Ergo Proxy is a show that goes through metamorphosis as you watch, sliding from one plot to another without ever really losing the core line of what made it interesting and unique. It’s a strange dive with a philosophical bent, the likes of which typically makes for great cyberpunk. Rather than talking more in abstract about the show, though, it seems prudent to jump right in.
The show starts out with Re-l Mayer, granddaughter of the regent lord of the domed city of Romdeau, who works as a detective, along with her partner, Iggy, who is a type of android called an AutoReiv. As she goes about her investigations, she encounters Vincent Law, an immigrant to Romdeau (and because of that a second-class citizen) who is working hard for acceptance in his role as a government technician, despite Re-l pretty much being the only person we see give him the time of day.
Through this sequence, we’re actually given a fairly long, lingering introduction to what life in Romdeau is like. We see Re-l go about her daily life, not just her investigations, interacting briefly with her grandfather (who lets two golden statues in his presence chamber do the talking) and her personal physician, Dadelus. The audience is introduced to even more of the setting, including Raul Creed, the chief of security.
Re-l’s investigation ends up being into a series of murders carried out by AutoReivs. The rogue androids are those that have been infected by something called the Cogito virus, which grants the otherwise obedient machines free will. While she’s looking into matters, though, she encounters a humanoid monster, which briefly attacks her while on the run from Security Bureau forces.
We also get Vincent going about his business, having some close calls, though perhaps none so close as the social issue when he visits Raul’s wife to test one of their AutoReivs for Cogito. The robot in question, Pino, is a companion-type made in the image of a little girl (a much better human imitation than most), who sees Raul and his wife as her parents, but since they’ve been granted a real child she wants to dispose of Pino cleanly. She’s not infected, though, so Vincent refuses to take her away despite some not-too-veiled threats.
We get much more of the conspiracy as well, with Raul tracking down information on the monster that Re-l encountered, for his own reasons. This creature appears to be something called a “Proxy”, something that the authorities know more about than they’re letting on (even to Raul) and that Dadelus studied before it breached containment and escaped, which causes Dadelus to reveal that, as far as he can tell, the Proxy is some sort of immortal ultimate form of life.
This would be trouble enough, but Re-l seems destined to be drawn in ever deeper, as one Proxy assaults her (after a fashion; it seems more fascinated with her than hostile despite the breaking and entering) in her home before another smashes in and the two super-monsters (when only one was previously known about) fight, battling out into the street as Re-l, quite reasonably, passes out.
In this sequence, we’re introduced to, surprisingly enough, just about every major player and concept for the show. Let’s look at the characters, or at least the ones that have already made distinct impressions, in a little more detail.
Re-l is, essentially, the primary protagonist for the show. She’s more of a stock character than most here, being your tough, no-nonsense dogged investigator, but that’s not to say she’s bad. Because she’s more or less our central character, she’s the window through which we experience this world, particularly Romdeau and its culture that’s… subtly alien. One of the great things about Ergo Proxy is how it treats being native to the scenario. Re-l and even Vincent belong to the world they live in, so they don’t comment on its common truths that would be strange for us. However, they still engage with those facets, and without having to explain them to us in great detail get us engaged with their different world. For instance, we see the relationships between humans and AutoReivs through how the characters interact with the ones associated with them, particularly Re-l and Iggy, how she clearly treats Iggy as someone, but not quite an equal, a sense that’s reinforced with Raul’s wife trying to have Pino disposed of, yet not being able to do so to Pino’s face once she’s brought back on-line after her exam. Speaking of that interchange, the way the Creeds were “granted” their child, and the fact there’s already an infant in the house, helps to underscore how different Romdeau’s humans and human life are from what we know: even reproduction doesn’t happen the familiar way, with new humans being vat-grown rather than born from human wombs, a truth that will be brought up more precisely later if you missed it, but that’s first seeded here in that very matter-of-fact way. One last note on Re-l is her status, being positioned between incredible privilege, as the scion of the ruling family, and staggering isolation as it’s clear that her grandfather and his inner circle don’t actually support her attempts to play cop.
How about Vincent? Vincent is already clearly a man caught between two warring selves. He came to Romdeau from Mosk, and even still carries a keepsake of Mosk which Re-l suggests he ditch if he wants to integrate. He tries to do things well, and do them by the book, but the society around him doesn’t want to reward his attempts to become one of them. He’s saying and doing everything essentially ‘right’, but the game is fundamentally rigged. He seems nice enough, but there’s also clearly some degree of edge to who and what he is, and you get the sense that he is, perhaps, restrained somehow by his attempt to integrate.
Raul, as a character, is something of a foil to Re-l. As opposed to Re-l, who has started at the top and made herself an outsider, Raul is someone who has clearly been upwardly mobile, with several comments on his gains in status. Because of this, he now has an insider position as the chief of security, but he’s still clearly not part of the ruling clique, being kept in the dark about things like the true nature of Proxies even when he’s tasked with dealing with one, leaving him as an ambitious person trying to work around the limitations imposed on him, struggling between a sense of power and entitlement and still not being powerful enough to do what he needs to do.
