November 12th, 2006
Ergo Proxy Episode 23 (END) - Deus Ex Machina
What deus ex machina?
I liked it!
Well, only the second half of the episode, as I thought the first half was crap, but the second half of the final episode of Ergo Proxy meant that the end wasn’t entirely shit so I won’t feel bad about plonking down moolah for the series on DVD!
Hurray!
I do have some questions, though, which will go in the extended entry. Hopefully those of you who paid more attention will be able to give me some answers, as although I’m aware it’s anime and therefore the writers delight in leaving you asking questions at the end I’m sure I’ve just missed the point somewhere along the way.
On a more general note, though, I’m not quite sure what to say about Ergo Proxy. It certainly didn’t turn out quite like I’d expected it to at the beginning, both for the better and for the worse; it was better for being more complex than just goth-girls-and-guns, but worse in that I’d have liked more focus on the supposed detective/mystery aspects we saw in the first episode (and yeah, alright, a few more battles might have helped, I like action sequences…)
The production aesthetic of the show was outstanding, and I have no complaints with the way Shukou Murase works; I know his other stuff isn’t very popular (and I will admit to finding Gasaraki a struggle due to the rather dry politics, although I loved the Noh stuff) but I don’t have a problem with anything he had much to do with; although the animation fluctuated it was never truly awful, and it was all well shot.
I was also really very impressed with the voice acting; a by-product of watching shows like this is that the acting is generally much more understated than in most anime, and we got some great stuff here; I hope we get to hear more of Rie Satou, and Akiko Yajima deserves SO MUCH LOVE for voicing Pino, a character I thought I’d hate that turned out to be my favourite in the whole show.
My problem’s with Dai Sato, I guess; given that the original pitch of Ergo Proxy was “robots go on a journey to find out the meaning of their existence”, changing things from that didn’t work very well in my opinion. As I said last time, I really think the writers did a great job with the characters; all the main characters (yes, even Kristeva) went through interesting development and got plenty of screen time, and I’m really impressed the show managed it as well as it did.
But seriously, WTF was up with the plot by the end? In fact, just chop out all the Proxy One stuff and I’d probably be okay with it; it was a load of bollocks, frankly, and the dialogue in this episode concerning it was pretentious twaddle. It wasn’t clever, it was bull. In my opinion, anyway. Bad Sato, BAD!
Anyway, Ergo Proxy is best summed up as being inconsistent. Inconsistent writing, inconsistent animation, inconsistent quality all round. But it’s not as if it averages out at being mediocre as a consequence, though; despite not being OMG BEST SHOW EVAR it’s engaged me enough to examine it relatively critically and talk about it, which I think’s pretty successful. It’s not something you want from every show, sure (I don’t watch Gakuen Alice because it’s thought-provoking…), but I think it’s the kind of thing Ergo Proxy set out to do and it did so with relative success.
Anyway, I think the DVDs start coming out in a couple of weeks, so I can enjoy the show in big-ass widescreen on the telly then and revel in the glorious cheese of kiri some more. COME AND SAAAAAAAAAAAVE MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY, indeed.
Right, questions after the jump!
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November 11th, 2006
I’m not going to write about the story of this episode, because it’s not really worth it to be honest (although, as a Classicist, I did like the Minotaur/Labyrinth imagery)
To some extent, I like what’s happened here; I think the character arcs have worked well in this show, as we’ve seen real development (mostly) and it’s played out quite nicely, particularly for the main characters. But I’m still very, very disappointed with the narrative arc that Ergo Proxy has taken.
You may remember back when I actually kept up with this show as it aired that the biggest worry some people (including perhaps myself) was the effect of Mahou Shounen Vincent-chan on the show. To some extent, it’s now the LACK of Vincent that’s really dragging things down now; I miss his humanity, his dorkiness, and his general presence in the storyline in these last couple of episodes.
