Ergo Proxy - complete

One thing Ergo Proxy is not going to do is make it easy for the casual viewer. Hard sci-fiers will be in technological heaven picking apart the meticulously crafted and confusing future-vision. In a deliberate attempt to foment this confuddliness, a different writer is contracted in for each episode leaving an oftimes ambigous and foggy path. For those of us unfamiliar with the comi-tragic meanderings of traditional Japanese theatre may find the gargantuan leaps from existential despair to flippant japery boggling. Episodes swing like a lonely housewife from murder mystery to theology; from political machinations to introverted psychology; from dark suspense to cute kookiness; from rabbit deities of Aztec mythology to the Classical philosophy of Rousseau and Heraclitus. Much of how this will be interpreted depends as much on the viewers affinity for rabid conspiracy and obsessive over-analysis as anything spelt out by the script. One must read between the frames, as it were.

Kirsteva, Deleuze, Gattari, the name-drops come flying in. A Rome-like Senate exists and the two statures in Regent Donov Mayar’s chamber is based on Michaelangelo’s Night and Day stature in the Medici Chapel in Florence. The voices of Night and Day represent those of Lacan and Husserl. The Twilight and Dawn simulacra representing Derrida and Berkeley. Characters recite [surrealist poet] Joe Bousquet like they read it in the funnies and weighty philosophical musings are never to far from the gun-totting Matrix-like face-offs. Those who’ve recently been enjoying the slightly absent desolation of Hitsuji no Uta or Serial Experiments Lain will know the feeling. Those of us who’ve woken up on a gloomy Monday morning to watch their alphabet cereal spell out ‘misfit’ in the milky murk may start to believe the developers have an inside channel straight to their innermost thoughts.

Want more? No better evidence exists of both Ergo Proxy’s intended demographic and its status as a prime example of how the best anime manages to embrace European thought and Western film whilst giving it a uniquely Japanese air plays out as Radiohead’s Paranoid Android closes the credit-sequence. A fitting, if a little obvious, choice unusual in anime which usually prefer to pen their own cheesy theme-tunes (although Paradise Kiss did use Franz Ferdinand to close out their episodes last year).
By Eric K (chucklechuck) & Washi


Links:

http://rapidshare.com/files/3168371/ErgoProxy.01.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3168723/ErgoProxy.01.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3168739/ErgoProxy.01.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3168876/ErgoProxy.02.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169014/ErgoProxy.02.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169043/ErgoProxy.02.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169119/ErgoProxy.03.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169211/ErgoProxy.03.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169238/ErgoProxy.03.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169320/ErgoProxy.04.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169403/ErgoProxy.04.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169421/ErgoProxy.04.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169488/ErgoProxy.05.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169553/ErgoProxy.05.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169575/ErgoProxy.05.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169650/ErgoProxy.06.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169744/ErgoProxy.06.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169770/ErgoProxy.06.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169866/ErgoProxy.07.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169943/ErgoProxy.07.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3169965/ErgoProxy.07.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170031/ErgoProxy.08.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170118/ErgoProxy.08.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170167/ErgoProxy.08.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170286/ErgoProxy.09.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170372/ErgoProxy.09.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170390/ErgoProxy.09.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170478/ErgoProxy.10.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170553/ErgoProxy.10.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170596/ErgoProxy.10.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170685/ErgoProxy.11.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170835/ErgoProxy.11.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170875/ErgoProxy.11.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3170942/ErgoProxy.12.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3171019/ErgoProxy.12.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3171042/ErgoProxy.12.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3171160/ErgoProxy.13.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3171241/ErgoProxy.13.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3171262/ErgoProxy.13.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3171335/ErgoProxy.14.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3171416/ErgoProxy.14.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/3168619/ErgoProxy.14.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6998716/ErgoProxy.15.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6998776/ErgoProxy.15.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6998892/ErgoProxy.16.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6998970/ErgoProxy.16.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999051/ErgoProxy.17.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999117/ErgoProxy.17.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999190/ErgoProxy.18.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999250/ErgoProxy.18.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999336/ErgoProxy.19.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999400/ErgoProxy.19.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999489/ErgoProxy.20.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999542/ErgoProxy.20.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999619/ErgoProxy.21.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999681/ErgoProxy.21.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999756/ErgoProxy.22.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999816/ErgoProxy.22.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999896/ErgoProxy.23.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/6999962/ErgoProxy.23.part2.rar