the creature's forward half. It sinks, then explodes, releasing its stored power into the sky. The dark towers of Electric City all light up.
On the shore, Angel makes a report via radio.
Roger leaves the area, after first destroying the plant so it can never again be activated. It's his way of completing the contract. It's too bad the first thing the old man remembered was how to create a manmade titan that produces electricity. Paradigm retrieved a sample of the creature, but he doubts they'll create another.
Back at the mansion, Dorothy is again tickling the ivories. "How many times do I have to tell you that it's pointless to just imitate us?" Roger teases. "Even I sometimes feel like playing [the blues]," she answers.