DT Classics 022: The Big O

0:04 disclaimer this episode of the dub talk podcast may contain language and situations that may not be appropriate for all audiences listener discretion is advised this episode also contains spoilers for the first season of the big o keep this in mind as you listen and as always the views and opinions expressed are those of the individual participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the dub talk podcast as a whole then cast in the name of god ye not guilty

0:51 [Music] hello and welcome to dub talk a show where a bunch of anime nerds get together and talk about their favorite anime and the dubs that come with it uh i am your host for the evening uh lack the watcher and with me is roots of justice hello hello anna mandul hello hello hello and tonight is a very special episode where we are going back to the age of toonami and talking about one of my personal favorites and an underrated gem of the anime community the big o yes the the noirish uh mecca series mystery whatever you want to call it it's a whole hodgepodge like a melting pot of ideas put together to create one of my

1:36 favorite anime of all time so bingo showtime for the for the youths out there who weren't around in the age of toonami what is big o uh so yes the big o was a series created in 1999 by sunrise um essentially uh sunrise tried to make the tried to make a giant robo and they succeeded but the problem is giant robo didn't do very well so uh they decided to go back to the drawing board and they ended up coming up with um the big l does anyone else want to go into more detail about that yeah so a little fun fact about production in terms of the big o is um sunrise was commissioned

2:24 to do in between work on a certain warner brothers animation series um [Laughter] no but same crew i i think tiny tunes was over at tms i i can't recall if somebody will definitely correct me in the is that true like i want to say it was tms who did tiny tunes and then it was sunrise who did the um the bruce tim dc universe animated series like i know they did batman i think they did superman as well um but i mean the designs are a little closer to the superman kind of designs than they

3:10 are the batman designs right so um a lot of the a lot of the design choices for batman the animated series ended up being inspiration for what we ended up getting with the big o's sort of diesel punk neo-noir giant punchy robots uh that combined with giant robo obviously uh created the very unique design philosophy of the series um it is very deeply rooted in like 20s 30s noir um 60s kaiju too oh absolutely

3:57 with a bunch of um 50s and 60s sci-fi schlock thrown in for good measure take take take one part giant robots one part uh uh george pal sci-fi movies and one part anton first set design and voila it's big-o yeah that's basically it also a very interesting thing i found out um sorry i just need to look it's as much a tribute to it's a much a tribute to cinema as cowboy bebop is just completely in a completely different way right so um there is one other very fascinating production fact that i found out and doing research for my little bit of this episode so yeah big help

4:46 um on a personal level it's just it was kind of when i first watched the big o um i was like wow this is unlike anything i've ever seen in anime honestly i was really shocked like how different it was and i was like i want to watch all of this this is amazing and i kind of wish we got more anime like this yeah yeah i also i let's see when did this come out on toonami this would have been okay about 2001-ish i'd have been in the process of finishing up middle school and beginning

5:33 to transition into high school um this was absolutely mind-blowing i couldn't believe something like this i think around the same time blue submarine number six was also airing on toonami and that all of that just kind of blew 13 year old roots of justice's mind yeah i uh i i was around the same age and at the time i didn't know the word tokusatsu uh but if i had he said like hey hey you wanna you know watch a cartoon where uh batman's a tokusatsu villain tokusatsu hero yeah you're uh you sit down kid you're gonna like this the robot fights a lightning monster at one point it's great

6:19 i mean it's funny too because i was way into american comics long before i was in anime because remember i didn't really get an anime until i was like 18. yeah so um so like for me i mean it was pretty cool to see something so batmany but done in an anime style when i was just getting into anime so yeah justice league unlimited is like my favorite cartoon of all time so right there's an added element of that okay so i found the name um another really cool fact about the big o is um it was sort of supervised by a name who you probably wouldn't have recognized at the time but nowadays um he went on to

7:05 direct a show that i really really like uh he goes by the name of keiichi sato oh and he would later go on to direct tiger and bunny and rage about oh that makes sense rager bahamut genesis oh and also virgins but i think he was a um i i'm sorry i keep interrupting you but um here he was sort of a supervising animation director he did the character designs um i think he also did a bunch of the world building for uh for the setting of the show paradigm city okay because you there is a little like cultural crossover between the big o and

7:52 tiger and money i can kind of see that yeah i just thought that was interesting and i wanted to bring it up yeah no that's cool um so yeah didn't you want to talk about like why the theme in the sentai cut is is this oh do you do you want me to do big op shenanigans now or at the end of the episode um let's do it now let's get that out and then just all right so get comfy kids so uh so if you if you watch big o on the blu-ray that sentai has put out on high dive uh you'll be greeted with a very nice uh op set to a song called big o the show must go on

8:37 uh which was done by all right so uh called big it's called big show big big o the show must go on by roon a guy it's this fun sort of retro 1960s style uh this was not the original opening for season one the original living for season one was another song by ruin a guy called big o which had this fun uh op which was all these kind of like still images of like you know robots and cars and stuff over this weird flashing background and newspaper clippings you've got little introductions to all the characters and it was accompanied by the song big o which is this really cool bombastic song with all these backing vocals and shrieking guitars it's a really excellent song that was marred by only one problem which is that is an extremely obvious rip-off

9:23 of queen's theme to the flash gordon movie from the 80s yeah um probably intentionally who's ever heard of the japanese doing that though no honestly frankly frankly that that's on point enough that i suspect that's intentional like it's supposed to remind you of it yeah i always kind of assume that that they did that on purpose yeah but it's very clear that at some point somebody along the chain got kind of cold feet about it and elected to replace it with this one um now and uh later uh you have season two uh which has an op animation that's very similar to the one on this one it's a little different in a few places but it's it's the same kind of like taking footage from the show kind of thing and it was accompanied by another song uh by uh ruining um was it

