Of Swords and Parasols

 

 

 Bruce Wayne Roger Smith is the top negotiator in Gotham Paradigm City, a city whose citizens lost all their memories 40 years ago. A futuristic city almost straight out of film noir, Paradigm City is plagued by Memories, remnants from the civilization 40 years ago that occasionally wreak havoc on the city.  Thankfully, Roger and his faithful mecha, Big O, are there to fight them.  Except, sometimes, the police rather wish they weren't, and think Roger tends to rather overdo it(they have a point, the man loves his style a tad too much.)

It sounds rather hokey and campy, but really, it isn't.  The whole thing is handled in a stylish film noir fashion and, despite massive amounts of insanity, it's played in a rather subdued manner.  Roger himself is a clear homage to the classic Batman...you know, Bruce Wayne when he was more of a charmer with a yen for adventure and justice, before Crime Alley and Frank Miller made him the ill-tempered control freak of today.  He has a huge house with lifts, a souped up long black car, batarangs(I kid you not) a penchant for black clothing, and a stoic, super-proper butler named Alfred Norman, who takes care of the house, car, and Big O.  I suspect that Roger's calm, suave, collected, amazingly sane and together personality is also meant to poke a bit at the average issue-ridden mecha pilot.

Roger also has a number of rules to live by:  everyone who lives in his house must wear black, one must courteously follow all the rules of negotiation, only beautiful women are allowed to drop by unannounced, uncourteous people are automaticaly uninvited, one must be perfectly groomed at all times, one must always be unfailingly courteous to women and the elderly, even if they have abducted or tricked one, etc.  There are a lot more rules.  Most have to do with courtesy and chivalry.

In the first few episodes, Roger "acquires" R. Dorothy Wayneright, an android created from memories.  R. Dorothy is indestructible-being at ground zero in an explosion only gives her frazzled hair-uncertain about her past, and chooses Roger as her protector.  In the first episode, I mentioned her to kingcrankycatand compared her to Relena in Gundam Wing, noting that she really was a robot, though, and had more personality.  I not feel very guilty about this.  R. Dorothy is much more interesting and has far more personality than Relena.  And she makes sense. R. Dorothy is an amazingly stoic android, and often imitates humans, trying to be one.  After choosing Roger as her protector(note: she's indestructible, and so really doesn't seem to need one...) she gets Norman to hire her on as a maid.  When Roger tells her that one of his rules is that everyone who lives in his house must wear black, R. Dorothy examines the clothing, and then bluntly tells him that his style sucks.  When he oversleeps, she wakes him up by loudly playing the piano, and then lectures him for letting his eggs get cold.  When he uses her as a decoy and then set off an explosion without warning her, she informs him that he is a louse for just assuming she'd be ok.

She's a stoic, indestructible android with fashion sense who lectures and snarks, what's not to love?

There's also Roger's info-man, who seems to know far more than he's letting on, the upstanding chief of police who appreciates Roger's help, but really wishes he wouldn't cause so much property damage while he was at it, and Selina Kyle Angel, a femme fatale who hires Roger fot a job so she can gain access to machinery, then later reappears as a sevretary working for the organization that rules Paradigm City.

Did I mention that at one point, a giant sea monster tries to eat Big O, or that at another point, Roger yells for R. Dorothy and Big O that the evil, rampaging mecha had nothing to do with them, and they couldn't compare themselves to it?

As an aside, the end credits are Roger and R. Dorothy posing while a romantic ballad plays.  It suits Roger, but is slightly...odd.