There are more secondary characters as well. Of particular note is Dadelus. He (though you would be forgiven for not recognizing that) is both Re-l’s helpful and reliable physician, and the mad scientist who knows more about the Proxies than anyone else. And Dadelus play both roles smoothly. He is, undoubtably, the same person, mostly seen in a faint edge in the interactions between him and Re-l that suggests, while he is a good and wise ally, there’s still a degree to which he needs to be regarded as dangerous.
Did I mention this was all done in a single episode? It’s true. All that maneuvering with Raul, all that investigating with Re-l, the drudgery with Vincent, introducing the Cogito virus from a couple different angles, introducing the mystery of the Proxies and getting enough information to be interested in unraveling more – that was all one episode. There was even more detail than I was really able to cover so far, including more weird details about the setting coming out through organic interactions and, though it won’t make sense until the very end of the show, a hint from the secret final antagonist about his motivation when a mysterious voice and the glimpse of a mysterious face talks about “the pulse of awakening”. This is perhaps a bit more intense in episode 1 than elsewhere, but even considering the series as a whole, Ergo Proxy episodes are some of the most heavily stacked of any show I can easily recall, and they do it without feeling rushed. They feel long, like you’ve watched a movie despite the show fitting a 25-minute standard slot for the early 2000’s when it debuted, but not rushed.
That said, I will be doing my best from this point forward to not dwell overmuch, in the interest of this review not being as long as my 3-part dive into Darling in the Franxx, meaning that I’ll be largely hitting the highlights now that we have the ground-work down.
Re-l, quite reasonably, struggles with being stonewalled on the whole Proxy thing despite her home being trashed. It’s need-to-know information that not even Raul gets the whole picture regarding, so Re-l is due even less. The stonewalling does go a bit above and beyond, though, as Re-l finds the tampering goes as far as erasing Iggy’s memories of the Proxy incidents, indicating that this is no petty secret she’s stumbled upon.
Meanwhile, Vincent is having a bad time, as he has to flee for his life against the attack of one of the Proxies, this assault coming in broad daylight. He does his best to get away, running through a mall for part of his escape, but the Proxy still causes quite a bit of collateral damage in the process, including killing Raul’s wife and infant child (Pino, as luck would have it, doesn’t get killed, but something in the scene seems to awaken her thought, or, to put it another way, cause her to become infected with Cogito). Though Vincent escapes the Proxy (waking up on an empty subway train having had a mysterious symbolic dream; it’s unclear how he got out of the chase) he does so a wanted man, seeing as Raul blames Vincent for the deaths of his wife and child caused in his flight from the Proxy. Pino goes home at first, but when disposal forces arrive, even she is sharp enough to know to book it.
With the lid blown off the scenario, Re-l gets to trying to track down Vincent, as he seems to be her best lead on the Proxy situation, having appeared both near her ruined apartment and of course as a focal figure in the chaos at the mall. Thus, she attempts to head off Raul’s forces and bring in Vincent as he tries, blindly, to escape persecution. In this run, Vincent ends up meeting up with Pino. She feels called to a certain route, and Vincent follows her, under the not incorrect assumption that it will be relatively safe. Re-l, however, somewhat expects this: Vincent worked on disposal for infected AutoReivs, and would thus probably try to imitate their movements. And, it turns out, the winding route that the infected take, away from any cameras, seems to be the same all the time: a secret route to reach an airlock to exit Romdeau
This is where the chase comes to a head, at the airlock. Re-l finds Vincent and Pino before Raul’s goons do, but not before they’re at the city’s very threshold, what might as well be the edge of the world. The way opens, and air pressure alone starts to pull them out. Re-l extends her hand promising to protect Vincent, but he’s lost all hope of ever becoming a true citizen, and having a life in Romdeau. Thus, he falls, and Pino with him, into whatever exists beyond the city. The airlock closes, leaving two people very interested in what was just lost: Re-l, looking for her lead; and Raul, looking for revenge. The situation is even stranger as the Proxy that attacked Vincent is found – dead, despite the fact it’s supposed to be totally immortal, much to the interested horror of Dadelus
In the grim, frozen world outside, Vincent finds himself in a scavenger community of the dispossessed, who survive by using what Romdeau throws away, which is quite a lot given Romdeau’s intense consumerist culture. Among the people there, Vincent and Pino find some degree of acceptance, but the small community is clearly balanced on a knife edge.
What’s also notable, however, is the condition of the world outside Romdeau. It’s a cold, dreary, perpetually-overcast winter world, switching us from a cyberpunk setting with some period notes in its style and appearance to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Before Vincent can figure out quite what to do with himself (though he has some ambition to take the sailing land-ship the group has and attempt to make it back to Mosk in search of his identity), Re-l leaves the dome in search of him, falling prey to an illness because she had never before left Romdeau. Raul isn’t crazy enough to come in person, but he does dispatch attack drones to target the community in the hunt for Vincent. Because of this aggression, the small community ends up breaking. They execute a plan to get Re-l medical aid, sending her back to Romdeau in a prisoner containment vessel meant for Vincent, and the last survivors escape with Vincent and Pino on that ship.