10:10 i think it was um i forget the title of it um it's this fun sort of jazzy very 1960 sounding instrumental uh it's a really nice song but it's also barred by one thing which is that it's an extremely obvious ripoff of the song from ufo a not as well remembered jerry anderson show from the 70s it's not one of his super marionette things like thunderbirds it's one of the ones with real people in it and i've heard the two and it's it's the same song like it's arranged a little differently in big o but it's the same song claims it's an homage but i mean i i i buy the first ones an homage because people would definitely recognize that i don't know how well remembered ufo would have been like anywhere in 2003 right um that one that was that one they got

10:57 cold feet on it so badly it didn't even make it to home video i have the old bandai release for big o season two it uses this newer song with the uh op animation from the first season like it did it only made it to air i think they were like okay we're gonna get sued if we let this continue yeah it's a great song it really matches the animation it's just you know a little too blatant and for the record the the op that is included on the sentai blu-ray and is basically the standard is um it's from an animax rebroadcast from like 2007 i believe yeah that's that's what a n says uh yeah

11:42 this is probably a good time to mention that we are only covering the first season yes um mostly because it's easier to do that and but the i personally think they're two different shows in a lot of ways so i figured just talking about the first season would be fine so i mean the second one is called the big o2 so i know it was making there's like a two year gap between the production cycles yeah it was only made because adult swim let them basically right so i mean big o is one of those weird anime that is like in japan it was just kind of a flop in the united states we just ate it up exactly like trigun yeah the japanese hated tri-gun but we loved it over here so um all right so do we want to get

12:30 started with the list yeah yeah let's do it so um for the so we'll get started with the adr director and idiot script writers um for the adr director we have the legendary mr kevin seymour and for the uh script writers we have leah sargent and mary c mason so um who wants to get started um you know what i'll go first okay um kind of straightforward talk here um it is the the direction and the the script writing are very very strong in the big o this is

13:17 very much the late 90s early 2000s yeah you know what we are like legit if we're dubbing something that's not necessarily for kids um let let's try to actually make it as entertaining as we can without going to urban vision right without going too heavy on the camp or the uh or you know the the wackiness of it was kind of this sweet spot of of dubbing um in that era when they were like we'll be accurate but we'll also give our own interpretation right and i think that really helps a big o

14:03 yeah it is very firmly rooted in 40s 50s americana as well as actually you can pretty much make an argument that it's you know late 30s through the 60s referencing pop culture in various different time periods right and making this majestic hodgepodge of a series it's one of the best looking anime ever like don't at me honestly it definitely has an aesthetic to it yeah i guess i just i love that aesthetic so to me it just but the the way that it's shot and the way that it's filmed just makes it look so good well

14:50 well first and foremost casting is spot on um yeah all of the characters sound like their voices ought to be coming out of the character designs yeah i will say some of the deliveries a little rough in a couple places but that's just 90s dubbing yeah that's like it's it's one of those sacrifices of this very kind of early-ish era yeah i mean i'm still trying to figure out how to do it but they still did it phenomenally well given the time right so and i say like very early era-ish but uh like anime's been getting dubbed since the 60s um uh but this is where it really

15:39 the process of anime dubbing really started to get commercial in my opinion right i just thought i needed to give that a little bit of clarification um but yeah back on the direction and script writing it feels very rooted in reality and it definitely takes its sort of noir vibes very seriously yeah it feels like adults talking yes yeah that's um one thing the show is reminds me of is uh i talk about this with a friend of mine a lot is like movies that are for adults but not the sense that they're like r-rated or anything just in the sense of like no one under the age of like

16:25 20 is going to be interested in this yeah although under the age of 20. i know but in the the set in the sense of like oh this is make this is made for adults in the sense of like this is sort of paste and tone for them yeah uh rather than like you know oh it's oh it's so sexy and learned it's like nah it's just like adults are gonna be interested right there's actually like no real sex in it honestly really uh yeah i i'm in agreement like i i this is this is i mean it's hard to say i don't enjoy this dub i saw it when i was 13 and it's about you know a guy piling around a giant robot and hitting monsters and other giant robots like exactly yeah i'm not even even if this was bad which i don't think it is but even if it was i'm not sure i could really view it that objectively it's too i hear

17:11 a moment watching this wondering is this a show that is specifically designed to appeal to me or do i like it because it's the re it's the reason i have this taste in the first place yeah it's it's funny because i tweeted when i started watching this again for this episode like i tweeted literally watches five seconds of this anime god this show is so good [Laughter] uh yeah no i i i agree i think the casting's really spot on i think everyone's really well directed i think the script it feels right like it does a good job of nailing the tone that i think the show is going for it just it just it complements everything really well oh yeah absolutely um there's definitely

17:58 kind of a bogart era-esque film kind of sound to it i would say um i guess i'll take over from here um it's it's really important to acknowledge like the significance of kevin seymour in the anime dubbing community like it really can't even though okay mary elizabeth glenn is the adr director of cowboy bebop she is the director of the gold standard of dubbing but there is kind of this element of kevin's if it wasn't for kevin seymour we never would have had these dubs like if it wasn't for the extra steps he took to really bring well if he didn't thought if he didn't

18:44 follow in the steps of k of carl masic we never would have gotten to this point in dummy i don't think i'll die on this help yeah um and i think it's really interesting to kind of see him at his doing his craft in this show particularly um and it's funny because you look at the big three the big three of the toonami uh aside from like dragon ball z and yuyu haku i i i guess it's more adult swim but you get what i mean you got cowboy bebop you've got outlaw star and you've got trigon big o is kind of the fourth the the fifth beatle if you will like it's it's sort of this one that

19:29 didn't really make the mark that the other three did and yet it it almost it feels more polished than like outlaw star and trigon in some ways i mean how do you guys feel about that yeah actually that that makes a lot of sense um and i love i love the dubs for outlaw star and trigon don't get me wrong but the fact that kevin seymour had the reigns on this one i think it shows i i think it really gives it more of a polish than trying on an outlaw star yeah yeah no i i understand what you're and something else to consider too is a lot of the people who worked on this

