Ergo proxy

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Television series
Original title エ ル ゴ プ ラ ク シ ー Ergo Proxy
Ergo Proxy Logo.svg
Country of production JapanJapan Japan
original language Japanese
year 2006
length 25 minutes
Episodes 23
genre Science fiction , mystery , cyberpunk , thriller
production Manglobe
music Yoshihiro Ike
First broadcast February 25, 2006 on WOWOW

Ergo Proxy ( Japanese エ ル ゴ プ ラ ク シ ー , erugo purakushī ) is an anime series from 2006. It combines science fiction , mystery and cyberpunk .

scenario

The domed city of Romdeau is located in a futuristic world that is suffering from the consequences of a global environmental disaster. Here people and androids ( autoreivs ) coexist peacefully under a totalitarian surveillance system. Autoreivs that are assigned to a single person as a companion are called entourages. A series of murders by robots infected with a virus called cogito (Latin for I think ) begins to jeopardize the delicate balance in the social order. This virus causes the autoreivs to become aware of their existence and develop a soul.

In secret, the government is conducting secret experiments with a mysterious humanoid form of life called a proxy , by means of which they believe they can secure the survival of humanity and its position of power.

The series centers on Vincent Law ( ビ ン セ ン ト ・ ロ ウ ), an immigrant who works for the AR Control Division - an organization established to hunt down and destroy infected robots, Re-l Mayer ( リ ル ・ メ イ ヤ ー ) , a homeland security inspector charged with investigating the murders, and Pino ( ピ ノ ), a cogito-infected robot surrogate child of Director General Raul Creed ( ラ ウ ル ・ ク リ ー ド ). Vincent himself is such a proxy, but he has lost his memory.

action

Vincent Law is not very successful in his hunt for the infected androids, but hopes to gain the status of a fellow citizen. At the headquarters of the organization he meets Re-l Mayer, a commissioner of the secret service. Vincent accompanies her in the search for an escaped car rival and feels drawn to her, but is too overwhelmed by her strong character to try to get closer to her.

There are several incidents in which Re-1 runs into proxies but is banned from doing any further investigation. When Vincent is finally attacked by a proxy, he tries to escape from the city and meets Pino, whom he had previously checked on Cogito. At this point Pino is already infected and accompanies him on the run. When the security authorities try to arrest Vincent, he is pulled through an air lock together with Pino into the outside world.

In this outside world a person is normally not able to survive, but since he is a proxy, he gets used to the outside conditions within a short time, as do some people already living in the outside world who take him in together with Pino. During this time, Re-l tries to find out more about the proxy and comes across unusual information about Vincent from her childhood friend Daedalus Yumeno ( デ ダ ル ス ・ ユ メ ノ ), who works as a scientist. Knowing that she is being watched by her grandfather, the city's dictator, she tries to bring Vincent back to the city. In this attempt, Re-l's protective suit is damaged and she is exposed to the deadly atmosphere in the outside world. She falls into a deep sleep and would die if she wasn't brought back to Romdeau quickly.

Vincent decides to do so and pretends to voluntarily return to Romdeau. While Romdeau's guards' attention is on Re-l's airship, Vincent flees on a windboat (a sailboat that relies on the wind, but glides instead of swimming) with some of the settlement residents and Pino in the direction of the Mosque - his home town. There he wants to find out who he actually is. He has a terrible suspicion that he has something to do with the proxy, who always appears when he is around. Everyone dies early on the journey except for him and Pino. Re-1, healed again by Daedalus and now immune to the outside world through the treatment, then travels after him.

On this journey, which both continue with Pino after a few incidents, both Re-l and Vincent find out himself that he is a proxy. Now both are trying to discover the secret of the proxies, because even if Vincent turns into a proxy, he doesn't seem to want to harm her.

Production and publications

Geneon Entertainment and Manglobe produced the 23-part series. Directed by Shuko Murase , who was previously best known as a character designer and director of the anime Witch Hunter Robin . Dai Satō workedas a screenwriter at Ergo Proxy , who had already carried out this role at Cowboy Bebop and Wolf's Rain ,among others. The character design was created by Naoyuki Onda and the artistic directors were Kazumasa Satou and Toshiyuki Yamashita . The responsible producers were Akio Matsuda , Michiko Suzuki and Takashi Kochiyama . Production ran for about 3 years, the first two for scripting and character development, the last year for making the animations. The CGI effects took a particularly long time to implement. The effects were mainly used for depth of field, lightreflectionsor bullet time settings as well as for vehicles and weapons.

