Ergo Proxy Episode 8 - Shining Sign
Vince is hungry. Vince is lonely. Vince is attacked by helicopters and rogue Autoreivs. As usual, life sucks a bit for Vincent and Pino, who seem to be following something shiny in a recurring theme for this episode. However, they get taken in by a bunch of soldiery outposty types who feed Vincent up a bit and explain that they’re clone soldiers fighting the Cogito-infected Autoreivs for some long forgotten reason; when they ask Vincent to join them, he seems indifferent. They tell him that what they’re doing is human prerogative, but Vincent still seems to think it’s somehow just a bother; at that moment his eyes flare up and he starts feeling sick; he claims it’s due to indigestion, but one might be suspicious that he’s aware that his reaction is not quite human…
Anyway, lo! does Vincent vom in the toilet, and go wandering around; while Vince muses on the Autoreivs and his loneliness without fellow human contact, Pino is more concerned with the weird people and the fact that she thinks she sees something shining in the depths of the outpost. The shiny thing turns out to be evil flying bandages that are killing people. Of course.
Anyway, Vince and Pino get put in jail on suspicion of murder, where their next-door neighbour is a rather insane woman who keeps rambling on about gradually hearing, seeing and getting stronger; when Pino starts copying her, saying “dandan” (gradually) over and over again, Vincent starts going a bit bonkers; the woman says something about hearing “the first movement” (the Japanese title of the first episode) and he has flashes of Monad Proxy being zapped by lightning from Ergo’s eyes (mmm, portentous).
while Vince goes barmy, the Autoreivs launch an attack on the base; the “glorious leader” of the outpost soldiers (Mayahuel, I believe?) tries to escape without them but gets bandage-impaled by the bandage monster, which turns out to be “the Moonlight Proxy”, Senex. While Vincent dribbles out the top of his mouth, Senex takes control of the helicopter and crashes it into the mad girl from before who stares up at her imploringly whilst continuing to mumble the same phrases from before. Everything goes BOOM! and, while Pino takes cover, Ergo Proxy emerges and beats the stuffing out of Senex, ripping off the bandages and zapping it with its lightning eyes; Senex’s mask falls away to reveal a girl very similar in looks to the crazy woman from before, and both end up dying at roughly the same time.
Vince lies unconscious amidst the wreckage, and a strange blonde-haired man discovers his body littered with cards; he picks up one, the Joker, with a picture very similar to the way Ergo Proxy looks…
Hmmm, weird. But I’m not going to comment much on this episode, because any comment I WOULD make is negated by the next one (which, oddly, I watched first) so I’ll talk about my impressions there, I think. Coming soon to a computer screen near you!
May 3rd, 2006 at 6:28 pm
I was actually really sad when Senex got whacked by Ergo. So far I thought she was by far the coolest looking Proxy shown in the series. I would’ve liked to have seen more of her. Yar.
Looking forward to your review on Episode 9 as well, since I just finished watching that one. Well, I’m waiting for your opinion on it now, just to make sure if what happened is really what I had interpreted. Yeesh. Talk about awkward.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Your reviews are great as usual! Love your description of being killed by bandages. :P
But you do have to admit that this episode had much more action and revelations that Ergo Proxy has had in the past…they sure took a while. I had seriously made a decision that if episode 8 didn’t have anything good in it, I was going to stop watching. And now, thank goodness, I’m still watching.
Surprisingly, my favorite character is Vince…even though he’s pathetic…even though he’s a bit drab…but he has powerful green eyes that the animation team sure put a lot of time into detailing it and he’s not necessarily the “winner” all the time (like in those Naruto and Bleach type animes).
Whatever…we’ll see if my opinion changes at all later on.
May 6th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Is there any significance in the missing Queen of Spades? There was almost a Royal Flush next to Senex, but instead of the Queen of Spades, we got a Joker instead.
May 6th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
Maybe it means that Ergo Proxy is about to change the dynamics of the world’s rules…I think the Joker looked a lot like him and plus, that yapping depressed lady who dies under the helicopter was murmuring a lot about “the master” coming or something like that. But you might have something there.