*wink*
See, I care about my readers, I like to know you’re all healthy and spry as young lambs, gallivanting here and nuntooting there. As for me? I’mmmm alright if you happen to like that sort of thing which personally I don’t. (Marvin reference #1)
I’ll be honest, its 10am and my hands are literally about to fall off due to how cold it is, so I thought to myself, how can I make my hands warm? Opti0n 1 seemed to be playing a game, Option 2 was sitting on them, and Option 3 was ratta tat tat away on the keyboard, so I figured I’d do something constructive (laugh) like a blog post.
As it happens, I do have something to talk about, as I finished Ergo Proxy yesterday I may as well spam images from that and talk a bit about it. Same rules as usual, there will be spoilers (although I try to keep them to a minimum, don’t blame me if you read this) for the general story of Ergo Proxy as well as I can understand it. So don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m also typing this with gloves on, which is interesting.
Anyway (I use that word to start paragraphs way too often) I had known of Ergo Proxy for some time mostly due to the stupid title. That’s all I knew about it though, oh, and that the main character had blue mascara..stuff. It was never high on my list of stuff to watch, and I’ll be frank the only reason I really picked it up was due to Dai Sato being the writer. (Lead writer on Eureka Seven, he also worked on Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell) the premise of Ergo Proxy isn’t anything that far out there, in essence, humans are living in a large domed city, big brother society, world outside is FUKO’d, the usual. I’ll skimp on the details for the most part and just say what I thought about the show, A.P.A style.
Ergo Proxy started off pretty damn fast paced, the first 9 episodes or so introduced a ton of characters, many of which died out within 1-2 episodes, it didn’t really give much indication as to where the series was headed, but eventually, much like E7, LE and to a lesser extent Cowboy and Champloo, the story takes place on a ship and its crew, going on a journey. Never the less, where E7 and LE have large crews and what not, Ergo Proxy’s crew consists of 4 maximum members: Vincent Law, Re-L Mayer, Pino and Iggy. Vincent and Re-L are “humans”, Pino and Iggy are Autoreiv Entourages (basically robots or androids) so after episode 9, the pacing slows down and it becomes more episodic in nature till about the 19 mark or so. In a way it contrasts with Last Exile, whereas Last Exile starts off very slow and then becomes fast paced near the end, Ergo starts fast, then goes slow.
As for the characters themselves, there wasn’t really anything new here. Vincent Law is an amnesic (Japan LOVES amnesiacs more than Batos loves rating) Re-L is your typical rebel girl with a gun, to be honest I didn’t much like either of these characters, and I basically paid very little attention for the first few episodes. Pino and Iggy were far more interesting to me, ironic considering they are/were robots. If you hadn’t realised by now from my banners and spamming of Dio pictures, I like, 90% of the time, the “happy-go-lucky” or careless characters most of the time. Apachai, Dio, Pino and so on. (Mao doesn’t really count, but he’s a cat.) I’m not really sure why I enjoy these characters more, but oh well. There’s also a moderate supporting cast. Chief amongst these are Chief (…) Raul and Daedalus the “I’m actually a man despite my female voice actor” and if that didn’t tip you off, I was listening to the japanese dub. I tried out the english dub as it was dual audio but..for the most part, the voices weren’t bad at all, but I found Vincent and Pino to be superior in the japanese versions (also the english dub removes Pino’s nickname for Re-L, what’s up with that?)
From here on there be spoilers, just so you know.
So eventually (well, like at episode 9) it is revealed that Vincent isn’t human at all, but is in fact a Proxy. To quote him, “I am Ergo Proxy. Agent of Death.” and that’s when the storyline kicks in more. From what I understand, Proxies are basically god like beings with ebony skin who are more or less immortal. Re-L (her name is basically pronounced Real) discovers that her entourage, Iggy, has been infected by a virus known as Cogito, which gives these robots a soul. Pino has been infected for basically the whole time, so when Iggy gets infected he goes mental and it eventually ends up with him dying. His death scene was rather amusing as he kept swapping back and forth between his two differing personalities you could say. Lots of characters die in Ergo Proxy. In what seems typical of shows Dai Sato works on, there is no clear-cut villain. Heck, even more so in this case, Cowboy has Vicious you can say is the bad guy, Eureka has Dewey, but there arent’ really any real villains in Ergo, not in the traditional sense, you could say Raul is I suppose, that’s probably the closest you’re gonna get.
Again, like Cowboy, Ergo has a rather vague ending, I will literally show you the exact ending:
“I am Ergo Proxy”
“Agent of Death”
Make of that what you will, that’s the main character, and main characters aren’t meant to give sinister smiles like that. Even so, it wasn’t a bad end per se, it didn’t feel as rushed as LE’s end, and whilst it could have answered more questions, I was satisfied with it I guess.