In the process, it becomes clear that the remaining Proxy, the one that was fascinated by Re-l, is deeply connected to Vincent, that he somehow summons it, as it appears with shocking rapidity when Vincent is in dire danger. It’s worth noting that Vincent is not to be found during the Proxy’s manifestation.
In Romdeau, Re-l finds herself in more danger than ever. Dadelus is able to save her life (using medical tech culled from the study of the defeated Proxy to do so), but someone else is out for blood, using Cogito-infected AutoReivs as hitmen against her and Dadelus, causing Dadelus to cover for her and fake her death to the authority. Vincent, meanwhile, has to deal with a long, grim trip, where all the less hardy residents of the scavenger community who went with him die one by one, eventually leaving him alone with Pino and forced to come to terms with the reality of death being all around him.
Vincent then becomes wrapped in a war between two ruined dome cities that he encounters on his path. The ruin he’s brought to, Charos, has its population consist of human soldiers desperate to protect their functioning artificial womb system, the device that would in theory permit them to rebuild their civilization. While Vincent and Pino are there, the last bastion falls under attack, both from their foes, the AutoReivs of neighboring Asura dome, and from a mysterious entity that we know to be a Proxy. Vincent encounters the creature as the last residents of Charos die off, and the truth is revealed when we see Vincent himself transform fully into the Proxy related to him before, the titular Ergo Proxy. In this form, he kills the attacking Proxy, but his rampage isn’t able to save anyone and ultimately sees him (with Pino and the ship) brought to Asura Dome. There, he meets with the Dome’s Proxy, a surprisingly human and urbane individual who actually explains some of what was going on, that the Proxies are, by default, the rulers and progenitors of the domes. Ergo, for his part, appears to be the “Proxy of Death”, existing to hunt and kill his fellows. Asura’s Proxy is particularly bothered by this as both he and Charos’s Proxy, Senex, were lovers (after a fashion) who set themselves into sleep intending to meet again in a new world, and Ergo’s arrival cost him the chance to ever encounter Senex again. Naturally this results in a fight, and the death of the Proxy of Asura, causing Vincent to have to face up to his double life as both himself and Ergo Proxy.
Meanwhile, in Romedau we deal with a careful game of influence between Raul and Dadelus. Raul manages to use his interactions with Dadelus to get something of a leg up on Re-l’s grandfather (since there were many things Grandpa didn’t know, like the fact there were two proxies in the dome). Dadelus, disgraced after Re-l’s “death”, ends up using Raul to be reinstated. Raul thinks he has Dadelus on a leash, while Dadelus thinks that everything is going according to plan. Dadelus seems to be going a wee bit insane, though, calling the corpse of the slain proxy in Romdeau (Monad Proxy) his Re-l.
Re-l, meanwhile, finds herself in the pastoral setting of a dead silent dome where robots (unintelligent machines, not AutoReivs) upkeep an empty society, slowly grinding onward towards death. She and Iggy have some interesting philosophical conversations which Iggy is perhaps a wee bit too able to engage with. She also has a gun and two glowing blue bullets, which we see on the other side are two of perhaps a few dozen such rounds made by Dadelus at the cost of blacking out the whole city for a couple minutes, which should be able to kill a Proxy. Perhaps a relevant thing to have, as she’s going after Vincent with either the knowledge or strong suspicion of the truth.
After a mysterious and kind of mind-bending encounter for Vincent (where he meets an old bookshop owner, whose book shop seems to exist in multiple phases, and who leads Vincent down a path of recovering his memories, allowing him to better come to terms with being a Proxy underneath before spurring him on towards Mosk where more answers might hide), Re-l catches up to him outside an overgrown, ruined dome. Vincent confesses both his nature (which Re-l doesn’t believe) and that he has feelings for her (true or not – probably true, but not accepted at this stage), but the encounter becomes a little more heated when a skulking, child-like AutoReiv startles Pino, stealing food from the ship. They track the AutoReiv down, and find that it was setting its stolen goods as offerings to a groaning, Frankenstein’s-Monster-like Proxy. Vincent becomes Ergo (proving his nature to Re-l) and starts to fight, giving Re-l a choice of what to do. However, she sees a hint of Vincent in Ergo, and Ergo for his part seems to have a special regard for her, so she ultimately chooses to shoot his foe with one of her two proxy-killing bullets, which does its job remarkably well.