20:15 are tv actors they were tv actors before they were dub actors oh except except for of course the voice of roger but we'll get into that right um but a lot of these people came from tv and that's a lot of where the detective noir kind of stuff thrives for a long time was was tv like once once it stopped being in films it moved to tv and that's where a lot of these actors kind of learned how to act so yeah yeah any other thoughts um shit's off the chain yo it truly do me it'd be like that

21:03 sometimes and do we like that they think it don't be like that but it do we have fun here yeah uh okay so it's also funny i i it's also funny that kevin seymour actually doesn't voice anybody i guess do we want to get into the actors now and the characters yeah sure so let's get started with uh two kind of tertiary characters who also are um fairly important to a lot of the plot points of the show um let's start with alex rosewater and big ear not big o big ear um alex rose water is kind of like the um shoot i'm blanking on his name

21:50 um jonathan breaks character and gargoyles is that oh xavier xanatos yeah he's the xanatos of this series basically because gargoyles also probably has a lot of connection to the big o2 um and big ear is kind of the informant for uh for roger smith as he provides him with most of the information that he needs to be able to uh secure his jobs so um this is a particularly fun one to talk about um first and foremost we'll talk about um big ear who is voiced by jameson price sorry jameson price um and the second one uh and uh the second

22:38 one uh alex rosewater is voiced by um michael forrest now michael forrest well we'll we'll talk about james and pray james and price you might best know as uh excandar from fate zero um uh he was the bad guy in jegan's gravestone um i can't remember the name of that character to be honest um oh of course he's so giro in in persona 5 which is probably one of his biggest roles currently um [Music] he was a fujimaki and megalo box and this is all really obvious now that i'm seeing it um oh yeah dreyfuss and seven deadly sins oh yeah

23:25 he's he's uh he's mr satan in the california dragon ball super dub that's really funny yeah a lot of his stuff is just obvious but it's you know what do you draw from when you describe these things there's been a lot of transformers too wow i didn't know um okay but uh michael forrest um probably not as well known for his anime dubbing work he's probably best known and this goes into what i was saying earlier is his television work um most sci-fi geeks will probably know him best as apollo from star trek really uh and also he was like in the melancholy of harvey suzumiya

24:14 so um uh mondul do you want to sort yeah sure okay uh let's see also i just like any excuse to go apollo [Laughter] uh where to start um i don't have a lot to say about jameson's performance and it's just great he's got that great deep baritone that's so good for this he doesn't do much but he's damn good at it you know big ear usually just shows up to provide some like general ex exposition for what's going to happen that episode exactly uh and it he doesn't have to do a lot but boy does he sound good doing it mega man mega man mega man make sure to use her has he has he played dr light at some point that seems like no

25:00 he's casting choice but you know who i really want him to play he still hasn't played yet mm-hmm rao and fists the north star how has that not happened yet no office in the north star anime yeah need to know one of those first right and i want patrick science to souther anyway moving on um uh yeah no he he's good and uh i like michael forrest a lot he does a really nice job playing this like just very cagey sinister like compared to xanatos feels very on point now that you mention it it's like it feels that very like you know he's he's got all this power but he's very ominous and mysterious and he's not going to show what's happening also i'd not appreciate it when you said that he was in star trek he's in like

25:46 1967 star trek yeah yeah exactly he's just crazed uh yeah no like i mean i mean i'd not realized how long have been acting you can tell like he's he's he's he's like 90 now he's nice yeah he's like one of the last survivor yeah he's still alive wow yeah all right you know what if nothing else let's see if he let's see he probably would have been like what in his christ he would have been in like what his 60s at least when he was doing this role he does not he does not sound that old no he doesn't just straight up like i would not i would not have guessed i would have guessed he would be a significantly younger actor like he does he does he's great no he was a young actor when he was apollo in star trek i know that's jesus

26:32 he's like yeah boy okay um no this goes into what i was saying about how like a lot of these actors are tv actors you're not wrong yeah so that's that's where a lot of like the harmony gold and like you know um uh sorry streamline streamline thank you that's where a lot of the harmony golden streamline people came from was television so yeah no like michael's great and now now i'm just more impressed yeah it's it's really cool like because i grew up watching star trek so it's really cool to see like an actor from star trek be in an anime dub you know because you don't you don't think about that you don't

27:19 whenever there's like stars like that in an anime dub it's usually like a guest star you don't think about them actually getting into the world of anime dubbing yeah like when uh peter mayhew was like in a dbz dub or something i think that happened once yeah um the dragon ball gt made for tv movie um there's actually a really great story um christopher bevin's tells at conventions about directing peter mayhew and if you you know when cons open back up and if you happen to be one at one where christopher bevin says a panel ask him about it it's it's really fun um i think i will uh but yeah but in those cases it's more like a guest

28:04 star where they're like oh look who we got for this dub but in alex rosewater in michael forest case it's just he just does dubs like he's one of the he's one of the crew so and a lot of these guys like i'm pretty sure jameson price came from television like i can't i can't say where but i want to say he got to start in television that feels about right yeah it's that's the more the more i learn about this the more i realize how much of the california scene on the older side or just like tv actors who've kind of fell into voice acting at some point so like what's that what's this it's from japan yeah whatever it's money that's probably where it started oh 100 just started it's like hey a paycheck

28:49 i'll do this yes carl mason carl amazing just going around hey you've got a great voice why don't you come and do this for me so now that's a cannon movie all right anyway um uh so um i've basically said everything i have to say about them too like they're both very talented actors um and they both fit these roles extremely well um this this has to have mature sounding people to it for it to work and you can't get much more mature than jameson price and alex for michael forest sorry so yeah no uh two thumbs up for me from these two yeah

29:35 i actually happen to really like sort of the air of menace uh that michael forest gives alexander rosewater he's got a great voice because you don't the funny thing about alex rosewater is you don't know why he's such a threat until the second season rolls around i'm not going to spoil why right but when he when he pulls his big move it is a big move everything's big in the big o big hoes and big ears um like i i like michael uh i know it's really hard to get the two names

30:21 i know rosewater i mean alex forest i mean god damn it like the parts of michael forest performance are things that we're not covering in this episode because he goes whole ham in season two and it's it's great apollo um and jameson price as the big year um i i just it it's great um like he's just there in a coffee shop giving roger advice and then roger slips him at 20 under his coffee cup that's basically the crux of his character until season

