If that’s one anime that tries to extra-hard make itself more complicated than necessary, Ergo Proxy has to be one.
On first impression, the 22 episode anime centres on futuristic wasteland world, and a society inside a domed city called Romdeau. Everything is very ordered, with androids called AutoRaves serving humans in many ways. But even from the first few epsiodes, they start throwing curveballs of in the form of philosophical and mythological references. Sure, lots of anime do that, but not as much as Ergo Proxy.
There are two main characters in the story Real Mayar and Vincent Law, plus an infected AutoRave child called Pino, added for some cuteness quotient. Much of the series, especially in the latter half, deal with the strange relationship between the two lead characters.
While the dialogue and themes are heavy going, the overriding theme and story conclusion is rather quite straightforward. Many of the episodes especially towards the end seem to be throwaway vignettes, they tell a dream like tale that vaguely ties in with the main story arc to to reveal a little bit more about the characters, but do not advance the story line.
The animation is modern, dark and goth influence. Real Mayar is rendered beautifully, and the AutoRaves are intricately modelled to give them a modern look that is refreshing. But Vincent Law looks patchy, he sometimes looks different from episode to episode.
When i started watching this series, I was doing a course in Western philosophy, so I could really see where the writers were coming in terms of the inspiration for some of the themes used. The horror part of the is thankfully minimal, but there were a lot of stretches in the series that I thought were pretty slow going and unnecessarily complicated.
I’d give marks for their animation and character design, but overall, I wasn’t overly impressed with Ergo Proxy. It isn’t an accessible anime for beginners, but it does break away from the cliches of the genre by attempting something different.