you refill my place
So a little while ago I finally watched my box set of Ergo Proxy. It only took me...two years of owning it to get around to it. That is honestly faster than with some things I own.
Ergo Proxy is set in a future in which most of the earth has been rendered inhabitable, and people now live in domed cities where they are reproduced artificially. Alongside the humans are the Autorievs, which is what they call androids, which come in two types: Entourage (the kind that are basically work partners) and Companion (the kind that say, serve as a child when you haven't been authorized to be given one yet). The series opens in Romdeau, a domed city in which things have started to go wrong. Autorievs are being infected by a virus with the very symbolic name of "Cogito," which causes them to become self-aware. Unfortunately, this tends to make them homicidal. And if that wasn't bad enough, there are mysterious monsters called "Proxies" which can cause immense damage and seem to have a lot of secrets behind them. Inspector Re-l Mayer of the Intelligence Bureau begins to investigate, which causes her to get caught up with the immigrant Vincent Law, who seems to attract a lot of trouble. Vincent also gains a cute robot sidekick in the form of Pino, a child-sized Companion Autoriev infected with Cogito. After Vincent, along with Pino, and Re-l all go through some incidents on their own, the three eventually team up and set out into the world to discover things. Meanwhile, things get worse for the characters back in Romdeau.
It honestly took me a while to warm up to Ergo Proxy. The first few episodes are kind of enthralling, but then it lags for a while and the characters start to grate before it picks up seriously. The turning point for me, where I started to love it instead of just being interested by it, was episode 15 (the quiz show episode), and from then on I kind of devoured it. I have a feeling it will actually be a little better watching it a second time around. It's one of those series I can't honestly give more than a 7/10, but which I like a little more than that.
Vincent Law starts out as a meek immigrant to Romdeau who just wants to fit in and become a Fellow Citizen. ...That doesn't work out for him. He ends up outside the dome, and for a while is in a constant state of either finding his footing or being utterly lost. It doesn't help that he comes with identity issues, complete with some amnesia. Still, overall he actually remains pretty sure of himself, even if that self can be overly passive, and is a pretty decent guy.
Vincent does, however, have a tragic tendency towards overwritten monologues about his terrible situation. Writers, I am all for taking cues from the X-Files on many things, but the overwritten musings is not one of them.
Re-l Mayer is cold, extremely competent when she wants to be, spoiled when she doesn't want to be competent, and very focused. Re-l is the granddaughter of Romdeau's Regent, and thus has grown up especially privileged and especially trained to be a Fellow Citizen- a good emotionless cog in Romdeau's machine. Her quest to understand the Proxies, however, introduces her to broader horizons, which she eventually starts to respond to, though she continues to be very serious.
Re-l shares with Vincent a sometimes annoying inability to note that WEIRD THINGS are going on, though this can partially be forgiven due to the possible influences of the settings they are in when this happens.
Pino (whose name is a reference to a character in Black Jack, whose name was a reference to Pinocchio) was the Companion to a high-status, childless couple, before the couple was granted a real child and tragic incident which left her mother figure and the baby dead and Pino infected with Cogito. Presumably because she had more or less been treated as a child, Pino doesn't go psycho when infected, but behaves like, well, a child. She was to be scrapped, but she runs away and ends up joining Vincent.
Pino's characterization is actually really well-handled. At first, Vincent can recognize her expressions as programmed ones, but they get wider and more genuine as the series goes on. There's a part where she ends up befriending a human boy, and constantly imitates his drawings exactly until he yells at her to make her own. Even her character design is great- her face looks human because that's what you'd want in a Companion, but places like her upper arms aren't made to resemble skin at all, because that would be covered by clothing and manufacturers are going to cut costs somewhere.
And she's kind of made of adorable.
Raul Creed is the newly-appointed head of the Security Bureau. Raul starts out lawful neutral and a model Fellow Citizen, positions which pretty much make him an antagonist. Over the course of the series, Raul displays some anger issues at certain people, a refreshing amount of respect to his Entourage, and generally kind of seriously falls apart for very understandable reasons. (This results in him actually becoming an antihero figure. Not perhaps the one you would want to have around, but one nonetheless.)
I actually seriously love Raul as a character, as you can probably guess from the icon, but going into that properly would involve explicit spoilers for episode 17 and beyond, instead of just vague ones.
Daedalus Yumeno is the young head of the Health and Wellness Bureau. He grew up with Re-l, and is...quite attached to her, to say the least (read: increasingly crazy stalker). Daedalus is very intelligent and very determined to prod at or experiment on things until he figures them out, something which he prefers to do in privacy but is willing to make deals in order to continue.
Honestly, while he has a moment or two of pathos at the end, I never liked Daedalus, and I still don't.
There are some other characters, like Re-l's Entourage Iggy, who I could include, but there is not as much to say about them, especially when I don't want to give explicit spoilers. So I shall stop here.
I should say that if you don't think you'll have patience for 1) Sato Dai (the head writer) proving that he knows some philosophy, 2) Murase Shuko (the director) demonstrating that he thought The X-Files looked cool, or 3) episodes which take place entirely inside characters' heads, you'll want to avoid this series.
If, on the other hand, you find slow builds and lots of glimpses into different parts of a world interesting, and like a show that realizes that having a serious business plot doesn't mean it can't have fun with the fourth wall, Ergo Proxy is worth checking out.
