As for me “Patience is a virtue”, I’ll post my final opinions after the final show.

I have to agree with your comment at AS on some of these upcoming eps not sounding as something to loo forward to based on those briefs. At least speaking Realistically , there doesn’t seem to be much on offer — if the synopses aren’t misleading like they sometimes are.

I think in some ways I went overboard with my comments about the show, and let a personal annoyance color my statements too much. I’m still reasonably interested in what they’re going to do with the plot eventually. However, since I haven’t developed a significant emotional connection to any of the characters (Real and perhaps also Daedalus coming close, but not close enough), I find that it’s easier for me to just read up on EP in blogs and at AS than watch it.

I wonder if anyone else has experienced the same thing, that you’re a lot more interested in EP on the intellectual level than emotionally. Beign curious rather than caring. Wanting to know how they (the makers) handle things more than wanting to watch it take place…

Plotwise, I like that the focus is building a story through character development. I like that the morals of this world are a bit hazy, and that the characters themselves aren’t always sure of what’s right or wrong. This is clearly not a nice place to live. People die at an alarming rate. I think that’s fine. Death isn’t supposed to be something fair or always easily explained. But based on what the story’s doing, I don’t think the show is killing people unecessarily.

EP has actually done some good things with its storytelling. The characters are developing at a good pace, even within their genre’s “mold”, human or otherwise. Their facets are interesting, if not always surprising, but they’re not so hackneyed we can tell exactly what they’re going to do next all the time (or there wouldn’t be so many debates and theories in the first place.)

Personally, I don’t think the plot is whether Vincent is a Proxy (was never much of a secret), whether Vincent and Real will like each other (couldn’t have been more obvious), whether Real will survive (all that marketing won’t go to waste) or whether Pino will develop a human heart (her name has always hit me as short for Pinnochio), or any of those things we can see right before us. They’re just part of the journey.

I also don’t think Vince’s Proxy transformation was meant to be a surprise, not to the viewers anyway. It’s the worst kept secret in the whole series, seeing as how they only hint that Vince is the Proxy in every OP sequence since ep 3. The characters are taking their own time to discover that, and this seems in line with where they are in the story.

As for transformation sequences in SF, I don’t think it’s unwarranted. It’s also not as unusual as one might think. Gilgamesh, a not too dissimilar series, had transformation sequences. Blood+, an ongoing series, has transformations. If nothing else, by genre, EP strikes me as a dark SF/F cross (there’s SF, but the Proxies are bordering on mysticism). Judging EP on its own, the transformation sequences don’t strike me as unnatural given their circumstances. They’re not unexpected or without purpose in terms of the storyline, and that’s my criteria for whether or not they’re appropriate.

Other aspects of the plot, like the philosophical leanings and name-dropping, do work for me. At least, I think EP is making some observations about the society/world it’s building (some of them strike me as snarks about our world too), and I do think that will tie in with the plot in a big way. This is also the big picture I’m focusing on. If it takes it slowly, even 15 eps to hit The Plot, that’s fine to me. (WHR took 15 eps and took out the male lead for nearly 10 of the next eps — back when it was running, I remember how people were complaining “there was no plot” till it fell on their heads; so I think it’s a stylistic element of the director at work — might be up to viewers’ personal taste.)

PS: I don’t feel cheated because Real isn’t around at the moment. I like her, as I do many of the characters (some of the more obscure ones I want to see more of). The focus of the story at this point naturally feels like it should be with Vincent. (I also think the focus of the plot has also been Pino in an indirect way — I updated my Halfway Point notes back at my LJ with a word on that.) I know Real will be back. It’s good to not always know how. And, the title of this show is, “Ergo Proxy.”

They(referring to his posts) certainly make a nice change from some of your posts which you seem to love repeating over and over again and often make in threads that are unrelated to EP via some really tenuous links. Still you do IMO post some good shit, far better than stuff I could come up with anyway, I just wish you’d get back to that.

I totally understand your side on these things, and I hope I didn’t impose them on you. When I write my posts, I certainly think on how to avoid shoving my opinion up others’ asses, which is why I constantly and consistently use IMO, personally think, IMHO, etc. You may have noticed that, not only on my Ergo Proxy posts, but on my other posts as well.

Although I admit I am a Real fanboy, if I truly was only watching the show for the sake of Real, I’d have stopped at 4 or 5 or 6 … that was already too little airtime for Real. What I dislike about the creators is that they had the balls to lie or misdirect the common viewer to net them into watching EP. (Yeah, it’s marketing, but doing it underhandedly isn’t going to please me in the least.) They featured Real in Newtype, in most of the posters, and in most part of the trailers. I myself would like to be obfuscated in ’smart’ shows like this, however, I don’t want the general ambience of the show to misdirect me, because like now, I really feel cheated. If they would have featured Vincent, they should have shown Vincent and featured him. That way I could expect a true SF series, not the philosophical and psychological girl-with-gun stuff I’ve had with Motoko (and better yet at that, IMO). They mistakenly displaced my expectations, and so with others, that we feel (I think, anyway) that they’ve cheated us. That’s my take on it.