Thereafter, it becomes clear that the idea of returning to Romdeau isn’t sitting well with Re-l, and she has her own desire to travel with Vincent and learn the truth. This doesn’t set well with (Cogito-infected, if it wasn’t obvious) Iggy, whose reason for being is the protection and monitoring of Re-l. Her continued refusal to leave well enough alone and go back drives Iggy to a Yandere-style frenzy, intending to kidnap and subdue Re-l (berating her with a new, vicious personality as well) and use her as bait to kill Vincent before returning her to Romdeau (or just making off with her. I’m not sure Iggy has thought this through.) However, when the AutoReiv boy from before (the one who attended/worshiped the Proxy Re-l shot dead) appears and attacks Re-l, Iggy ends up sacrificing himself in order to save her. Of course, as a machine he’s disabled and not dead, forcing Re-l to actually finish him off, His kind persona even reasserts briefly, both encouraging her and making it more painful to put down what’s basically a friend gone rabid. Thus, with the fall of Iggy, Re-l abandons her flier and we now have a crew of three on that ship.
The first adventure for the new crew is a very surreal one where they stop in a dome that’s unpeopled but still maintained, and find they aren’t entirely alone, being messed with by the dome’s Proxy, which uses sense-manipulation and perhaps shapeshifting to delude and confuse both the characters and possibly the viewers, trying to call them to a lake in the center of the dome to commit suicide, as it made its citizens do (an attempt to kill its own reflection and therefore its immortal self. Needless to say that didn’t work out for it). Of course, the Proxy is ultimately defeated with Re-l recognizing its one tell (that it casts no reflection on water) but the getting there involves so many layers of illusions and mind manipulation that it’s both difficult to follow and a blast to watch. This might be the most surreal and strangely told episode of Ergo Proxy, the one that’s overall emblematic of the quiet, melancholy, twisted, and tortured nature of the show… but it is not the weirdest episode of the show. No, that one comes right after, when we cold open with Vincent as the contestant in an insanely flamboyant game show, Re-l and Pino (the former sulking, the latter excited) a captive audience for the farce that is about to be engaged with.
I am not kidding. That’s really where the next episode of Ergo Proxy picks up, how it opens, and what it will be doing for essentially its full run time. There is no explanation of how we got here or where we go from here, no explanation of why the game show exists, or how the trivia questions have half the information they do. In some ways, it’s just a silly exposition episode. Recall how I said that Ergo Proxy largely lets you learn the facts of the world in an extremely immersive way? Well, even with that interest, it seems that some straight-up explanations must be dropped, and they chose to do so in the most memorably insane way that I have ever seen.
This takes the form of a trivia game show in which the contestant, Vincent, must answer questions and earn points above a certain threshold. If he loses, he and his party will be executed for show, where as if he wins the same thing will happen to the excessively flamboyant host. The questions and answers give us our information about the setting.
Out of all the Q&A there are two sections worth noting. The first is a “Guess the person” quiz where Vincent gets a guess after each. Vincent first guesses Re-l (annoying her as there was an implied interest in Vincent, and he might be a bit hopeful for that), then when more data is revealed, Ergo. However, the dark figure that’s always watching him with deep interest is, in actuality, Proxy One.
Proxy One is not a figure that had been mentioned up to this point in the show. In fact, it might be possible even after Ergo is “wrong” and Proxy One the correct answer to assume that Proxy One is another identity for Ergo/Vincent – perhaps Ergo plus his lost memories or such. It seemed fairly obvious to me that this was a new character, and it is in fact the case, but the episode is so weird that I can forgive a little confusion.
What wasn’t immediately obvious is that, while never mentioned before this point, Proxy One has actually appeared in the show! He gave a brief speech in the first episode, setting the stage for everything, and appeared as a vague shadow when Vincent was asleep on the train after coming into conflict with Monad Proxy, presumably having moved him to said safe location so he wouldn’t be taken in by the security forces. On closer review, Proxy One’s presence actually pervades the entire show from beginning to end, even though he’s only first mentioned here after the halfway point.
This highlights one of the things Ergo Proxy does very well; it weaves the story very well, in a way in which you’re not entirely sure the first time through what you’re being primed for until it hits. It’s a rare show in which you could pay close attention to every episode and every scene in order to tease apart the themes and motifs. There are pretty much no wasted moments, or wasted shots for that matter, nor is the show typically strange or esoteric for the sake of being strange and esoteric. There are some shows, some works where when it shows you something kind of insane, it’s probably doing what it’s doing just to be “artistic”, raising a smoke screen to prevent people from realizing how little substance there is, as it’s occulted by a mass of style that makes people think they ‘just don’t get it’. Ergo Proxy, on the other hand, knows what it’s doing. Even in the middle of this ridiculous game show, there’s a palpable feeling that everything is happening for a reason.
Speaking of things happening for a reason, that brings us to the other answer (or set of answers): how the world came to be what we see.