31:07 two reveals his true nature yeah i i just love these two characters and their actors because it's ah yeah thinking because i'm tired it's cool man don't worry about it um so do we want to move on yeah yeah okay uh so yeah are we good to move on yeah all right so um for the next set we are going to talk about the essentially main villains if you don't count alex rosewater essentially the main villains of uh of the first season um we are talking about schwarzwang

31:54 and beck gold which i did not realize his last name was gold cold oh boy these guys yeah um okay hang on one second i just realized i know who he is but i forgot his name um okay so yes for um for beck he is voiced by robert burholz uh or is that how you pronounce it uh book cults i looked this up recently actually book okay okay so for beck uh he is voiced by robert the colts and for schwarzwald he is voiced by michael mcconaughey uh now robert buckles um

32:40 you would probably best know him he's mostly dubbing now right he like does video games largely a director now yeah mostly mostly directing dubs now that's what i meant to say yes um but he's probably best known at this point for outlaw star for being gene starwind uh i don't wait what oh yeah i did learn that i'm sorry i i did you not know that really i'll be honest i had not heard of his name prior to learning of him directing like a lot of stuff for netflix i was just unaware he had done any acting much less anything i was like i'd like seen all right that makes sense i think i learned that and then forgot about it yeah he actually hasn't done a lot acting wise um it just so happens that he's also jean sarwin

33:26 i did not know this he even sounds like gene how did you guys not know this he even sounds like gene starwind look i i have not bothered to look up the cast list of a lot of things i watched i was young okay it didn't occur to me very i mean he so seldomly acts and dubs nowadays i didn't even think to check yeah oh he was in b stars i didn't know that uh i mean it was like a really like minimal character but that's cool that he was in b stars um and uh michael mcconaughey of course has been charles lee britannia um he's also

34:12 been god what else has he done michael mcconaughey is like one of my favorite actors in dubbing um uh he's king walter atlantis in uh seven deadly sins uh oh yeah he's um captain captain teneal and jojo's was our adventure in the best episode of stardust crusaders in my opinion um [ __ ] let's go back a little oh duh he's um he's shin in the original fist of north star movie dub which is like one of my favorite dubs of all time there you go all right um i'll go first i'll go first on this one um like i just like i said michael mcconaughey is one of my favorite actors of all time uh i i love the death i love how he can be

34:59 so over the top and boisterous and still give actually a compelling performance he's one of those actors that can sell camp just super well to the point of where like it doesn't feel like camp he's like he's like um uh you know he's like frank gorshin like he could just sell camp and make it feel legit um yeah and and schwartzwald is a great character for that because you've got this loud villainous over the top like i need to make a big scene in this city kind of villain and it's just the kind of characters that like michael mcconaughey was born to play and um yeah he just he gives that perfect like balance of like camp and actual

35:45 compelling performance that just makes it such a fun memorable villain um for um rebec gold um i i like i like rubber uh buckles um but i would say that becca might be one of the weakest performances here i i that might be kind of a harsh thing to say but first of all there's not much of bec in the show i'll admit that he's not and i i think he sounds fine but at the same time some of the delivery felt a little rough in a couple places i can't really pinpoint exactly where it was but it just i don't know some of it felt

36:32 a little harsher compared to like some of the other performances in this um and i know that he's a one-off villain well a two-off villain so you don't really need him to be that compelling or that like a plus as a villain but i would say compared to a lot of other people here he just he isn't quite as strong i still liked him but i don't think he was quite as strong other thoughts you want to go first roots yeah yeah i can do that um i just love how sort of extremely campy and boisterous both um both schwarzwald

37:20 and um i'm sorry michael zabach is his like his actual name before he assumes the title of schwarzwald which is such a forest it is such a great like it's such a great noir villain name honestly yes because it's got that german expressionism element to it so which is appropriate because he looks like a tim burton character exactly yeah but um both him and beck are just so over the top campy flamboyant boisterous um and they have such

38:06 okay uh and they have such great performances to match um i actually do quite like um cole's is um back because um as it turns out he shows up a few more times in season two because he just loves to break out of jail and each time he shows up he gets even more cartoonish than the last and i think for a show as deathly serious as the big o is trying to be um having sort of that jokey sort of like like not mark hamill's joker kind

38:53 of character more of a um oh i know there was a batman villain that's just always always like actually you know what actually mark hamill's joker is a good is a good app comparison to this um because it's it's one of those things like um like in the production of batman the animated series um the kids reacted better when the joker was acting like more of a clown so as the series went on um his plots were be were written to make him funnier and funnier right and that's sort of what happens to beck and i and

39:39 it in something as sort of dark and serious as the big o having that little bit of just um having like a comedic palette cleanser is is great every couple of episodes especially when you're marathoning it and you know it's uh it's just giant robot punchy time and then all of a sudden you get just these little comedic moments of bet gold showing up and ruining roger's plans and i i did kind of notice like in this in the second episode featuring beck that there was kind of like 18 a time skeletons kind of feeling to them in the way that they were and i had to look up this name

40:25 because i haven't really watched time looking but um the the fact that it was a trio of kind of numbskull villains oh they're they're they are absolutely part of the long long lineage of uh trio of absolute morons yeah like i mean you know being a kid of the 90s my favorite reference is oh it's it's team rocket yeah who were of course based on the time scale absolutely yeah so yeah yeah [Music] but it's just hilarious that every time he shows up he somehow finds a way to fail upwards like it's it's great um and michael mcconaughey schwartzwald um it is just such beautifully menacing scenery chewing

41:12 ham especially in the episode where he where he comes back yes um the episode where he returns with his own sort of giant robot built in the style of the big o um what i love is um and i can't believe the scene actually got through pretty much uncut in the original cartoon network toonami um where he's having the party and everybody is just having this livacious time and then as as he's speaking all of a sudden everybody starts screaming in the max the masks light on fire

