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Ergo Proxy: Purpose in the Apocalypse




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TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 5821
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2021 3:20 pm Reply with quote
Thanks for your insightful review. I liked the series too, though sometimes I found it hard to understand.

In some regards you could say it ended on a cliff hanger, considering the final moments of the final episode. But you could also say, it was the end of this metaphyiscal plot line.

A sequel season would take place after the 'arrival' and would be more mundane, than the first season.
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Themaster20000



Joined: 05 Aug 2014
Posts: 863
PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2021 4:15 pm Reply with quote
The show was definitely all over the place,with what it was trying to say. Starts so promising,but that last half is just a mess.Things are bad when you have characters describing events that happened,instead of showing it to the viewers (mainly in the 2nd to last episode). The atmosphere certainly makes the show stand out.
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Triltaison



Joined: 03 Jul 2011
Posts: 715
PostPosted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 3:25 am Reply with quote
Themaster20000 wrote:
The show was definitely all over the place,with what it was trying to say. Starts so promising,but that last half is just a mess.Things are bad when you have characters describing events that happened,instead of showing it to the viewers (mainly in the 2nd to last episode). The atmosphere certainly makes the show stand out.


Agree 100%. Ergo Proxy remains the only anime that I'm annoyed I spent money on, and I own well over 1500 discs of anime on DVD and Blu-Ray. It seemed like such an interesting and worthwhile story was being set up in the first few episodes (especially when I love works like Wolf's Rain and Perfect Blue), but that gameshow episode toward the end was absolutely infuriating. For most of the later show I felt like I was trapped in a conversation with someone who had just read their first book about philosophy and wouldn't stop talking about it while I was simultaneously trying to also watch Blade Runner.

No offense to those who love it, but I just remember it being horribly clunky and unpleasant. It does have a good mood to the world and a solid opening sequence featuring Radiohead, at least. I also remember liking Re-l's robot partner but he doesn't show up beyond around episode 6 or so. So it does have some interesting/redeeming aspects, but overall it was not a show for me.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5286
PostPosted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 6:10 am Reply with quote
While I do appreciate the experimental nature of the show and must confess that from a visual level it does well. I feel that over all that while the show has a lot to say, it doesn't say it in a meaningful way. I don't like the word pretentious, but the scenes with the statues talking are outright pretentious.

But the biggest problem for me at least, is that none or nearly none, of the characters felt like characters. In comparison to Wolf's Rain from the same time, where despite the philosophical and spiritual nature of the show the human characters feel developed and rounded out. Ergo Proxy has mostly dialogue boxes in human form. and it seems to get worse at it as the show progresses.
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Professor Nihil



Joined: 09 Jul 2021
Posts: 27
PostPosted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:08 am Reply with quote
Ergo Proxy is 8/10 for me.

I enjoyed it but liked Witch Hunter Robin (also 8/10) a bit more, both have nice design but weak not very human characters.

Ergo Proxy has some timelessness to it, making it worth watching but I wouldn't look for too much meaning in it.

Do that and perhaps you'll be disappointed.

It's fashion anime aimed at a specific subculture market if I am not mistaken.
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Kicksville



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 1168
PostPosted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:01 am Reply with quote
Well, these comments make me feel a little less weird. I watched this in full for the first time last year and was surprised I didn't like it much.

The first few episodes are great, but then it ends up being much more...goofy than expected. It's hard to describe without giving away too much, but I suppose you could say I thought it would be one thing and it was another. I didn't need it to blow me away philosophically or anything, but what it was trying to do just never clicked for me.

There is some good stuff in there though, and funny enough despite what I said, I thought the two parody episodes were the best ones. But aside from that I wonder if it'd have benefitted from being shorter.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1026
PostPosted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:20 pm Reply with quote
I can’t remember the details, but at the time I thought parts of it were brilliant while other parts seemed like they would have had to have been written by a child, and it wasn’t the humour I was thinking of (or not primarily at least — I can’t remember exactly). I got similar feelings from Eden of the East. “Were [these two pieces] really written by the same person?”

