Paradigm City

An aerial shot of Paradigm City. The city is based on the island of Manhattan and is suggested to be New York City itself.

Paradigm City is a fictional city-state which serves as the main setting of the anime series The Big O. Located on a sea coast and surrounded by a vast desert wasteland, the partially domed city is wholly controlled by the monopolistic Paradigm Corporation. The Big O takes place forty years after "The Event," an unknown occurrence which destroys the world outside the city and leaves the survivors without any memories.

In the final episodes of the series, the city is implied to have been an elaborate fabrication produced by an unknown power.

Location

Several buildings and structures shown in the series suggest that Paradigm City may be modeled after or even that be New York City:

• In episode 1 (Roger the Negotiator), as Roger is traveling to the site of the meeting with Beck, the World Trade Center towers can be seen in the distance. (The series premiered in Japan before the attacks of September 11, 2001.)
• In episode 5 (Bring Back My Ghost), it is mentioned that Officer Fraizer fell into the Hudson River.
• In episode 8 (Missing Cat), the antagonist's base is in what appears to be the American Museum of Natural History.
• In episode 12 (Enemy Is Another Big!), one of the battle scenes is fought at the ruins of an airport, called "JFK Mark" by Dan Dastun (the ruins are at the edge of the wastelands, which suggests that almost everything beyond the airport ruins has been destroyed).
• In episode 17 (Leviathan), the remnants of the Coney Island amusement park and the Cyclone roller coaster are clearly shown.
• In episode 19 (Eyewitness), a character is shown wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap.
• In episode 20 (Stripes), Angel finds herself drawn to the ruins of Grand Central Terminal.
• In episode 21 (The Third Big), Big Fau rises out of the ground through the Washington Arch.
• In several episodes Roger pays Big Ear for his services with what would appear to be US currency.
• Whenever he visits Big Ear, Roger drives over what appears to be the Brooklyn Bridge
• In one of the last two episodes, Roger sees Vera in what appears to be the Lincoln Tunnel.

City layout

Domes and main city

Each dome in Paradigm City has its own "sun," a source of artificial light that orbits along a track along the inside span of the dome (bright and direct sunlight is considered something of a luxury, the city having been under a near-constant state of overcast ever since the Event). The structure of the domes is conventional; they appear to be built of heavy steel girders. The largest is Paradigm Dome at the city center; it contains the Paradigm Corporation headquarters. Crops are grown in certain outlying domes, such as the fields of wheat and tomatoes owned by the retired Gordon Rosewater.

In the final episodes of the series, enormous, megadeus-sized stage lamps are observed suspended from a massive gridlike structure high above the city, suggesting that the entire city city may be an elaborate stage set. Prior to this the population is unaware of them, as they are normally concealed by clouds.

Underground

Subways and other tunnels predating the Event are abandoned, as the entire population harbors an irrational fear of going below ground. Roger Smith shares this phobia, though he is willing to use the old subway system as a method of quickly transporting Big O around Paradigm City as needed: an immense tank-like vehicle that contains the Big O, the Prairie Dog, uses the subway tracks to deliver and (on a platform) elevate the Big O, so that it may burst forth from underground. The phobia prevents anyone from tracking Big O's movements to Roger's house. In episode 4, Roger ventures further down than he ever had before, and finds that the deeper one goes the newer the surroundings become; more recent installations exist below older ones. Thus while the tunnels near the surface are simply old subway lines, the ones deeper down are from right before the Event itself, and house remnant exotic technologies unknown on the surface such as the ruined archetype megadeus found by Schwarzwald.

Coastline

A large portion of the city is also submerged in shallow water just off the coast. It appears that during the Event there was either a massive rise in sea levels or an earh movement causing a large portion of the city to sink into the sea, or both. Taller buildings can still be seen protruding from the water. The submerged city acts as a large artificial reef, attracting a large amount and variety of fish and other ocean life, which is harvested to help feed the city's population. Submarines are largely unknown, though the Paradigm Corporation an operates a corps of frogmen.

In the final episodes of the series, Roger (in Big O) falls into the sea. Deep below the submerged portion of the city, he sees what appears to a system of gigantic gears and mechanical equipment below the ruins, lending support to the theory that the entire city itself, even the old submerged ruins, may just be a fabrication.