41:58 right all to that all to that muse all to that sort of that theme song in the in the soundtrack where they use the theremin [Music] like that that terrified me as a kid but it was so good and i think that's a good addition to what i was saying before about how everything just kind of came together because you have the the really great english performances the great visuals and the great soundtrack on top of that uh so yeah both of these performances were act absolutely top-notch thumbs up mm-hmm

42:43 good yeah i'm i'm in agreement uh michael is great at schwarzwald he is so big and enormous and menacing and uh a little ridiculous but not so much that he never feels like an actual opponent uh it's just it's so fun listening to michael just ham it up so hard for this character he he rises to the character design which i think with your character is some sort of weird pointed headache mummy man like that's that's an important thing to be able to do um yeah he's a delight and i i enjoy i enjoy robert playing back although i think part of that is as a child of the 90s i've realized how much that uh three idiots try and foil the

43:30 hero's plan and are generally bad at it character type it's clearly something that appeals to me and i just find back this is very entertaining because he he has decent plans he's just not good enough to actually execute them correctly right like when he has the what is it he tries to slap the thing on dorothy's head it ends up being used cheap parts which is why it didn't work right you [ __ ] you're that you're sabotaging yourself i just i i just find very entertaining i think he's just good at being like the right level of just silly and campy and escalating it as necessary as time goes on uh and again wild did not realize that this was the guy who's been directing a bunch of stuff for netflix the last two

44:16 years that's all right i think i have to turn my dub reviewer card now to get a new one in the mail after i pass a test uh yeah i know like i'm an agreement these guys like these guys are great i loved it good times love them camp dylan's okay um so do we want to move on to the next set yeah let's do it yeah okay well now we have some more ally kinda to uh um roger smith our main character um but in one's particular case not so much uh we have dan dawson angel and norman berg

45:02 um now dan dawson is voiced by peter lurie angel is voiced by wendy lee and norman berg is voiced in this particular case by milton james uh now um for peter lurie you might best know him he was leatherhead in the 2012 teenage mutant ninja turtles tv show um and he seems to be uh kiramaru and uh hashirama sinju does that mean anything to you all okay okay yeah i know who that is i think being the key words here he was

45:49 king or gayle rare groove in uh rave master uh there's gonna be something here a little more uh he was the voice of joggie in the fifth of the north star tv show and i arc the lad he was alfred uh wendy lee of course uh faye valentine lisa lisa athena sykes in the phoenix wright series oh she was also yoruichi uh oh yeah and of course haruhi suzumiya and and twilight suzuka in all star um and milton james milton james is definitely one i have to look up uh he mostly does video games it appears

46:34 um united paper man in grand theft auto 5. uh he's done some transformers work uh blastoff uh grax aimless um in street fighter 2 the animated movie he was at ceno and ninja scroll mushizo uh shinkuro and villager b so who wants to who wants to start um it's probably my turn this time around um um i guess i'll start with dan um i just love the fact that he sort of plays the straight man to um to roger smith's giant robot antics

47:21 um he's basically the guy shouting at roger not to cause property damage throughout the city it's great i i love their dynamic he's a very good like you know a very good like inspector zenigata type so right um one particular scene i love um was actually an interaction between him and roger smith um oh i can't remember if it was the um the episode with the uh the phantom in the movie right that i i did not remember that episode at all and watching it i was like this might be the best episode of the show

48:08 honestly um it's a good one and i love that he and the um what is it the son of the legacy of amedeos that's that was my favorite episode but i almost think that that one was better watching it again so yeah um but it was a scene between dan and roger where dan dassen is is at roger's apartment um they're they're talking about you know business stuff um military police and negotiator stuff um but he mentions oh do you still have that bottle i uh obviously referring to like uh

48:55 some either a wine or a whiskey and he's just like i i've been meaning to try that and roger's just like oh yeah i finished that off a little while ago which sort of sums up their relationship in the show really well as well that roger has long since moved on from the the dynamics of you know the power dynamics of paradigm city and meanwhile dan is trapped in trapped in nostalgia of the past kind of thing it like i i really liked it right no he's got a very good arc which doesn't really come into play until later honestly okay um i also do really love milton james he's excellent he's actually fantastic

49:44 i just love how he's sort of the doting butler to roger smith but is also completely capable of kicking [ __ ] in himself um because i know the episode with the uh with the cat it brings out the gap and when the scientist comes to capture and he just comes up to the rooftop with just this big ass like helicopter mounted gun holding it uh to shoot down the the sort of airship the the evil scientist is in like that was absolutely badass that's why speaking of and speaking of badass um wendy lee also did a really great job as

50:31 angel i i do think it is a little bit of a rehash of her uh faye valentine but at the same time the the two character archetypes so who who who faye valentine was also right so uh it's not something i'm going to take points off of because um she did a really good job particularly in the episode with the sunken city where she and roger are both trapped there as they're trying to collect memories and then the uh the frogmen show up right yeah

51:19 and they sort of have this conversation throughout the episode about how they got to where they are and like it's one of those episodes where you know most of what ends up going down happens in the past and it's i like those episodes like like you the episode starts in the middle of whatever they're doing and then they have to flash back to how they got there i uh it's also a common trope in noir films it's great and then of course um angel also angel also gets to do some really cool [ __ ] in season two so

52:05 i i have to give her props there just because you know this is our opportunity to talk about the big o so here we go but i also don't want to spoil anything because you know like the big o2 is an experience [Music] uh but yeah i'm i'm basically done the these were two i'm sorry these were three really great performances that i absolutely love um i'm on do you want to take over yeah yeah okay uh where to start uh this is completely irrelevant but i do find it funny that this show so soaked in uh noir imagery and influence has an actor in it whose name is one valley yeah yeah i i

52:51 uh that that doesn't have anything i really had to like catch myself did not say peter larry like peter lori when i was uh when i was saying his name you despi you despise me though that's so that's that's a there aren't no no one in the show has no well we get some weird goofy voices which which work they work none of them didn't work any actual actors for this that's true also also i feel like at this point like that's that's a comedy voice like more people know that from looney tunes when i took movies when i took chuck huber's voice acting close when i took one of his voice acting classes he basically had us