Some of the art is excellent, regardless, and I liked a lot of it. For some reason thinking about it has made me want to rewatch Texhnolyze.
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yuzumei



Joined: 03 Dec 2016
Posts: 53
PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2021 2:59 am Reply with quote
Texhnolyze is probably one of my favorite shows. I think I watched it 5+ times through the years. I remember a friend recommended me Ergo Proxy saying that it was "similar" to Texhnolize. Well... not really. I really really wanted to like Ergo but it was a mess. The show has very interesting ideas but the delivery sucked. OMG and that gameshow episode!!! Bleh!!
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:55 am Reply with quote
Ergo proxy would have greatly benefited from being just 12 episodes. There's a very long segment in the middle that's just the character aimlessly meandering in the "boat" and doing essentially nothing. Cut out all that and re-tighten the whole story and you'd get something much stronger.
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Gonbawa



Joined: 28 Jun 2016
Posts: 53
PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2021 7:35 pm Reply with quote
I too bought the DVD box and was not happy with it. Especially when the final destination of the dangerous and long travel, the answer to all the questions, the very goal the protagonists risk their life for during all the first part, is irremediably destroyed mere hours before they find it. End of the firts half. Now dear main characters, turn back and go back home. It felt like the scriptwriter was spitting on my face : "Oh, you tought it was something in-between Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell ? Stop kidding yourself : just watch the nice pictures and give me your money."
Ergo proxy is artful and beautiful but all the so-called smart and philosophical story is merely smoke and mirrors.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4558
PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:15 pm Reply with quote
It's been a very long time since I've seen Ergo Proxy, and while it was definitely uneven and occasionally too full of itself, I still remember enjoying it a great deal. It was part of a whole wave of darker psychological shows in that era that we don't really seem to see much of at all anymore. I watched it in a discussion group with some friends, and we spent hours chewing over it and theorizing. Pino is the best.

And hard disagree on a few earlier posts: I freaking loved that game show episode. A massive expository infodump in the form of a ridiculously self-aware, fourth-wall-smashing spectacle? More of that please. Although very different in structure, it reminded me a lot of the GITS: Stand-Alone Complex episode "Chat! Chat! Chat!" which I also love.
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One-Eye



Joined: 08 Mar 2011
Posts: 2260
PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2021 12:57 pm Reply with quote
I haven't seen Ergo Proxy in years. I originally saw parts of it on cable (I think it was FuseTV?) and it made me hunt down the DVDs. I still have the DVDs and have vacillated over upgrading to Blu-ray, mainly because I'm not sure I really want to. I recall loving the aesthetic, the moodiness, and Pino. Both the sub and dub were pretty good. I recall enjoying the first couple of episodes and the first half of the show in general, but then I got more and more annoyed in the second half.

I think part of it was that the show had invested a lot of time presenting itself as some kind of post-apocalyptic BladeRunner-ish story in a somewhat linear format. It then broke what it had perhaps promised the viewers by then sharply veering into sometimes zany episodic twilight zone territory. There were perhaps one too many dream sequences, the game show episode and generally spinning its wheels in the second half of the show. Then there was a mad rush to the end, which I felt at the time could have used an extra episode for setup. I think when I was done I felt frustrated, because I think that with a little trimming and a few more grounded episodes to help connect things more this could have been an excellent show. Instead it was a might-have-been great show and now it might have the status of a cult hit type of show. By no means is it bad imho, but do the good parts outweigh the frustrating ones enough and would I want to revisit it again? Simply put, I don't know if I do.
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Themaster20000



Joined: 05 Aug 2014
Posts: 863
PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:21 pm Reply with quote
One-Eye wrote:
I haven't seen Ergo Proxy in years. I originally saw parts of it on cable (I think it was FuseTV?) and it made me hunt down the DVDs. I still have the DVDs and have vacillated over upgrading to Blu-ray, mainly because I'm not sure I really want to. I recall loving the aesthetic, the moodiness, and Pino. Both the sub and dub were pretty good. I recall enjoying the first couple of episodes and the first half of the show in general, but then I got more and more annoyed in the second half.