This isn’t all given cleanly or in order (because, recall, game show format), but here is, essentially, the history of the world: humanity learned to use Methane Hydrate as a plentiful, clean fuel. However, there was an explosion in a large reserve, which triggered something of an end-of-the-world scenario: 85% of humanity died quickly, and Earth was soon rendered uninhabitable by default. To preserve the human race, two plans were enacted. The first was Project Proxy, which created three hundred Proxies who would use their great power to preserve and rebuild, creating their dome cities on the ruined earth with AutoReiv technology and the ability to create and maintain the artificial womb systems providing a population of not-quite-humans as well. This sheds some light on the jabber about the interrelationships between Proxies and their Domes, why it’s said that a Dome can’t survive without a Proxy (not necessarily its own, since Romdeau was able to steal Monad from Mosk, but at least one to keep the Womb System active) and why the Proxies are regarded as ruler-creators, essentially regarded as demigods: they are, effectively, not demigods but demiurges, sub-creators who rule sealed spaces to their not necessarily benign designs, by the grant of unseen greater masters and true creators.
The other plan was Project Boomerang, the creation of an ark ship known as Boomerang Star, which would carry as many true humans as possible (not all the survivors, causing great strife as anyone else would, essentially, be left to die) beyond Earth, to return at some point in the future when, hopefully, the world was sufficiently regenerated to be re-colonized. It’s also noted (and worth noting) that the returning true humans would have no more need for the Proxy system, making the possibility of Project Boomerang’s return a somewhat ominous idea for the Proxies and the humans (or “humans”) born from Project Proxy.
Now that the exposition is largely out of the way, there are two other elements of the game show episode worth mentioning. First is that, again unlike what other shows might do with something as flagrantly over-the-top as this, the episode is actually highly relevant to the continuing plot and taken as canon, rather than being ignored as quickly as it appeared. Specifically, what is a game show without an audience? Vincent’s game is broadcast world-wide, even going so far as to take over media in Romdeau, where Raul is able to see on the TV that Vincent, who he bears a vast grudge against, is still alive. He even learns from the show that Vincent is traveling to the Mosk Dome, or whatever is left of it. The fact Raul gets this intelligence is critical, and it’s not forgotten where he got it.
Lastly, we have the ending. Vincent wins the game, and the host starts to say goodbye, still disturbingly fine with the idea of dying as a form of showmanship. At the end he declares that proxies, it seems, must fight and decomposes in a flash of blue light (similar to the effect of Re-l’s Proxy-killing bullet), suggesting that the host was, in fact, a Proxy himself (and possibly that previous contestants were as well, but that’s less clear). Despite this, being this demiurge-being, the Host takes his death with a smile. You might just say it’s for reason of insanity, but there does seem to be more going on in Ergo Proxy as a whole.
Specifically, purpose, especially purpose-in-being, is one of the major themes of the show. A character’s relationship with what they see to be their purpose or reason for being is a matter of constant concern. The Game Show Host Proxy doesn’t say goodbye with as much good cheer as he does because he’s just ‘mad’ – he might be insane, but that’s not it. He does it because it’s a fulfillment of his purpose. He created (or was created for) the scenario, lives it fully, and ends with it as he is “meant” to do. Especially given the warnings regarding Project Boomerang and the end of Project Proxy, the question of whether a being is or should be willing to accept destruction because it has reached the “natural” or “appointed” end of its relevance is one to which it’s good to see responses, and the Game Show Host clearly stands as the avatar for “Yes, it’s time to go.” Other entities, of course, have different relationships to purpose, loyalty, and death. Vincent is lost, trying to find his purpose. Re-l is willful, and tries to re-define her purpose and her nature with it. Iggy was torn apart by his purpose being denied. And we’ll be checking in with Proxy One (among others) later on.
After that slice of madness, we continue on the journey to Mosk. We get an episode centered around the wind having died, and the ship being stopped in the Doldrums, giving Re-l a chance to come to terms with her new existence. The action is mostly nothing, just our main cast trying to make do with the fact that they’re stuck, but the subtext and character are really solid. Re-l remains herself, but now with something of a new perspective and the beginning of a sort of inner peace.
In the next episode, the crew comes across a mysterious cavern wherein dwell strange creatures. These mutants are unlike anything else we see in Ergo Proxy – they’re ape-like, degenerated, with a primitive culture including some cave paintings but artifacts of a higher past (including a piano). They’re also trapped between a rock and a hard place: Deep in the cave is an object that is the source of toxic vapors that cause the cave creatures to sicken and die slowly. However, without some level of the vapors, they cannot live at all, and the exit from the cave is marked with the corpses of those who tried to escape their fate but could go no further. Most critically and fascinatingly, these abhumans (for lack of a better term for them) are able to breed. A pregnant female is encountered, and some of their art depicts humanoid figures with smaller inside, which Re-l recognizes with shock and disbelief is too reminiscent of the Womb System that produced everyone she knew to be an accident. These are, presumably, the last remnant of the true humans left behind by Project Boomerang and, by their nature, not incorporated into Project Proxy, a sad and dying tribe boxed in with death all around them. Wiser and perhaps a little sadder, we leave them to their fate.
