Ergo Proxy – 17

You know, simply put, this was an excellent episode.

Autoreivs drive a train inside a tunnel. The train passes by Raul, who seems to be a fugitive from his countenance.It’s because he’s full of sweat and panting heavily. Running away after the train has passed, he encounters and autoreiv and shoots it full of holes.He shoots and destroys other autoreivs up, too.

He remembers a time in his past (I guess) where he was still the Director after he drops his now-useless ID on the ground after destroying those autoreivs.

Meanwhile, Real still travels along with Pino and Vincent, but this time, for the most part, seems to be agreeable (and more beautiful) this time around. Vincent still waits, albeit horribly, for the death promised to him by Real. I think he mentions something about it being horrible, and Real quickly changes the topic by telling him to leave. Since Pino has gone, Vincent again looks for her while an impatient Real waits.

Back at Romdeau, Raul and Daedalus talk about Real and Vincent with Daedalus expressing positive comments on Proxies (or so I think), and Raul pissed, because he tells Daedalus that he doesn’t know anything about Proxies. (I think this was an analogy to episode two.)

Real and Vincent still can’t find Pino; back at Romdeau, Raul scans his eyes to gain entrance to his office. It seems that he has tracked down Vincent’s path to escape from Romdeau; afterwards, he leans back and closes his eyes as Real and Vincent discover a cave beneath loose rock and sand. In a daydream, Raul sees Vincent as the winner of the game in ep15, so that wasn’t some dream or phantasmagoria: somehow, it happened in the past. Raul had to be calmed down by Kristeva afterwards. What Real and Vincent see within the cave are some mummified beasts somewhat looking like humans (perhaps these were humans in the past). Real tells Vincent to shut up because she hears something. Daedalus continues on with his fanatical admiration for Real; he lovingly rubs a digital picture of hers. Vincent and Real spelunk deeper into the cave; Pino has discovered a new musical instrument other than her quasi-accordion/recorder/whatever. It’s an old piano, and Pino plays it quite like a professional. Those dead bodies that looked partly like humans in the previous images were proxies, after all. The proxy disappears in the distance after Real moving the light away from it.

Raul, after talking with the council, still has all these illusions on Vincent; these illusions speak to him, as if to arouse his anger.Raul finally quits after the council decides not to do anything. (He leaves Kristeva behind, so I took that as a hint that he has finally quit.)

A pungent gas is inside the cave, and it seems Real cannot tolerate much of it because she starts with her coughing fit. (I have a lot of these right now, also.) Vincent escorts her to safety as Pino plays the piano lovingly. (That girl can do lots of things, really.)

Raul revisits the scene where his wife and child was murdered. Indeed, just as I called it a few paragraphs ago (I write an episode scene-by-scene) Raul has become a fugitive, and he has autoreivs chasing after his ass. We then return to what was the first scene: a train containing autoreivs passes by, and Raul, panting and sweating, shoots up some autoreivs. Daedalus scarily dotes on Real. It seems that the poison in the caves (from which Real runs away from) is killing all the Proxies in there. Anyway, from the drawings in the caves, it is insinuated that the creation of life in Romdeau is patterned after proxies themselves, seen by both Real and Vincent taking the weak little proxy. The mother-proxy, as I call it, for I have no other name, seems to be an allusion to the perfect woman in Hinduism (I love History, and that’s the only subject I have this semester that I even read about and give a damn. Incidentally, we’re talking about Asian Religion, and as I love reading about it, I know a little about it. I definitely hate this semester.)

Kristeva visits Raul’s office once again; this time, she has manned robots (Robotech?) for support, along with another yellow-haired autoreiv. Raul, some floors below, plays a piano as somewhat time ticks down in his office, perhaps to launch a bomb. The manned robot destroys the window nearest to where he was playing the piano. It seems that the tenuous link between Pino and Raul seems to be established with this, that Pino’s proficiency in musical instruments was because of Raul. In the end, Raul was a human tied down with his need for revenge; sadly, he mistakenly directs it towards Vincent: perhaps for taking Pino, mistakenly thinking that Vincent took his wife’s life and took what he loved. At the end of the countdown, a missile is launched as Raul plays his piano. Picturesquely, it coincides with Pino playing an imaginary piano in the air, a skill that her ‘father’ taught her, I guess, as the missile burns towards its destination in the distance.

IMPRESSIONS:

When the ED remains to be the same, but gets more hard-hitting this time around, you know something good has happened with the episode. Perhaps next to ep13, this is my favorite. It’s because it simply shows the humanity of Raul, and the humanity of a lot of the characters in the series. It brings Ergo Proxy back nearer to the realm of human understanding, and how Raul acted was TOO human, which was simply magnificent. The culmination of the episode, as the peaceful piano music juxtaposed with a violent inside upheaval for Raul and a revolution (brought about by the nuclear missile) about to happen outside was simply unique. The burning of the missile amidst a dark sky was simply majestic, and the different revelations happening in this episode was a sight to behold.