"Ergo Proxy" (2006) TV series

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Shuko Murase

Seasons:

1

Release Date:

25 February 2006 (Japan)

Genre:

Animation | Adventure | Crime | Mystery | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Malice implanted by the creator.

Plot Keywords:

Domed City | Anime

Cast

Rachel Hirschfeld	...	Pino (23 episodes, 2006)
Liam O'Brien	...	Vincent Law (23 episodes, 2006)
Karen Thompson	...	Re-l Mayer (23 episodes, 2006)
Travis Willingham	...	Iggy (11 episodes, 2006)

Runtime:

25 min (23 episodes)

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Certification:

Australia:MA | Australia:M (some episodes) | UK:12 (DVD volumes 1-5) | UK:15 (DVD volume 6)

Company:

Geneon Entertainment

Soundtrack:

Paranoid Android

Brilliant show, except for the poor ending

First the bad news: it almost seems as if the writers didn't know where to go with the story. Surely they must have planned every step from the beginning, but the story eventually spirals completely out of control, going from cyberpunk to epic fantasy. It's a shame, because the show is very interesting until the final episodes. The last episode is so incredibly incomprehensible that the characters may as well have been spouting "alas, the morally ambiguous water melon is the moon's armpit yesterday!" The writers should have stuck to the cyberpunk theme, and ditched the fantasy nonsense entirely. On the bright side, the ending does seem to suggest that the second season will be interesting, and will hopefully contain more scifi, and less fantasy. But we'll see.

Anyway, it's all good before the last episodes. As said, the theme is clearly cyberpunk, with movies like Blade Runner, The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell coming to mind. As for the character design, Re-l is one of the most interesting characters I've seen, with a very striking and unusual appearance (definitely not the stereotypical anime stuff, more like The Matrix, though she looks radically different when she isn't wearing makeup). Like almost any good show, Ergo Proxy is fundamentally about the characters, and watching Re-l is, in the end, more interesting than the story. There's also a cute little girl called Pino. She is actually an advanced autoreiv, a cyborg, infected with a virus called cogito that causes self-awareness in autoreivs. At first, she just imitates people, but gradually develops real feelings and a real personality. Then there's Vincent, the actual protagonist of the story. The episode that I like the most has no story at all, and concentrates entirely on character interaction within a somewhat confined space. It's both hilariously funny and touching.

The production values are very high, with an effective but sparsely used soundtrack (the intro song is outstanding), and terrific graphics. A curious aspect of the show is its many references to European culture and philosophy, with episode 1 beginning with a quote from a 15th century Italian poet. The cogito virus is, of course, a reference to Descartes' "cogito ergo sum," which itself is referenced during the show several times. Most of the text is in English, such as when Re-l writes something down or a computer display is showing something. Ergo Proxy is heavy on philosophy, even moreso than Ghost in the Shell.

I would really recommend Ergo Proxy to anyone with an interest in scifi, cyberpunk or adult anime. Or quality TV in general. I'd probably give this a 9/10 if it wasn't for the story's horrible downwards spiral towards the end.