At the same time, we follow Raul back in Romdeau. He’s a wanted man now, having dug too greedily and too deep into the secrets of the city, finding (for instance) that without a live Proxy the Womb System has fallen silent (parallel with the discovery of natural wombs among the abhumans). However, he’s also a man with a plan. He remembers the broadcast, and Vincent, and believes (perhaps not wrongly) that Vincent has taken everything from – his hope, his future, and his family (including Pino, who it seems only the wife wanted to be rid of, based on how much Raul misses her and regards her as his daughter). To this end, when he knows his card is marked, he takes drastic action, driven by his vengeful rage to awaken a terrible weapon, known as Rapture, that’s sealed away in Romdeau. Playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse, he gets ahead, and while the show doesn’t go ahead and quote Moby Dick, one might be so inclined as Raul fires off Rapture, revealed to be nothing less than a nuclear ICBM, streaking across the sky to annihilate Mosk in an unmatched fireball.
His vengeance as complete as it will ever be, and his role in Romdeau now lost (leaving him, once a model citizen, in the same position both Vincent and Iggy faced when their lives were turned upside down), Raul retreats to his home to wait for capture, playing the piano in solemn despair and remembering his time with Pino as he waits. This is juxtaposed with Pino playing the piano as well, the one found in the outer areas of the cave, a beautiful exercise that she enjoys, contrasting how Pino gained her “Self” through joy and love, while Raul has now gained humanity primarily in despair and pain.
The episode after, Vincent and company arrive at what little remains of their destination, Mosk. Naturally, there’s not a lot left of the city after it was both wrecked in conventional war years ago and nuked fairly recently, but aside from the desolation, one truth more is found: a hidden chamber with an attendant AutoReiv (calling himself Amnesia) and some scrawled records. It isn’t our heroes who find this first, though: an unseen figure (Proxy One) arrives, recognized by Amnesia, and destroys the AutoReiv to prevent the memories he holds from being restored. Vincent, Re-l, and Pino arrive after, finding the destroyed AutoReiv, some tantalizing clues that all seem to point one way: back to Romdeau.
Speaking of Romdeau, we follow up with Raul after his arrest. He’s stabilized (in a sense) as a man unfettered. He mocks the authorities for preserving an ancient nuke and giving it such an audacious name as rapture expecting that nothing bad would happen, and declares his new allegiance to the concept of Destruction. Not because he seeks annihilation, but rather because he has found purpose in the struggle. He seeks a world no longer beholden to gods or Proxies, scoffing at Re-l’s grandfather, who has given in to the idea that all is lost, declaring that Romdeau isn’t lost as long as someone fights for it – and Raul intends to fight until the last. In a sense, he’s become a hybrid of a Satan figure (a rebel against God when he knows God exists) and the ultimate Humanist, seeking self-determination for all over destiny. When the “God” in question, a Proxy, is more seen as a malevolent demiurge, Raul’s struggle comes off as equally noble and insane.
And because he’s not wrong about the Regent and his entourage being a bunch of losers, he’s more or less able to walk.
Also insane is Dadelus. With no Monad and no Re-l, he seems to be steadily losing it. He’s even made a replacement Re-l clone (who he calls Real Mayer) and seems inclined to keep the quickly growing girl all for his insane self. In a sense he and Raul have switched places. In the early arcs, Dadelus was aware while Raul was blinded by ignorance. Now Raul’s eyes are open and Dadelus has become blinded by mania.
We get one last “random” encounter on the return trip to Romdeau, and this one belongs entirely to Pino. As the team approaches a lit dome, Pino’s dreams take her there. The dome is Smile Land, a perpetual Disneyland-esque theme park where, for humans and Auto-Reivs alike, fun and happiness are mandatory. Pino’s honest smile enchants the residents of Smile Land, so used to fakes plastered on, but her place as not a proper resident gets toon AutoReiv security on her case. Aided by some “defective” entertainers who want to be re-cast, she ultimately visits the dome’s Proxy Master: Will B. Good, obvious Walt Disney analog in this obvious Disneyland analog and the one Proxy in this show who doesn’t seem to be violently insane. He tries to get Pino to spill any weaknesses Vincent might have – she knows of one (his attachment to his pendant) but refuses to spill it and betray her friends. Will then explains that he fears their arrival (we see movie posters in ’50’s style for “Attack of the Ergo Proxy!”) as they will have to fight, and he knows he’ll lose and lose all the happiness of Smile Land along with his life. Lastly, in desperation, he begs Pino to convince Vincent to go anywhere but here. Pino awakens, and sees Smile Land in the distance, and though she can’t say why she does ask Vincent to steer clear. Re-l points out they could use resupply, but Vincent sees Pino’s conviction and decides to trust her, giving Smile Land a miss, letting Will B. Good narrate us out about how the girl with the smile saved Smile Land.
Somewhat like the game show episode, this is another weird one, where the style is different and kind of excessive compared to the normally slow-moving and darkly philosophical Ergo Proxy. Last episode we had Raul giving his great manifesto about the destruction of fate and life without God, this episode we have knockoff Disney toons struggling with an Orwellian Disneyland. It’s not exactly a consistent tone.