I think part of it was that the show had invested a lot of time presenting itself as some kind of post-apocalyptic BladeRunner-ish story in a somewhat linear format. It then broke what it had perhaps promised the viewers by then sharply veering into sometimes zany episodic twilight zone territory. There were perhaps one too many dream sequences, the game show episode and generally spinning its wheels in the second half of the show. Then there was a mad rush to the end, which I felt at the time could have used an extra episode for setup. I think when I was done I felt frustrated, because I think that with a little trimming and a few more grounded episodes to help connect things more this could have been an excellent show. Instead it was a might-have-been great show and now it might have the status of a cult hit type of show. By no means is it bad imho, but do the good parts outweigh the frustrating ones enough and would I want to revisit it again? Simply put, I don't know if I do.


It's hard to go back and rewatch it,since you know most of the stuff setup in the first half doesn't have a good payoff to it. Those last three episodes with them just desperately trying to close every plot point,was such a disappointing way to end. You've should've seen the city slowing falling apart throughout the show,instead of it just happening immediately in the last episodes. Shame,cause it really was a show on the verge of being great,it just needed tighter focus.
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SonicSP



Joined: 24 Aug 2007
Posts: 40
PostPosted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 5:18 pm Reply with quote
Just out of sheer coincidence, I have just finished watching this show today after being in my watchlist for a few years. So it's nice to have an article being written recently too analyzing it.

The animation is pretty nice. There is a sense of darkness everywhere and I meant literally dark. While this was not nice to see visually (I prefer brighter color schemes) it just fits this world and this anime so we'll that I commend it. Everything is so depressing but that's how it should be. I enjoyed speculating and trying to figure out the world including analyzing the atlas and looking at continent to see whether they match our world or not. Is is an alternate planet? An alternate world? Same world but destroyed?

And yes Blade Runner was what I was reminded of.for most of this show, even after it became less cyberpunk-ky. Something about the slow pacing and existentialism.

This show has a lot of missed opportunities but and I think the ending doesn't land as well as I hoped but I still throughly enjoyed it. I do think they can cut and streamline some of the plot points and a few of the "standalone" episodes near the end was really unnecessary to the main plot. But the journey there was overall really good even if not all the plot points and threads are explained.

I enjoyed Re-I as a character. She may not be the nicest person out there but she feels flawed but in a good way. She is nice opposite of Vincent, which is the straight up Gary Stu and they make a good pair. Add in Pino and it feels like a nuclear family. She walks a fine line of being a diva but also a competent main character with redeeming features (I was initially expecting a Motoko Kusanagi clone from GiTS: SAC, cyberpunk detective and all). Her storyline with Iggy, her robot companionwas also very very good and well handled.

But definitely the first cour is a lot better than the second cour. The second cour spent too much time building in new mysteries instead of solving existing ones. I had a huge sense of dread heading into the last two episodes knowing there wouldn't be time to solve the remainder questions. The ending turned out a lot better than I feared though still imperfect but it's good enough not to sour my experience with this series and I will indeed be rewatching this a few more times to spend more time with the characters.

The slow pacing can also be an issue. Not a problem on the first cour cos the mystery buildup is so exciting but as you reach the second cour you want them to solve and unravel things instead. Two or three episodes near the end while can be good standalone episodes really really doesn't work well in a show focused on such a mystery world. Examples would be the theme park episode and the fake dream return episode. I will admit however that some of the standalone episodes earlier like the stranded ship episode.

Also remind me of Death Stranding in a way too (which of course came 13 years after). With the traversing across a post apocalyptic world stuff while also wondering about the mystery in hoe the world came to be like this.

I disagree with the article when it comes to the ending though. The ending had a sense of finality to it and doesn't need a second season at all. Yes there is "things" that needed to be done but they're not the sort of things that necessarily needs a sequel. It feels like a complete work to me say than a Part 1 out of Part 2 thing It is more that I wished some things in this series was streamlined of handled differently as opposed to needing a sequel. Some things needed more screentime, others less so and there was more than enough time looking at the episode count.

In the end, despite it's flaws, this anime will stay in my head for awhile. I enjoyed the characters and while some of the plot points are not solved well enough or at all, most of it still is explained however imperfect the execution. I think cutting out a few of the later standalone episodes to focus on the main plot would have helped it more. Also the mindscrew was fun.

=======

Triltaison wrote:
I also remember liking Re-l's robot partner but he doesn't show up beyond around episode 6 or so.


He was in the show until Episode 13 and what a brilliant episode of was too.
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