53:36 all um do terrible impressions because terrible impressions are the best way to create new voices yeah right that's fun um but uh yeah obviously peter peter peter laurie is a real person and not a reference that's the quote of the night right there peter laurie is a real person not a reference there we go that's well that's that's that's that's just me talking to jojo fans it's like roundabout is not a meme it is a real goddamn song i have some [ __ ] respect you children and watch them all in order uh anyway i don't care what mother's basement says

54:25 on the podcast tonight um uh but i like through laurie's performance a lot uh i enjoyed his sort of just sort of weariness uh at you know he's he's got this old buddy who he hangs out with he tries his little mysteries and occasionally this god damn robot guys going up and destroying buildings i know a number of which seem to be uninhabited but i'm sure he has to finally get the paperwork these like monsters you do kind of get why dawson is like no what are you doing stop you know the dos is just like look all of this is way above my pay grade and i'm tired of dealing with it please please go away um but he i i like i think he turns in a

55:12 really fun performance in that way i like a lot of his interactions with roger and you can really sense the camaraderie between these characters uh the few times i've heard peter lurie this is definitely his best performance yeah i buy that and um and yeah the up like his spotlight episode which was the winter phantasm or whatever it's called yeah uh like i think he does such an excellent job there i think you know he he takes a character who i think uh isn't quite comic relief but i think often is you know oh he's he's promoting the you know he's he is used comedically occasionally and i think he gives him a lot of real depth in pathos that i think you know peter like steps up to the plate to like meet that's a great aspect of a show that's surrounded by such a big mystery is it shows that everybody has

55:59 more depth to them than what appears on the surface yeah yeah no i i i yeah i enjoy his performance a lot um but it's like what wendy lisa hoot is angel she's just good at being so when he leaves when he leaves it's like yeah like i'm gonna i'm gonna sit here and [ __ ] talk wendy lee yeah exactly are you kidding yeah i thought it was just okay you know yeah you know she it is a shame angel doesn't get to do too much in this season no but like when like wendy's good she nails the character she is fun whenever she shows up she also is just she like bounces off of roger really well like i i just enjoy seeing her it makes me think she was definitely a strong second choice for when they were

56:45 when they were doing like the jenny and dub for lupon she was probably like a strong second choice for fujiko undoubtedly yeah i i get the feeling it was between her and michelle ruff and they just ended up going with michelle ruff so uh yeah she's she's a lot she's just a lot of fun i think she really nails the character she's the blaster she shows up uh let's talk about the real champion of this section a voice so british it is wearing a monocle despite not having any form and he's not british that's what's so funny no i know it's i'm i'm pretty sure milton james is american which is which is strange because milton james is an aggressively british name yeah i know isn't it it's like it's like i don't think i don't think allen

57:30 oppenheimer is british either honestly uh and alan oppenheimer actually went on to voice alfred in a in batman under the red hood so i don't think milton james ever did though no that's uh oh that's right milton james died i forgot about that no i i know that that sounded bad but i i really do mean that as like oh that's right he passed away two years ago no no i i look i look i understand completely it happens yeah um that sounded way less like sympathetic than it meant to me but i i really that really is very sad that he died a couple of years ago no i i agree he's like he is he is so good here i i mean look i think the obvious

58:16 comparison is norman norman has a lot of alfred pennyworth in him and i think exactly yeah and i think but i think milton does a good job of making nor having watched a lot of batman the anime series growing up and reading a lot of batman comics i do think milton does a good job of making norman feel like yes he is that he's part of that archetype but he's not just a generic carbon copy of that character no i will say norman is more alfred than roger is bruce wayne oh i i 100 agree with that yeah um but i just i just like what milton brings to the role he always manages to make him sound so he puts a lot of genes in him i think that's part of it it's like there's that very like refined stephen fry kind of dry humor just he's always very calm and collected no matter what the scenario is it's like ah roger

59:03 needs me to drive out to this uh store to pick up uh a jairus and there's a giant robot it's a giant planet attack happening ah no worries she'll simply call in a day's wagon simply hop on my motorbike and burst through the store and pick up the woman in question who has the code no problem uh he is he is he is that he is the true gentleman's gentleman in the in the strange and upsetting future of paradise city uh paradigm city not paradise city but you know what i mean paradise take me down to the paradigm city or no where the grass is green and no one remembers what the [ __ ] going on [Laughter] you know i just he he just he plays the character so well he's such a delight uh i just i really

59:51 enjoy him here he feels so he feels so correct for the character yeah you know i've nothing but praises for him he's top-notch good stuff yeah um i honestly don't have that much to add um [Music] i like i said of all of the minimal amount of peter lurie performances i've heard i definitely think dan dawson is his best i think he fits the character extremely well um and like i said wendy lee is wendy lee it's really like you she's never really given a performance that i disliked or didn't love um uh and yeah milton james is absolutely fantastic as norman i would say milton james is one of the

1:00:38 top performances of this dub um just because he sells the character extremely well and his voice is just nearly one to one and i'm not trying to downplay alan oppenheimer although i haven't heard much of his performances uh as norman but i definitely think milton james had this uniqueness to his voice that just fit the character perfectly so um yep so do we want to move on to the last two yeah yeah all right um so we're rounding out the cast with the two main and um like most important characters of the show we've got r dorothy

1:01:25 wainwright the young the little robot girl lost uh looking for answers to who she is and what she is and of course roger smith the the negotiator and the pilot of the big o now um our dorothy wainwright uh is voiced by leah sargent and roger smith ironically not voiced by roger craig smith but but uh steve bloom yep um now in cowboy now leah sargent has been judy and cowboy bebop um she was millie and tri-gun uh that's right she was chun-li in the

1:02:12 in the street fighter 2 movie um kaide fujita in soccer wars the movie um tachicoma in ghost of the shell uh standalone complex second gig and uh she was civil in blackmagic m66 and steve bloom of course of course has been in cowboy bebop is spike spiegel um he's pretty much the lone voice of wolverine at this point um he's done vilgax and ben 10 i mean he's at this point he's more known for