Still, the conversation with Will B. Good is actually very much on brand and on point for Ergo Proxy. There’s a genuine pathos to his existence, especially when he’s the only proxy we’ve seen who is true to his purpose and not (like the game show host) completely mental. He’s heard “the Pulse of Awakening”, a plot device first mentioned in Episode one (by Proxy One) and still not entirely explained, but more and more relevant and insistent the longer we go on, which seems to tell him (and other Proxies) that the age of the world is changing. Still, Will intends to hold on to life, and his role as Steward and, despite his totalitarian dictatorial traits as seen in his dome, seemingly to the good of his charges. It’s another different perspective from one we’ve seen, and on the heels of Raul’s turn against fate and Gods, it’s interesting that now is when we see a (more) benevolent Proxy.
In any case, we now return to Romdeau for an endgame. Except, not really – our first return to Romdeau is another dreamlike encounter, where Vincent is trapped in an illusion-world of an idealized Romdeau constructed from the memories of Re-l where he has to square off against the hidden Proxy of wherever they actually are, who manifests (initially unrecognized) as a psychiatrist named Swan who seems to intermittently want to help Vincent, drive him to suicidal despair, or possess him romantically. I’ll be honest, this episode really does jump around too much and is something of a chaotic mess.
For take two, when we actually return to the actual Romdeau and… things are not going so well. Re-l, Vincent, and Pino end up split up, while the city has descended into civil war. Raul’s revolution found purchase and necessity alike: Cogito spread like wildfire, and now the people take up arms against the legions of AutoReivs. While this is going on, and Pino has to avoid being murdered, Re-l confronts Dadelus and Vincent confronts Re-l’s grandfather.
On Vincent’s side, understanding what he does, he calls the regent to task for the horrible treatment shown to Monad and plenty of other awful things. He also learns the story from the Regent’s perspective: that he was the Proxy of Romdeau, fell in love with Monad, and left Romdeau to the Regent. The Regent struck Mosk, Monad’s dome, out of jealousy, stealing away that which had stolen the heart of his maker.
Vincent also encounters Real, who has swiftly grown up into the spitting image of Re-l but also the reincarnation of Monad, being essentially a clone of both of them using Monad’s Amrita cells to be something more akin to a true Proxy (suggesting that Re-l herself may have been a human recreation of Monad, which might explain why Dadelus was tightly involved with both and why Vincent was so strongly drawn to her, even as Ergo).
Re-l’s meeting with Dadelus explains the horrors going on in the city (including that the last plan to complete Raul’s defiance of destiny, a project to engineer humans with Amrita cells, making them into beings that can live without a Proxy). Unfortunately, the fatality rate for the first round of testing is around 90% (more evidence Re-l might be something special, as Dadelus treated her outside-sickness with Amrita cells). This also goes to show how lost Dadelus is, as he mistakes Re-l for Real and clearly sees Romdeau’s humans as nothing but experimental subjects.
She then checks in on her father, only to see him being murdered by a figure she at first takes to be Ergo. This, however, is Proxy One. Raul appears to take a shot at “Vincent” as well, and even hits with one of those Proxy-killing bullets, but Proxy One (believed in the moment to be Ergo) rips off his hit arm to stop the spread of the poison, allowing the limb to regenerate, and exits the encounter.
As the whole world around them crumbles, our characters get involved in some last meaningful confrontations. Re-l meets Real, and seems to come into conflict with her over Vincent, Real being both his first love, Monad, and an impostor while Re-l was there to pick up the pieces, but has continuity of existence. They’re less antagonistic than one might think, but it’s still not a happy meeting. Dadelus’s madness intensifies as he realizes that Real doesn’t love him either, Vincent/Ergo once again getting in the way. Re-l realizes where Proxy One’s hand has been seen in the show so far, including her father’s death. Raul ends up stabbed by Real (it’s not entirely clear how or why) and staggers to his ruined home, where Pino hoped to meet her father. His AutoReiv, one of the last seemingly loyal ones (though out of, it seems, pure affection and not uninfected programming) takes care of him, and finds and takes charge of Pino, ensuring that Raul can die at peace and that Pino will be cared for.
Vincent challenges Proxy One, and receives the last truths from him: Ergo Proxy is not one of the originals, but a creation of Proxy One, his shadow given life. Why did Proxy One do this? To explain more clearly, it’s to do with Project Boomerang and the Pulse of Awakening. The Boomerang Star is returning, and the true humans with it, and the broadcast heralding their arrival, the Pulse of Awakening, is meant to ensure that the Proxies won’t be able to survive and cause trouble under clear blue skies. This seemingly inevitable end, as well as his dissatisfaction with the imperfection of his own work, caused Proxy One to create Ergo as his implement of vengeance, the Proxy of Death who would carry on Proxy One’s work of tearing down everything that the true humans of Project Boomerang had hoped to gain in the new world – the Proxies, the dome cities they cared for, everything. Raul saw destruction as a path to freedom, but for Proxy One, destruction is pure spite; unable to see even as much hope as Raul did, Proxy One’s rebellion took a form that was ultimately self-destructive. He and Ergo do battle at the Proxy’s throne at the pinnacle of Romdeau, and Proxy One falls. In success or failure? That’s for Vincent (who has never heard the Pulse of Awakening and thus who can carry on under blue skies) to decide. With that, Romdeau begins to fall in earnest as well.