Inland

Beyond Paradigm City, there is nothing, with the possible exception of the Union: the Event forty years ago apparently turned the rest of the world into an endless desert. However, a settlement called "Electric City" exists inland, in a stretch of hilly forest beside a large lake and river that appears to lead to Paradigm City, whose domes and skyscrapers can clearly be seen a short distance off. It is possible that Electric City was a suburb or fringe city of Paradigm. Big O is able to be transported to this area via the underground, suggesting that Electric City has access to the Paradigm City subway system.

Culture

The city is characterized by severe class inequity; the higher-income population resides inside the more pleasant geodesic domes, with the remainder left in tenements outside. Androids coexist with the human inhabitants of Paradigm City; while their numbers are fairly low, and they're something of a rarity, there are enough of them that denizens of the city are not shocked by them and don't consider it particularly unusual to encounter one.

Several episodes show inhabitants of Paradigm City practicing some shape or form of Christianity, as people congregate in meeting places with crucifixes prominently displayed. However, the practice appears to be based on custom rather than doctrine, which no one remembers. A cathedral is shown in ruins and forgotten, although some elderly people occasionally feel compelled to stand in front of it and sing scraps of hymns. it is revealed in episode 11 that almost no one remembers Christmas.

A holiday is observed on December 25, but as a celebration to commemorate the founding of Paradigm City, known as "Heaven's Day." The inhabitants of the city still put up generic Christmas decorations like decorated Christmas trees and streamers, but they don't really know the underlying reason behind all of this. Alex Rosewater seems to be the series' only character with knowledge of pre-Event Christianity. Dastun at one point mentions that Rosewater had in his possession fragments of a "Book of Revelations," although neither Dastun nor Roger had previously heard of it. It is possible that Rosewater also has other fragments of The Bible, as Rosewater describes the real meaning of Heaven's Day as being "the day God's son was born."

Factions

Paradigm Corporation

The Paradigm Corporation is run by Alex Rosewater, son of Gordon Rosewater, the original founder of both the city and corporation. Though there is a Senate, the Paradigm Corporation de facto runs the city; the Military Police are answerable to it (through its "Justice Division"). The company contains other divisions, such as Paradigm Press and Paradigm Laboratories.

The company's logo is a stylized P, in a combination of Art-Deco and interwar Modernist styles. Its headquarters are in a vaguelly Babel-like axial tower, at the center and protruding through the top of the city's largest dome.

Military Police

The Military Police act both in a military capacity, in defense against exotic (i.e. gigantic) threats, and as a police force, in the course of regular law enforcement activities. The series' most visible MP officer is Major Dan Dastun, later promoted to Colonel. Roger Smith was once a member of the military police, and partner to Dastun. The Military Police is fragmented by a crisis of loyalty near the end of the series, with Dastun and a large fraction of the force supporting Roger Smith against an insane Alex Rosewater.

The Union

The Union is a group of foreigners, believed to be the last remnants of the global civilization that was (outside of Paradigm City) destroyed by the Event. They are unknown to the city's inhabitants, who consider the idea of surviving "foreigners" a myth. Though their exact location and origin are unknown, many appear to be European (some appear familiar with the French language, a dead language to the residents of Paradigm). Like the residents of the city itself, the members of the Union also apparently lost their memories after the Event, suggesting that the mass amnesia was a worldwide phenomenon. Some members of the Union live in Paradigm City, posing as regular citizens of almost all social classes and careers (including the Military Police). Angel is a citizen or member of the Union, though Roger is fairly soon after meeting her able to discern that she is not a native of Paradigm City.

The Union's goal is seek out and recover their lost memories, which they believe may reside in Paradigm City, towards which end they engage in a combination of violence, namely terrorist bombings, and subterfuge, namely a secret treaty with Alex Rosewater. Although they apparently have control of a contingent of Megadei that they have found in the wastelands, as well as an impressive air force (something that Paradigm severely lacks), they are numerically and materially at a great disadvantage compared to the city.

Towards the end of the series, the true nature of the Union and of their status as foreigners is brought into question; indications are given that the group may have been created and manipulated by the Paradigm Corporation all along. There are also indications the Union agents' memories of having grown up in a foreign land may be fabrications, and that their entire childhoods may have been falsified. High-ranking Union member Vera Ronstadt suggests that the Union infiltrators are really Gordon Rosewater's "tomatoes," clones of the city's founding senators, supposedly possessing their memories, though Gordon himself contradicts this. If this interpretation is true, it suggest that there is literally nothing beyond the wastelands that surround Paradigm City.