I do feel that Ergo Proxy would feel a great movie if somebody were to adapt it. Whilst E7 fails as a movie because the major strong point of E7 is that it spends half the series establishing the characters and giving them development, the actual plot isn’t amazing, so when you just pull that out (albeit in a changed form) and cram it into a movie, the end result isn’t that amazing. I feel Ergo Proxy however, would work well as a movie, it has some cinematic moments. Speaking of cinematic moments, Last Exile would make a great movie. Perhaps even live action. I still really hope the fact that people are taking down the concept art means it is in production.
Lastly before I spam some images from the last episode, I’ll touch on everything else: Voice acting was average to good, it varied. Animation likewise varied, but for the most part it was above average, with several episodes (namely the first and last) having very pleasing animation. However there were no moments that stood out as a “wow” moment. This is from the same studio that did Samurai Champloo, but they’ve not done much else, to give you an idea of what to expect. As for audio, for the most part the music was, much like the animation and voice acting, average to good but nothing noteworthy that stood out. That is of course, with the exception of the OP and ED. Both of which were decent, the ED was Paranoid Android by Radiohead. (Marvin reference #2) I think that honestly sums up the series well “Average to good but nothing noteworthy”, nothing that will make it go down in my memory as awesome.
Now I shall proceed to spam some images before going to find cake. I hate winter, I have like 0 body fat to keep me warm..so I..eat cheesecake. Lant logic for you ladies and gentlemen. (Excuse the aspect ratio, for some reason MPC decided to be an asshole and fuck it up when I took screenshots and I honestly can’t remember how to fix it and I’m too lazy to re-take them)
Problem, Proxy?
EUREKAAAAA-UHH..RE-L RE-L.
Pino loves her portable piano thing, the name of which escapes me.
Pino’s making a classic I DUNNO LOL expression whilst Re-L is unamused as ever.
I still wonder what Pino’s suit is meant to be, a dog? rabbit? cat? fox? Who can say!
As for the score, I gave Ergo Proxy a 7/10.
Now I’ll go on a brief tangent regarding my scores:
- 10 – Perfect
- 9 – Masterpiece
- 8 – Very Good
- 7 – Good
- 6 – Above Average
- 5 – Average
- 4 – Below Average
- 3 – Bad
- 2 – Very Bad
- 1 – Terrible
- 0 – Unwatchable
Let me now elaborate upon this using examples. (Bear in mind, (or is that bare? I can never remember) that these are strictly my own opinion, and whilst I might think show A is perfect, it doesn’t mean I expect everyone else to agree with me)
10 – Perfect. I’ve given this to two series so far (I’m leaving things that aren’t anime out of this as it gets more complicated with movies and even more so with games or music or anything like that) Gintama and Eureka Seven. Why is this? Rewatchability is a big thing for me, and so far I’ve never grown tired of a single episode of Gintama or E7, this is impressive considering the former is currently almost at 200 episodes, and the LATTER is a 50 episode series (HAPPY NOW MIKE?). Perfect is an absolute, this means that in my eyes there’s nothing that can be improved, or if there is, it’s literally the smallest of nitpicks such as, for example, E7 isn’t widescreen, neither is Gintama.
9 – “Almost Perfect”, fuck off WordPress, I know you’re not meant to use an absolute for comparison but I’m going to do it anyway, don’t you know the phrase almost perfect? My god just GET OFF MY BACK JUST FUCK OFF WOULD YOU PAL BUDDY BRO. Anyway, these are shows that I really really liked, but they just didn’t have “that” which makes it a perfect score. Things that scored 9 include; Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Planetes, Guardian of the Sacred Spirit and 2nd, 4th, and 5th Kara no Kyoukai movies. These are like, the elite, the most awesome of awesome.
8 – Very Good. I don’t care what some morons might think, for me, 8/10 is an amazing score. Examples of 8’s include Denno Coil, Great Teacher Onizuka, Baccano, FLCL and indeed, Last Exile. These are shows that whilst I really enjoyed, they did have flaws that kept them from being a 9. Take Last Exile for example, this is perhaps my favourite show behind E7, yet I’m not blind to the fact that it has pacing issues, script issues and further problems that stem from these. 8 is still a very good score though, anything that scores 8 or above is something I highly recommend watching.
7 – Good. Now, in most game reviews for example, if you see something score 7/70% you think oh man that’s sucky sucky. Not so for my scores, 7’s still good. Ergo Proxy scored 7 alongside RahXephon, Death Note (the ova), Code Geass R1 and Darker than Black. These are all enjoyable shows, but nothing makes them stand out for the most part. Don’t think that 7 is bad, not at all, we’ll get to bad later so hold your horses, 7 is still good, it’s just at this point where the flaws become larger and more obvious.