The anime aired on Japanese television station WOWOW from February 25 to August 12, 2006 . The series has been dubbed on DVD by Nipponart in Germany since April 25, 2008. Animax showed the series on German television. There were also dubbed versions in English, French, Spanish and Italian and there were publications in Russia and Poland.

synchronization

The German version was created by GÜLO Film- und Tontechnik GmbH in Munich.

role Japanese speakers ( seiyū ) German speakers
Pino Akiko Yajima Katharina Iacobescu
Vincent Law Koji Yusa Philipp Brammer
Re-L Mayar Rie Saitou Kathrin Gaube
Raul Creed Hikaru Hanada Hans-Georg Panczak
Proxy One Hōchu Ohtsuka
Iggy Kiyomitsu Mizuuchi Walter von Hauff
Monad Sachiko Kojima
Daedalus Yumeno Sanae Kobayashi Shandra Schadt

music

The end credits are the song Paranoid Android by the British alternative rock band Radiohead . The band did not make the song available until they saw the already completed footage of the anime. The theme song is Kiri von Monoral , a melancholy, spherical rock song. However, the anime only has an opening credits from the third episode. The music of the series, composed by Yoshihiro Ike, underlines the eerie atmosphere of the plot, using monk chants, trip-hop and synthesizer sounds, as well as reverb effects and distorted or backwards played sounds.

Manga

A manga based on the anime entitled Centzon Hitchers and Undertaker ( セ ン ツ ォ ン ・ ヒ ッ チ ャ ー ズ ＆ ア ン ダ ー テ イ カ ー , Sentson Hitchāzu & Andāteikā ) was published monthly in the Sunday-GX from February 18, 2006 . Two tankōbon issues were later published on August 18, 2006 and February 19, 2007.

Conception

In its stylistic devices, the anime is very much based on comics , so that certain details are deliberately worked out, while irrelevant things are presented very abstractly or blurred. In order to create an oppressive mood in the style of the genre noir , mainly matt gray, blue and brown tones are used. Frequently used stylistic devices are fast tracking shots, slow motion and distorted and washed-out sequences. In the character design, elements of the Gothic genre were used. References to films such as Metropolis and Blade Runner up to 2001: A Space Odyssey can also be found, while the world of the series is also heavily influenced by the animes Ghost in the Shell , Neon Genesis Evangelion , Armitage III and Texhnolyze .

But other references to European culture can also be found in Ergo Proxy . Four members of Romdeau's Council of Thrones, for example, have the appearance of Michelangelo statues and bear the names of well-known philosophers and psychologists ( Lacan , Derrida , Husserl and Berkeley ). The entourages also have names such as Deleuze , Guattari or Kristeva .

Episodes 15 and 19 of the series have a special place here. Important plot elements are only revealed in episode 15, a more than silly quiz show in which Vincent plays for his life against the presenter. In episode 19, on the other hand, which has nothing to do with the main plot in the true sense, the drawing style of the “always laughing” Disney characters is more than clearly discussed. This is also seen as a reference to the drama of Beauty and the Beast , both in the Cocteau and the Disney version, which is said to take place between Vincent and Re-l.

reception

The German magazine AnimaniA calls the anime "a disturbing and pessimistic, but also fascinating future utopia" with a complex and exciting story. The impressive staging sometimes creates disturbing, dark images. Character design, sound and music are also suitably dark. The mixture of classic cel animation and contemporary, not exaggeratedly used computer effects was successful, and detailed backgrounds rounded off the "successful optics at a high level". In the course of the series, however, the animation quality fluctuates every now and then and, from the point of view of the German publication, has not aged well. The series is especially recommended to friends of challenging, intelligent sci-fi stories with "visually stunning optics". The German synchronization is above average.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GCult - Gaming is Culture - Interview with Shuko Murase about Ergo Proxy. August 28, 2009, accessed May 31, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f AnimaniA 05/2008, p. 8ff.
  3. ↑ a b Ergo Proxy. In: German synchronous card index. Accessed May 31, 2020 .
  4. ^ Ergo Proxy Music by Radiohead. AnimeNewsNetwork.com, February 15, 2006, accessed October 6, 2007 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e AnimaniA 06/2006, p. 60ff.
  6. ↑ a b c Marcus Hammerschmitt: Beauty and the beasts. May 27, 2007, accessed October 6, 2007 .

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