Arguably, Ergo Proxy is dystopian in genre; and this is what irks me so much of Vincent’s transformation. Past media, either with books or film, avoid quasi-magical transformations in this genre. There were no transformations with Zamyatin; there were no transformations with Orwell; I think there were no transformations with Blade Runner. Using transformation in this genre to propel the plot is just so far-fetched to me, thus, very difficult to believe in except to laugh at.

I hope I clarified some of my points and rebutted some points you were pointing out.

As you and “MrX” rehashed over and over, it essentially comes down to expectations; Ergo Proxy is not what you expected it to be, and that’s fair enough. While you find that disappointing, I certainly don’t; Vincent has proved to be far more interesting than I first thought he would be, and the show has posed several questions that I want answered as much as I want to see Real back in the storyline; I find Raul and Daedalus especially interesting, but there’s also the mystery of what happened in Moscow and a whole host of Proxy-related questions I want answered (like their motives, for one; why was Monad hunting Real, and what is the point of them even existing? Amrita cells must have come from somewhere…) Plus Pino is genuinely cute, something I never expected to see from this show!

Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t really care for hard-boiled science fiction thrillers; Blade Runner is visually impressive and contains some interesting issues but is, in itself, a rather boring film in my opinion, and I have never warmed up to the Ghost in the Shell franchise. Ergo Proxy is much stronger in that it weaves together multiple plot threads effectively (although not so much in the recent episodes due to their focus on Vincent) whilst posing some interesting philosophical questions that don’t just relate to topics in the philosophy of mind but also to general ethics and metaphysical questions about personal identity; certainly plenty of deep things to talk about there, even if you do think the transformation is hokey (which, as I’ve said before, I don’t).

It’s quite clear that your expectations regarding Real are your main issue with the series; she’s been gone for two episodes and you’re making out like it’s the end of the world! Two episodes of a 23 episode series are not that drastic, especially as episodes 1 and 7 was almost entirely focused on her story. I realise that she’s what you want to see in the show, but Ergo Proxy has plenty of other merits in my opinion that are worth looking at rather than focusing exclusively on Real’s character; yes, she’s a great female lead, but she’s not the be-all and end-all, and her absence doesn’t really diminish the show in the long run. Of course, if she is genuinely dead and doesn’t appear in the rest of the series I’ll be disappointed, but that’s quite clearly not going to happen as she’s the joint lead character of the show; I know, you want her to be the main one, but that’s just not the way the show has turned out, and it doesn’t make the show bad, just different.

With regards to the animation, I’m not sure what to think really. I don’t think the animation has really dropped in quality, I just think it’s become a bit more stylised; while things aren’t as smooth as they are in the first episode, smoothness isn’t everything (witness Madlax for that; the in-betweening work is incredible, but it doesn’t alter the static, unoriginal look that many Bee Train shows exhibit) and the somewhat angular, jerky look of the show suits it immensely. Furthermore, it pulls out the money shots on a regular basis; witness any of the fight scenes or the Plugvent scene in episode 3 for evidence of quality that matches the first episode, in my opinion. First episodes of TV shows are always bad judges for animation quality as they always plow budget into them to hook viewers; aside from perhaps Bones I can’t think of any studio that maintains animation quality from the beginning. I can see why you might be disappointed with Ergo Proxy’s animation, but personally I have absolutely no problems with it and consider it easily above average in terms of storyboarding, direction and keyframe animation compared to most shows this season; sure, the Bones shows like Jyu Oh Sei and Ouran may have better animation, but Ouran in particular makes clever use of limited or repeated animation done in a stylish way and neither is quite as artistically “lofty” as Ergo tends to be.

I’m not setting out to dash your opinion to pieces, nor am I trying to say that Ergo Proxy is the perfect anime series to which all others should aspire; it’s clearly not, it has problems and quirks like any other show (its somewhat derivative nature, parts of the Commune arc being poorly paced (although overall I still enjoyed those episodes), occasional animation problems). It’s also very easy to poke fun at because it’s so po-faced about everything, hence why I do so quite frequently; nevertheless, I’m really enjoying the show and have absolutely no qualms about saying so. I can’t completely demolish your opinion because, after all, it’s just an opinion, and we’re all allowed those. However, in return it’s best to understand that some people see the things you think are irredeemable flaws in the show and either feel neutral about them or think they’re relatively positive points of the show, and we’re never all going to agree; reducing this into pointless bickering and name-calling is cheap and petty.

As for “MrX”… well, there’s no context here in this blog, and I didn’t want to say something silly like “like, say, the guy you called “one guy”", and using the actual nick could bring the fight over here–which I’m guessing you could do without