In the desolation, Ergo/Vincent is approached by Real, who has sprouted wings and beckons him to fly free with her even as a mortally wounded Dadelus begs her not to go. They leave the city, but Ergo still has work on the surface while Real, alive and free, flies above the clouds, too close to the sun, and is burned to ash.
All in all, Re-l, Vincent/Ergo, Pino, and Raul’s AutoReiv matron escape the fall of Romdeau to look out on the new world as the gray clouds of doom that shrouded the outside world for the rest of the show begin to thin and part. Project Boomerang and the “true” humans have returned… but what our heroes will make of them is left to the imagination. That’s the end of Ergo Proxy.
This show is… a bit of an odd duck. It’s competently told and competently philosophical. Even at its most pretentious it never feels like it’s blowing smoke. The characters are engaging and even deep, and the world is a fascinating one with both a definitive style.
On the other hand, the plot is somewhat meandering. We start off in one story, with mysterious monsters, AI viruses, a sinister government, and so on… and then just sort of abandon it for a road trip through the domains of various demiurges. And when we reach the destination for that trip, we turn right back around into apocalyptic madness.
And, there are a lot of ways in which the show is much better in retrospect than it is to actually watch. Proxy One is a big deal on this. At the earliest you’ll start to understand anything about him after the halfway point, and if you miss some “blink and you’ll miss it” moments you’ll probably be totally lost until the final episodes when Re-l puts together some of the places where the villain of the story was actually in the story. Proxy One is clever, secret, and subtle, but to the point where it’s a detriment in terms of how the show views. Unless you already know about Proxy One and what his deal is, you absolutely will not catch some crucial setup.
And then there are episodes that, even stepping back and chewing on them for a while, don’t quite pull together in one way or another. The episode with Vincent’s Mental Book Shop Trip, the episode with the Doppelganger Proxy, and the episode with Swan are all difficult to follow, often leaving you unsure in the moment of what’s real and what’s actually going on. The episodes centered around the Quiz Show and Smile Land are way more over-the-top and done in a radically different tone and style from the entire rest of the show, and could easily lose a viewer not so much with their plot (which in both cases is rather straightforward) but with their inclusion and how they fit (or don’t fit) into the greater whole of Ergo Proxy. On careful analysis, there are good reasons for all these episodes and good reads for them, but this is still five episodes that could be total whiffs the first time through, or about a quarter of the show’s running time spent in stuff that might not land very well to a viewer in the moment. That can’t be ignored.
I will say, though that the ideas in Ergo Proxy are extremely well-done. This is a show that can really speak to you, and its aspirations are above and beyond. There are shows that strive for mediocrity, entertainment, or greatness. Ergo Proxy strives to be art, and great art at that. It doesn’t necessarily hit that mark, the sort that would put it truly on its own level, but the fact that it’s so much as trying speaks volumes to what the show is capable of when it lands.
So how to rate a show like this, that strives for something absolutely great, but misses bits and pieces along the way? In some senses, this is similar to Bakemonogatari which had, albeit in a different way, powerful artistic aspirations but was problematically inaccessible to viewers not all the time but at times. I mentioned this back in my review of Bakemonogatari, and that while the story there is less esoteric, it is perhaps more unkind to the casual viewer because of its extreme style. I still think that’s true, but on reviewing Ergo Proxy, it’s more that the ways in which they are inaccessible are fundamentally different. Bakemonogatari demands rapt attention and rewards contextual understanding, it’s a challenge to decipher in the moment. Ergo Proxy has sequences that run just fine, but others that are impossible to decipher in the moment and must be come back to. If you are willing to be invested and attentive, you can get what you are able to get out of Bakemonogatari at once. Ergo Proxy is the kind of show that may deserve multiple viewings, but it also practically demands if not that then at least a careful consideration in post.
Which had the greater heights, and which is the worse fault? In my mind, Bakemonogatari strives for more and achieves more as an anime, while Ergo Proxy strives for more and achieves more as a story. There are different elements that are strong and different elements that are weak, and in both cases it’s their primary strength that, while tremendous, also carries the deepest flaw.
Because of that, I feel like the shows are worth the same letter grade – A – even if I can recommend Ergo Proxy in more sure and firm tones. Unlike Bakemonogatari, which is an acquired taste, I feel you can know fairly well if you’ll enjoy Ergo Proxy’s dark, moody philosophy or not before you really sit down with it. So, if that’s at all up your alley, do yourself a favor and check it out.