#kelsey liveblogs ergo proxy

[daisyachain]

Not to be all ‘kids these days’ but watching Ergo Proxy really is a refreshing fall of rain after the 2010s. Not that there haven’t been weird slow-burn works coming out (HnK, No.6, Shinsekai Mori come to mind), but the real self-confidence of the work feels like it’s from a past era. The palette is muted, the character designs aren’t flashy, the series puts its stock in storytelling alone to make it stand out. It feels far more like a live-action drama in its minimalism.

Even tracking the evolution of Keiko Nobumoto’s works, which feel similar in tone to Ergo Proxy, there’s a marked 10-year skip from the moody works of the 00s (Wolf’s Rain, Samurai Champloo) to the loud and shiny works of the 10s (Space Dandy, Carole and Tuesday). The change in production sensibilities prioritized bright colour in the digital era, but alongside that the mood brightened considerably. When you look at acclaimed works in the past 10 years, you can also see that the big names are tilted towards kids’ shows with dazzling visuals. This is filtered through me being on the Kids’ Show Website and North American tastes favouring junk food; even so, I wonder if as the otakubait wave has risen it’s edged out adult animation…at all.

[daisyachain]

There’s some interesting stuff going on with Vincent taking on Re-l’s form during the dream sequence and shooting his own body. Probably meant to be a metaphor for protecting her from his daaaaark urrrrges etc etc but the fact remains he recovers his true self in the body of somebody else

[daisyachain]

Ergo Proxy starts off feeling similar to Wolf’s Rain with its domed cities, grey palette, and low-tech nuclear winter dystopia. The individual episodes are gorgeous but move slowly. Right around the halfway mark, though, it does what Wolf’s Rain couldn’t and just gets wacky

[daisyachain]

The difference in character design between the plain and bishounen Vincent versions is causing me plot-reading difficulties

[daisyachain]

Little little things. Re-l is shown working out each day. Her makeup comes off at night. She needs to do her hair. She’s not winning any most feminist character of all time awards and still she’s treated so well by comparison by being allowed to be a human person

[daisyachain]

Iggy going mad has some discomfiting connotations wrt Re-l and her agency. However it can’t be meant to be taken at face value; while he’s clearly gone around the bend after being a tool for years and years, Re-l has been hiding all her investigation work from him from the start of the series. His complaints about the robot being the one doing the actual work fall flat when we remember that he literally hasn’t been able to contribute anything since the very first episode

[daisyachain]

Daedalus is like 14, yet somehow remembers Re-l as toddler. Options are: Re-l is meant to be a teenager as well, she’s some kind of fast-growing construct (likely) and Daedalus isn’t (less likely), Re-l is an autoreiv (I’d suspect it, but she’s vulnerable to the virus), or I’m just misreading the flashbacks

[daisyachain]

Love Ergo Proxy. Love having to pause every 5 minutes to squint at the screen trying to make out crucial detail to a twisty and intricate plot because the brightness is at minimum and the contrast is at zero

[daisyachain]

The quiz show is a fun expodump for just tossing aside ‘show don’t tell’ and instead turning its face directly to the camera