Lots of bandwidth-sucking images ahead. Consider yourself warned.
Ergo Proxy is shaping up to be one of my favorite series of the past year. I’ve been keeping up with it sporadically, but I keep coming back and finding new things I thought I’d missed.
At first, it’s nothing completely original. Think Blade Runner with more of a focus on the existential leanings of the original Philip Dick story. Set it in an artificial utopia in the midst of a global ecological collapse, and it comes off sounding like countless other series.
The real difference is in the presentation. Ergo Proxy has some marvelous visuals and painstaking character designs, which is what we’ve come to expect from Geneon (Serial Experiments: Lain, Haibane Renmei), as well as some deep and convoluted intellectual concepts.
The story focuses around Rei-L Meyer (the lady with the shotgun), a detective in the suspiciously idyllic Romdeau. She’s tasked with tracking down Autoreivs (androids) infected with a virus called Cogito (“I think”). The robots “awaken” and develop individual personalities, often to the peril of their owners.
The social order of Romdeau seems to hinge on a stable social stratification and an unquestioning acceptance of the rules. “Fellow citizens” enjoy a degree of freedom, and all their needs are met, while immigrants (such as Vincent Law) must earn their way up the ladder.
Things quickly go wrong, and the lies behind the facade begin to show. Vincent finds himself framed for the murder of his entourage (a sort of domestic android), and he flees to the outside world.
Rei’s “grandfather,” the Regent of the city, and the being known as Proxy:
The show trades in a great deal of highbrow intellecualism:
As per Geneon’s usual standards, the visuals are a seamless mix of CGI and tradional 2D cel animation. The series is often depicted in contrasting shades of grey, black and brown, which is usually problematic, but everything is crisp and clear.
Rei with her entourage, Iggy:
Iggy seems to show a great deal of individual initiative for an AI. Though his memories are tampered with by Rei’s employers, he later recovers and is willing to work outside the standard surveillance network.
Unlike most of the other entourage units, who can only resort to violence when infected, Iggy is able to fight, at least to the extent of protecting Rei.
I’m only halfway through, but the series has already taken a number of very surprising turns. There are a number of nagging questions:
- What is Proxy, and what is his relation to the Amrita-infected unit that set up Vincent?
- In a city where people are custom-genetically engineered, why are robots needed at all?
- Given the same circumstance, why would the city need immigrants, such as Vincent?
- Was Vincent allowed a chance to earn citizenship based on what he knows?
- What exactly does Vincent know that leads Raul to hound him, even outside the city?
The series isn’t available stateside yet, but Geneon is releasing the first volume this month. Given the wonderful localizations they’ve done before, I have high hopes for the American DVD.