6 – Above Average. Now, 4/5/6 are all regarded as average to me, it’s just tiers of average. Some examples of 6 are; Xam’D, Soul Eater, Cromartie High School, Scrapped Princess and all seasons of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. These aren’t bad series, no, on the contrary, they are still enjoyable, but that doesn’t stop them from being average. Sometimes it’s one huge flaw that can knock their score down, but most of the time it’s just mediocrity. Soul Eater is a good example of what would’ve been a 7 or potentially an 8, yet the horrible ending took a lot of the enjoyment out of the show and made much of the message seem pointless.
5 – Average. This is where the “true” average shows are, neither good nor bad, but more often, they share elements that are both good and bad. Examples; Canaan, MariaHolic, Kenichi, Sengoku Basara and the first TTGL movie. Canaan is probably the perfect example of a 5. It’s an enjoyable show certainly, but there’s so many stupid moments that make you go “what” and plot holes and just..well, nothing that makes it go higher. Kenichi and Basara too, both were enjoyably and silly shows, Basara was nothing but silliness, Kenichi took the typical shounen route and attempted to include the entire spectrum of emotions, to limited success, it should’ve stuck as a purely comedic show, Gintama’s one of the few shounens that can do comedy and serious parts equally good.
4 – Below Average. Right, now we’re starting to get to the meh shows. Full Metal Panic, both seasons of Druaga, Samurai Champloo and Death Note (the series) these are things that could have potentially been decent, but were marred by certain things which crippled my enjoyment of the series on a whole. Example? Druaga season 2 starts off promising, but quickly descends into nonstop QUALITY moments, clichéd plot twists and general crappyness. Death Note starts off good but after L dies the series goes downhill pronto quick and all the charm goes out of it. As for Champloo, I just..the rap really annoyed me and stopped me from enjoying the show, the OP literally hurt my eyes and brain. Perhaps a petty reason, but even without it Champloo would be a 6 tops.
3 – Bad. Finally, we get to shows that I actually consider bad. However! Just because something is BAD doesn’t meant it can’t also be enjoyable. Some things are entertaining, whether it’s because they are so laughably bad or whatever, it’s not like you should always pass them up. Examples; Naruto, Devil may Cry and Afro Samurai. Let’s take Naruto, that series starts off promising but quickly becomes..just..my god. I don’t even need to explain, do I? Devil May Cry on the other hand is just so uninspired and pointless that it makes you wonder why they bothered to make it. Dante seems nothing like Dante other than the fact he’s unkillable and just waltzes around blowing everything up which makes you wonder what the point is as there’s nothing that can possibly pose a threat to him. Afro Samurai uuughhh..that gets 3 points solely because of the niceish animation.
2 – Very Bad. I’ll be frank, I’ve only ever rated 3 things Very Bad. Code Geass R2, Tales of the Abyss and Advent Children. I think it might be more suitable to call this point “So bad it’s laughable” Geass R2 was certainly so amazingly horrible that I found myself entertained more and more with each passing episode, wondering how they would top that absurdity, and certainly, they did. Tales of the Abyss was amazingly horrible and facepalm worthy throughout more or less every episode, the animation was a joke, the voice actors sounded bored most of the time and the story was perhaps the most generic and clichéd JRPG story I’ve ever seen. Advent Children was just full of fuck.
1 + 0 I don’t actually have anything rated 1 or 0 apart from Naruto Shippuden, which I’m hesitant about to be honest. See, with Shippuden, I’ve watched episodes 1-20 and then like 6 more episodes which were the Shikamaru vs Hidan episodes and the Jiraiya vs Pain episodes. Now, these episodes were impressive and I enjoyed them, HOWEVER, if you take them out, Shippuden is horrible horrible horrible horrible. Not even so bad it’s good, just BAD. The plot is a joke at this point and revolves around nothing more than HERP WHERE’S SASUKE I WANT HIS DICK IN MY ASS DATTEBAYO. I hate shows where the main characters have useless goals. Yeah though, there’s nothing that’s been properly rated 1 or 0 so I can’t really talk about it. Yet I can give you some examples of shows that I would rate 0, I don’t even need to watch them to know. Lucky Star, Toradora, and Haruhi. These are all shows that I don’t even need to watch to know how terrible they are. Much like I don’t need to watch Transformers: Revenge of my ass to know that is shit.
I hope that potentially cleared up any confusion regarding “Y IS SHOW X ONLY 7 OMG” ‘cos..I’m not a fanboy who just insta-rates shows 10 because I liked them, even if I do rate mostly on opinion, I’m not THAT biased.
Goodbye.
Oh right, next up on my list of stuff to watch? Serial Experiments Lain. I think I should really actually watch it considering I’ve already been ripping it off for 4 years woops.
OH right #2. No, Ergo Proxy does have a stupid title and they never explain it. THEREFORE, SUBSTITUTE. It’s just the name of that character.