Ergo Proxy
April 22nd, 2008In a desolate world all humans live in domed cities to protect them from the hostile environment outside. Each human wishes to become a citizen of one of these domed cities. The citizens live side by side with Autoreivs, robots that have been designed to be companions to the humans. Consumerism is encouraged and emotions are repressed. The society is "perfect". It is tranquil. It is boring. What people don’t know is that their perfect society is hiding a rotten core.
In the domed city of Romdo a woman named Re-l Mayer is an investigator for the Civil Intelligence Office. She investigates Autoreivs that are infected with the Cogito virus and terminates them. She is also the parole officer of a recent immigrant, Vincent Law, a man seeking to become a citizen of Romdo. Re-l is also the granddaughter of the ruler of the city and so has a certain amount of latitude that is not granted to ordinary citizens. She is a citizen and so is accompanied by her own Entourage type Autoreiv, Iggy. Iggy looks like a well-built, but not over muscled, man, but when his personality is activated he is effeminate. In the process of investigating infected Autoreivs, Re-l encounters a monstrous being that seems to hold feelings for her. This monster is almost immediately attacked and driven away by a similarly monstrous being.
These creatures are called Proxies. Their roles are unknown and they are said to be invulnerable. While this much is known about the Proxies, they are mostly a mystery. And Vincent Law finds himself right at the center of the mystery when he is attacked by the second Proxy. Suddenly all of Romdo is interested in Vincent Law. He escapes the dome and is followed by Re-l and they, together with an Cogito infected Autoreiv, journey across the wasteland to Vincent’s former city to try to discover the secrets behind the Proxies. During this journey they meet other humans, mutants, and Proxies.
Ergo Proxy is very hard to explain. I watched it and most of it didn’t make sense until I watched the last episode and even then I was left with questions. I guess I should say that the story in each individual episode made sense, but it was difficult to see how all the individual storylines contributed to the overall plot. The characters were trying to discover the secrets behind the Proxies, but isn’t as if they uncover a plethora of clues. If anything each episode builds the confusion until the truth is revealed in the last five minutes of the final episode and the ending raises more questions than it resolves.
I liked parts of Ergo Proxy, but I don’t think that I want to watch it again. The artwork is dark and Gothic and the anime benefits because of the mood enhancement of the artwork. The characters are complex and well drawn. Seriously Re-l is the perfect Goth princess, moody, angry, dark haired, dark eyed, and pale. However, the story suffers from incoherence. Maybe I was distracted from the details, but I thought that the story could have been clearer. The voice acting was very well done and the actors were well cast. I think the artwork was amazing, but it just couldn’t make up for the fact that the story was so confusing that even the ending could created more questions than it answered. With a stronger story this would have been an absolutely amazing anime.