But the biggest problem is that in the penultimate episode of the show we’ve basically learnt very, very little. For a series that prided itself on being deliberately vague and setting up a whole load of mysteries at the start, absolutely bugger all has been done with most of it. Most importantly, we don’t know WHAT the Cogito Virus is; not that it matters, as the series is now almost exclusively focused on Ergo himself, but that was one of the big things that Re-L was investigating at the start.
But there are other things that just don’t seem to gel right. Proxy One, for instance; introduced pathetically in the Quiz Show and obviously interfering by the end (if you thought it was Vince who killed the caretaker droid in Moscow you must be dense), but the big Wizard of Oz reveal at the end of this episode is presented as if it’s a big end-of-show twist when, thanks to the clumsy writing, it’s seen coming from a mile away. Just before this, I watched the first episode of Heroes, an American live-action show, which has several twists in the first episode that are nicely foreshadowed without being spoiled and thus have an element of surprise; Ergo Proxy hasn’t managed that at all with 22 episodes behind it!
I find this so frustrating; I really enjoyed the opening episodes of Ergo because there was so much to speculate over or theorise about, and the “stand alone” episodes in the middle of the series were generally quite entertaining on their own merits. But the endgame is and has disappointed me quite a lot, and I doubt the last episode’s going to turn me around completely, which is a shame.
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November 4th, 2006
Hear that? That’s the sound of me GNASHING MY TEETH IN FRUSTRATION.
Isn’t the first rule of narrative to show, not tell? Why on earth are we getting filled in on events just by people talking to Re-L? It’s sloppy story-telling born about by the erratic structure of Ergo Proxy, and it does my head in - the pacing of this show has been so badly done it’s mind-boggling.
Despite my frustrations, there’s still plenty of juicy stuff in this episode, as Re-L returns to an even more post-apocalyptic Romdeau, Vince goes off the deep end for some reason and meets the new Real Daedalus has created, and there’s a mini-showdown at the Regent’s. But I can’t help feeling it’s all been put together so sloppily that the end’s going to be bitterly disappointing. Only two episodes until I find out, though…
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October 22nd, 2006
…and then he woke up and it was all a dream!
(and they had tea and cakes and lived happily ever after)
Is it just me, or have approximately half the episodes of Ergo Proxy not actually happened? And yes, I know it’s not real (or re-l?), you know what I mean.
Anyway, a Proxy named Swan (given that it focuses on her eating and licking her lips at the beginning of the episode it’s pretty damn obvious from the start) messes with Vincent, making him think he’s a split personality of Re-L’s. Confusion ensues.
Well, at least this episode felt like it made more sense with the over-arching theme of personalities and memories, but Ergo Proxy’s gone a bit… odd, recently. I don’t really understand why we’re getting episodes like this with only three episodes until the end of the series and very little having been explained (we haven’t even met Proxy One yet!). I suppose it’s an artsy-fartsy weirdy-beirdy anime so this is the way things are supposed to work, and I suppose it does still make more sense than something almost totally incoherent like Lain, but there’s intellectually provoking and then there’s just plain odd, and I think EP’s been erring towards the latter recently.
Bring on the mahou shounen fights and rabu-rabu!
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October 18th, 2006
I always knew Walt Disney was a shapeshifting futuristic monster.
It’s interesting to see Manglobe attempt Western animation in this rather odd little episode about Pino getting a message to steer clear of a Proxy who’s happy to play God with his own theme park creations. However, whilst I enjoyed the episode a great deal, it’s quite oddly placed in the series; what with only four episodes left, it’s slightly odd that a total filler episode finds its way in here.
I have no objection to it in principle; it was good fun, it starred Pino and it was nicely animated. But it was fundamentally pointless; Dai Sato tried to shoe-horn in some stuff about memories or whatever he thinks Ergo Proxy’s about in there, but it was mostly about cartoon characters doing cartoon things and telling the Boukensha-tachi to bugger off.
Ah well, back to Romdeau next episode.
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