Cartoon Network's Adult Swim has recently begun replaying the entire 26 episode anime series Big O at 5 AM EDT. I'd seen a few episodes the last time around, but never from the beginning. And let me tell you, you cannot jump into season 2 halfway through and expect to have any idea what's happening.

Essentially the show is about Roger Smith, an independently wealthy professional negotiator who protects the amnestic futuristic Paradigm City and it's inhabitants. (Though he does frequently destroy more of the city than most protectors would ever dream of. Every time he comes to the rescue in his alter-ego titular giant robot, Big O, he destroys the street and usually several nearby buildings. I guess sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make a Big Omelette.) I really enjoy the show, and I think that it is an exceptionally deep story of the sort rarely tried outside of literature (or Alan Moore's graphic novels).

Roger's two sidekicks are his mustachioed butler, Alfred -- no, wait, Roger's butler is named Norman -- and his android R. Dorothy Wayneright. (Wayneright. I love that. So much about the show, from characters to setting to animation style, is reminiscent of Batman mythology.) To be accurate, Dorothy is not his property but his willing servant. Unlike so many other futuristic stories, in Big O sentient androids are usually treated as free willed, independent beings with rights equal to those of humans.

I'm quite smitten by Dorothy. I find her sensibility, her dry wit, her relative lack of emotion, even her hairstyle very attractive. It figures, I guess, that when I find a girl I like, she's an animated android.

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