It’s time again for the Reverse Thieves Secret Santa thingy, where anime bloggers make each other watch shows and then write words about them. Last year I got to watch the seasonably appropriate Tokyo Godfathers, which is an excellent film directed by the late Satoshi Kon that you should all go buy. This year I’m watching Ergo Proxy, which isn’t seasonably appropriate in the least and it’s not exactly excellent either.

“The domed city of Romdo is an impenetrable would-be utopia where humans and robots coexist, and everything is under complete government control – or so it appears. While working on a mysterious murder case, Re-l Mayer, a female detective from the Civilian Intelligence Office, receives a foreboding message that something is going to “awaken.” That night, she’s attacked by a deformed super-being… What was this unidentified monster that attacked her, and who was the figure that came in between them? As Re-l attempts to unlock this spiraling mystery, a metaphysical battle cry leads her to the unknown outside world.”

Ergo Proxy has a fetish for being vague. The series’ terminology is rarely defined, and characters often have discussions of vague concepts. Sometimes this makes sense as things need to be obscure for the sake of the story, but most of the time it just gets annoying and tiresome. Certain plot points are also left vague such as an important event that’s essentially skipped when the story jumps from the group just about to return to Romdo after exploring the wasteland, to them being separated in Romdo after some serious shit had gone down. How the group got separated and what actually happened in Romdo is explained through narration. It was so abrupt that I thought I was being faked out (again).

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