1:02:58 at this point he's in just about every video game that's ever produced like the the variety at this point he's done way more cartoons than he has anime yeah honestly um going for anime uh he was uh onizukan great teacher onizuka he was in the guyver he was amon and legend of korra let's let's stop there yeah i mean we could be here all day naming off the stuff that he's done actually literally all day yeah yeah no we could actually take up the whole podcast talking about his credits uh oh yeah and he's tom and two nine um

1:03:45 probably one that we should probably mention um so he's also on tick tock i follow him on tik tok um so yeah uh ammon do you want to start us off sure um so here here's a fun fact for you uh my understanding is when they were developing the show most of the major characters and so on uh were originally uh this is what i read originally like they had some roots in something sato who's the like mechanical designer who worked on giant robu who kind of came up with the initial idea most of them had some roots in something he had made up uh and the one difference is at some point he apparently doodled kind of like uh i think sort of a generic girl and it's like this is a sidekick roger has i

1:04:32 think her name is dorothy um and that's really all his involvement apparently dorothy is almost 100 an invention of uh chiaki j kanaka who is like the main writer of the series uh listeners at home who have heard me talk on this show are going to be incredibly unsurprised to learn that i am a big chiaki j kanaka fan because of course i am look at what i enjoy so it's kind of a silver surfer kind of situation where like jack kirby came up with the silver server but stan lee kind of came up with the backstory and all that stuff should that given i know other relationship that might have been the other way around if like stanley wrote there's a herald and jack lee's let jack curry's like all right it's a silver surfer okay i'm not i'm not sure anyways off topic uh but yeah he apparently dorothy is just

1:05:17 like almost entirely his creation from like the look on down uh which makes sense this is the man who made cereal experiments lame i buy it and uh i i don't know how how well to express how perfect i think leah sargent is is dorothy i know i think definitely part of it is i can definitely remember seeing ads on toonami for big o when it was running and i don't remember if this is the line they ended on but there's definitely somewhere in there where they had the clip from the first episode where um dorothy's just been like in the immediate aftermath of dory dorothy being caught in a rocket explosion where she just shuts the door and just says you're real louse roger smith and it's like it's perfect there's there's no better

1:06:05 delivery of that line from anybody um no i think she i think she is just wonderful she is so good at playing this character who is a robot and like and not in like a like she has some of that you know star trek isaac asimov you know what does it mean to be human stuff in there but it's also like no she's a robot like she creaks when she turns her neck and she's very mechanically animated on purpose and i think she does a very wonderful job of maintaining that artificiality without being too monotonous and stiff like dorothy sounds like a person she just sounds like she sounds like a really good approximation of a person right because that's the whole point of the first episode is you know

1:06:52 roger can't tell that she's an android until he's told basically yeah and i i think i think leah just does such a wonderful job of matching that uh because you'll see you know what is it the one i like best is uh at the end of the episode with the big plant monster where like roger's giving her this dress and she's just kind of spinning around and she's clearly very happy she got this but she also has the exact same expression she always has exactly and it's a weird it's a weird effect i think leah does a really good job of getting getting that like that sense of like there's there's humanity here but she's still she's still an android and there is still a ceiling on where that can go exactly and she's very aware of that and i think leah does also does a good job tapping into that sort of pathos and angst that dorothy has about

1:07:41 her being an android and what that kind of means with regard to her being a person right um which i think is hard like that's that's not an easy trick to pull off and i think leah makes it seem shockingly effortless and i'm always very impressed by it complimentary i can't imagine anyone playing roger other than steve bloom it's too good it's too perfect i don't know how did i don't know does one how does one sing the praises of stephen bloom in 2020. it feels redundant yeah what am i going to say exactly but he's good uh he does the like you know he does the noir narration stuff really really well uh he always manages to make it sound

1:08:28 like not like not not dated but not not dated and not cheesy like it feels very authentic and earned like you know he's talking about you know this is paradigm city assuming a city with no memories and what have you um he just plays roger very well he's good at being you know he's serious and solemn and he's very very professional at his nice sharp shoots in his cool car uh his fancy watch but he's he's got a little bit of humor to him uh and i also like that he just he plays the like kind of rich layabout part of roger smith really well where he gets cranky if he gets woken up before noon uh and well roger if you're going to get mad about that you probably should invited dorothy over because dorothy does not care it's nine o'clock you should be awake all the other adults are up what are you

1:09:14 doing uh and for that matter like i think their repartee is really well done uh dorothy is just a fine in addition to like you know the being a robot and all that she's just a fine example of like characters who are nominally assistants but clearly are going to take exactly zero [ __ ] from their employer and just like roger you're being an idiot stop it uh they're just they're very funny together i really like them uh i don't know what else i did it's good i i like that roger even though he's he doesn't really get dorothy he's not really mean to her necessarily like any time he

1:10:00 he like alienates her or any way he kind of apologizes for it you know yeah there's there's a very like roger has his own baggage but it's also very like dorothy's dorothy's dorothy doesn't mean harm or anything there's no reason to be mean you're good you're good friend dorothy i brought you this dress it's christmas or not christmas i guess it's it's heaven's day oh um yeah i don't i don't have anything particularly insightful to add they're real good uh if you don't believe me watch the

1:10:46 show you'll you'll see that i'm right uh i guess i'll go next then get my thoughts out and uh then you can go roots okay um so yeah not not terribly much to add i think it's really cool when someone who works behind the scenes also comes forward and plays a character as well and it's really really cool when that person plays the character extremely well i think leah sargen is an incredibly underrated like person in the in the world of dubbing i don't think she gets nearly enough credit that she does um i

1:11:31 it's just it's really her performance as as dorothy is something really really special it's amazing how much emotion you can get out of a character that has none and i you know it's it's really not much else can be said honestly but it it our dorothy is such a great character she's such an interesting character in in the way that she she's kind of this as a mafian type concept of a character and i i've actually recently seen robot carnival uh i recently watched it because retro crush did a premiere of it on youtube it was really fun i got to meet a lot of cool people it

