Cinnamon Ass

Vincent drifts in and out of consciousness, hallucinating about Dorothy’s murder, his encounter with Monad Proxy, and Lil, before coming to in a shack in the world outside the domed city of Romdo - he has been cared for by Pino (who keeps imitating everyone she sees) and an old man named Hoody. Hoody introduces Vincent to the local community of those who live outside Romdo for various reasons - some of them claim utter freedom, but others, such as the scavenging diver Queen, are more cynical in their outlook. Vincent, however, accidentally gives away their existence when he rescues Pino from an Autoreiv scout that records his presence, giving Raul more cause for concern.

Lil, meanwhile, continues to investigate Vincent’s background; she pays a visit to his apartment, where she discovers not only that he has everything exactly doubled in his house (giving more clues to his split personality, perhaps) but also that he has charted the escape routes of the Autoreivs infected by Cogito, and that they all head towards the same place. Lil pays a visit to Daedalus and pours out some of her concerns to him, telling him that she’s aware of Proxy, and he shows her the weird cavern-y place we saw back in Episode 1 with what looks like Ergo Proxy suspended from the ceiling; he accidentally lets slip something about Amrita cells, but vaguely covers for it, and Lil still continues to trust him for now.

Mmm, wheels within wheels. What is more important is that I ACTUALLY LIKE PINO AS A CHARACTER. Surely she should symbolise everything putrid and wrong with young female characters in anime today? Yet I find her endearingly cute. Furthermore, she plays a mean harmonica-thing…

All the signs point to Vincent having a personality disorder of some kind, but it’s unclear exactly what that might entail - he obviously has SOME connection to Proxy, but I just can’t decide what it might actually be. I think his fluctuating personality makes him a much more interesting character - while this episode he was mostly a stereotypically withdrawn badass bishounen, contrasting that with his confusion and occasional moments of “happiness” makes him much more interesting. Lil, of course, continues to rock - ’nuff said.

Someone on the AnimeSuki forums noted that there’s actually legible English text in the OP (I just thought it all looked pretty) and it appears that the reason Vincent emigrated to Romdo is there was some kind of horrible accident in Moscow (or “Mosque”) that caused the city dome to collapse - meanwhile, the authorities are misinforming the citizens that it’s impossible to live outside the domes due to some kind of disease. I suppose this must have something to do with control rather than anything else (inside the domes the government can keep tabs on the citizens far more effectively via surveillance) but I still don’t think living outside Romdo is really an attractive proposition - as we can see in this episode, it’s clearly the case that most of the scavengers have been forced into rummaging through the waste products of the citizens to survive, which is hardly ideal. I suppose this is the classic problem of futuristic dystopias - you get everything you need at the cost of some extent of civil liberties.

Whoa, deep. Um, Pino rocks! There we go, that’s more like it. Looking forward to the next episode!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 19th, 2006 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Ergo Proxy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.