Ergo Proxy is set in a future in which most of the earth has been rendered inhabitable, and people now live in domed cities where they are reproduced artificially. Alongside the humans are the Autorievs, which is what they call androids, which come in two types: Entourage (the kind that are basically work partners) and Companion (the kind that say, serve as a child when you haven't been authorized to be given one yet). The series opens in Romdeau, a domed city in which things have started to go wrong. Autorievs are being infected by a virus with the very symbolic name of "Cogito," which causes them to become self-aware. Unfortunately, this tends to make them homicidal. And if that wasn't bad enough, there are mysterious monsters called "Proxies" which can cause immense damage and seem to have a lot of secrets behind them. Inspector Re-l Mayer of the Intelligence Bureau begins to investigate, which causes her to get caught up with the immigrant Vincent Law, who seems to attract a lot of trouble. Vincent also gains a cute robot sidekick in the form of Pino, a child-sized Companion Autoriev infected with Cogito. After Vincent, along with Pino, and Re-l all go through some incidents on their own, the three eventually team up and set out into the world to discover things. Meanwhile, things get worse for the characters back in Romdeau.
It honestly took me a while to warm up to Ergo Proxy. The first few episodes are kind of enthralling, but then it lags for a while and the characters start to grate before it picks up seriously. The turning point for me, where I started to love it instead of just being interested by it, was episode 15 (the quiz show episode), and from then on I kind of devoured it. I have a feeling it will actually be a little better watching it a second time around. It's one of those series I can't honestly give more than a 7/10, but which I like a little more than that.
Vincent Law starts out as a meek immigrant to Romdeau who just wants to fit in and become a Fellow Citizen. ...That doesn't work out for him. He ends up outside the dome, and for a while is in a constant state of either finding his footing or being utterly lost. It doesn't help that he comes with identity issues, complete with some amnesia. Still, overall he actually remains pretty sure of himself, even if that self can be overly passive, and is a pretty decent guy.
Vincent does, however, have a tragic tendency towards overwritten monologues about his terrible situation. Writers, I am all for taking cues from the X-Files on many things, but the overwritten musings is not one of them.
Re-l Mayer is cold, extremely competent when she wants to be, spoiled when she doesn't want to be competent, and very focused. Re-l is the granddaughter of Romdeau's Regent, and thus has grown up especially privileged and especially trained to be a Fellow Citizen- a good emotionless cog in Romdeau's machine. Her quest to understand the Proxies, however, introduces her to broader horizons, which she eventually starts to respond to, though she continues to be very serious.
Re-l shares with Vincent a sometimes annoying inability to note that WEIRD THINGS are going on, though this can partially be forgiven due to the possible influences of the settings they are in when this happens.
Pino (whose name is a reference to a character in Black Jack, whose name was a reference to Pinocchio) was the Companion to a high-status, childless couple, before the couple was granted a real child and tragic incident which left her mother figure and the baby dead and Pino infected with Cogito. Presumably because she had more or less been treated as a child, Pino doesn't go psycho when infected, but behaves like, well, a child. She was to be scrapped, but she runs away and ends up joining Vincent.
Pino's characterization is actually really well-handled. At first, Vincent can recognize her expressions as programmed ones, but they get wider and more genuine as the series goes on. There's a part where she ends up befriending a human boy, and constantly imitates his drawings exactly until he yells at her to make her own. Even her character design is great- her face looks human because that's what you'd want in a Companion, but places like her upper arms aren't made to resemble skin at all, because that would be covered by clothing and manufacturers are going to cut costs somewhere.
And she's kind of made of adorable.
Raul Creed is the newly-appointed head of the Security Bureau. Raul starts out lawful neutral and a model Fellow Citizen, positions which pretty much make him an antagonist. Over the course of the series, Raul displays some anger issues at certain people, a refreshing amount of respect to his Entourage, and generally kind of seriously falls apart for very understandable reasons. (This results in him actually becoming an antihero figure. Not perhaps the one you would want to have around, but one nonetheless.)
I actually seriously love Raul as a character, as you can probably guess from the icon, but going into that properly would involve explicit spoilers for episode 17 and beyond, instead of just vague ones.
Daedalus Yumeno is the young head of the Health and Wellness Bureau. He grew up with Re-l, and is...quite attached to her, to say the least (read: increasingly crazy stalker). Daedalus is very intelligent and very determined to prod at or experiment on things until he figures them out, something which he prefers to do in privacy but is willing to make deals in order to continue.
Honestly, while he has a moment or two of pathos at the end, I never liked Daedalus, and I still don't.
There are some other characters, like Re-l's Entourage Iggy, who I could include, but there is not as much to say about them, especially when I don't want to give explicit spoilers. So I shall stop here.
I should say that if you don't think you'll have patience for 1) Sato Dai (the head writer) proving that he knows some philosophy, 2) Murase Shuko (the director) demonstrating that he thought The X-Files looked cool, or 3) episodes which take place entirely inside characters' heads, you'll want to avoid this series.
If, on the other hand, you find slow builds and lots of glimpses into different parts of a world interesting, and like a show that realizes that having a serious business plot doesn't mean it can't have fun with the fourth wall, Ergo Proxy is worth checking out.