1:12:17 was a great time and it's really cool to see anime really does robots really well and i know it's it's it's interesting to say that with like mecca and all that but when they do like down to earth more less mecca robots it's really really fun to watch because the japanese just get robots and it's really fun to see an actress like leah sergeant who just understands that so well and much like wendy lee's when he leaves steve bloom is stifling what can be said um roger smith is a great roger smith is probably his second best character under spike's beagle um

1:13:03 and the great thing is they're very different roger smith and spike spiegel are not the same guy at all and like hmm um i kind of noticed a bit of a humphrey bogartness to his performances roger smith did anybody else get that yeah you know uh now that you mention it a bit yeah i i have a dumb friend i have a dumb point of reference here that i can share really uh sure so despite the spike spiegel i uh you know steve bloom has played two between roger and spike spiegel he has played two characters who invoke uh actors who have played philip marlowe and the big difference is that uh roger smith clearly invokes uh any time

1:13:50 that humphrey bogart played him you know it's very there's something very you know classic and uh you know uh competent maybe even a little old fashioned about it yeah and um spike spiegel embodies phil marlowe when he's played by ellie gould and long goodbye which means he is weird and sloppy and very 1970s even though he really shouldn't be no no no no one talks about the long goodbye as an influence on cowboy bebop but i swear to god like it's in there i can see it that's that's about as high brow as we're gonna get tonight i'm on oh you bet uh but that's all my thoughts i i really can't add much else to that but so take it away roots

1:14:37 okay um yeah i can pre-face this by saying i'm probably not going to be saying anything bad about you know uh leia sargent or steve bloom's performances um i i loves dorothy's sort of robotic but not entirely devoid of emotion tone um like it is very clear that she is she has some monogram of understanding of how humans behave and she's not only trying to emulate it she's trying to express it herself as the course of the show goes along and she sort of grows on

1:15:25 roger smith um i think this is really kind of personified in an episode i mentioned before the episode with the cat um especially toward the end when she realizes oh yeah the the cat is sort of a re-bio-engineered version of somebody's child and um when it turns into the giant robot fights big o and then turns on its master um that was like a rintaro episode i swear to god yeah a cat that was a kid that becomes a giant demonic like monster cat uh but then it throws itself into the the

1:16:12 burning laboratory from which it was born and at the end of the episode dorothy is just on top of roger's apartment trying to process everything that went down um and she and roger have a really good talk about it and that's like that is one of the scenes that really strikes out to me as sort of the the emotional core of the big o and you wouldn't expect this from an anime about giant diesel punky punchy robots but you know there it is with sort of a twin peaks-esque psychological aspect to it

1:16:57 um and c bloom's roger smith um i love how steve bloom plays him as sort of the perennial bachelor down to the point where he is just this rich slob who likes to dress some fancy suits and solve people's problems um again a lot of the stuff i like about steve bloom's performance here is sort of stuff from season two um especially the first episode um but one particular moment i like is actually one that sort of bleeds over from season one into season two

1:17:43 um where he's fighting a bunch of uh giant robots into in the sea trying to invade paradigm city and he has this feel about how he likes to stand out in the rain without an umbrella and you know that is what it means to be free as he looks at the the tomato gordon rosewater gave him which uh tomatoes in the show have a lot of symbolism let's just say um but yeah like steve bloom does a really great job with the duality of roger smith you know you have the the cool calm

1:18:30 collected negotiator roger smith and then you also have the perennial sloppy bachelor who's annoyed who's he's been woken up at nine o'clock instead of noon and his dynamic with a bunch of the other characters is something i absolutely love um just between him and dorothy him and angel him and norman dan daston like how everybody interacts with him and how he interacts with them it's this really great sort of core it's the thing i talk about a lot on this show

1:19:16 that i really love to see in dubs it is punchiness and it's banter yeah because it's it's hard to get that so like all of roger smith's dialogue fits the sort of tone that roger is trying to convey but it's also really punchy and his interactions with people feel organic and in anime dub that is about the highest praise you can give so very solid thumbs up all around do we want to um do we want to wrap this all up gentlemen with final thoughts okay yeah all right um

1:20:02 i will start us off um back when i first got was getting into anime and was trying to watch stuff uh the big l was one of the first anime i really got into and having rewatched it it still holds up just as well honestly not not a stitch out of place as far as i'm concerned um it's still every bit the the anime that i loved and the dubs that i loved and just the fact that i really could see like what anime could be and you know i was a late bloomer when it came to my anime obsession um like i said i started really when i was about 18 and it just it really

1:20:48 it's so different but it's so good and how it's different things can be different and be bad big o is something that's different that's really really good and this dub is just so well done by people who really get this genre and understand how to like read the lines and deliver the lines and just how they need to sound and it never feels like parody it always feels like it always feels 100 sincere and i love that about it um that's all i can really say honestly all right um so i don't think it's gonna be an understatement when i call the big o absolutely timeless

1:21:35 um it is an absolutely wonderful show from the first frame of episode one to the final frame of episode 26. the character dynamics are incredibly well grounded and mature um and you got giant sort of art deco robots beating the living tar out of each other like what is there not to love about that and in like giant b-movie monsters um it is absolutely a product of just about every decade of american pop culture that one can remember simultaneously and that is a hard feat

1:22:22 to juggle with american made productions i am absolutely stunned that this is just not something that is referenced or utilized very much in um in us pop culture uh the way something like cowboy bebop is uh because this like i could probably show this to my nephew in a few years and he will just absolutely adore it yeah um because it it feels like anime but at the same time it doesn't and i think that's

1:23:08 one of the greatest lasting legacies i can think of for the show uh and also the dub is really [ __ ] solid the thing we're talking about you know not like like i said not a stitch out of place um the world feels alive um everybody interacts with everyone else like an adult uh it's it's just great tv uh that's all i can say yeah this is the big o is a great show

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