Ergo Proxy

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Ergo Proxy
Ergo Proxy
エルゴプラクシー
(Ergo Proxy)
Genre Science fiction, Cyberpunk, Horror , Thriller , Psychological ,Drama, Mystery
TV anime
Directed by Shukō Murase
Studio Manglobe
Network WOWOW
Original run 25 February 2006 – 12 August 2006
No. of episodes 23

Ergo Proxy (エルゴプラクシー Erugo Purakushī?) is a science fiction suspense anime television series, produced by Manglobe, which premiered across Japan from 25 February 2006 on the WOWOW satellite network. It is directed by Shukō Murase, with screenplay by Dai Sato et al. Ergo Proxy features a combination of 2D digital cell animation, 3D computer modeling and digital special effects. The series has some goth elements.

Contents

[edit] Setting

The story initially takes place in a futuristic dome city called Romdo[1], built to protect its citizens after global environmental apocalypse. In this utopia, humans and androids (AutoReivs[1]) coexist with each other peacefully under a total management system. A series of murders committed by berserk robots infected with the Cogito Virus are starting to jeopardize the delicate balance of the social order. Behind the scenes, the government is conducting secret experiments on a mysterious humanoid lifeform called Proxy, which is believed to hold the key to the survival of mankind.

In an interview [1], Dai Sato describes his latest project.

"It is set in the future. A group of robots become infected with something called the Cogito virus, and become aware of their own existence. So these robots, which had been tools of humans, decide to go on an adventure to search for themselves. They have to decide whether the virus that infected them created their identity, or whether they gained their identity through their travels. This question is meant to represent our own debate over whether we become who we are because of our environment, or because of things that are inherent in us. The robots are all named after philosophers: Derrida and Lacan and Husserl."—Dai Sato

[edit] Cast & Characters[2]

[edit] Principal Characters

  • Vincent Law

Voiced by: Kouji Yusa (Japanese), Liam O'Brien (English)
Immigrant Registration 0724FGARK
An immigrant from Mosko working for the AutoReiv Control Division (オートレイブ処理課?) within the Temporary Immigrant Sector FG (暫定移民区域FG?), set up to hunt and dispose infected AutoReivs. His past holds the key to the mysterious killings in Romdo.

  • Re-l Mayer

Voiced by: Rie Saitō (Japanese), Megan Hollingshead (English)
Citizen Registration: Re-L124C41+
DoB: April 22, 284AI
Age: 19
Inspector Re-l Mayer of the Citizen Intelligence Bureau (市民情報局 Shimin Jōhōkyoku?) is in charge of investigating a series of brutal murders committed by AutoReivs infected with the Cogito Virus. She is also the granddaughter of Donov Mayer, the Regent of the Dome City.

  • Pino

Voiced by: Akiko Yajima (Japanese), Rachel Hirschfeld (English)
Companion AutoReiv/Dual-Use Domestic Helper
AR Serial Number TOYDA/1.0/TPash/c10/serSSELD0012524
Deluxe model childlike AutoReiv under the care of a childless couple. She becomes infected with the Cogito Virus, making her have human emotions and what could possibly be seen as a "soul". Throughout most of the series, she wears a little girl's pink rabbit costume or pajama set. She follows Vincent everywhere on his journey.

[edit] Recurring Characters

  • Iggy

Voiced by: Kiyomitsu Mizūchi (Japanese), Travis Willingham (English)
Entourage AutoReiv
Re-l Mayer's robotic personal assistant (Entourage).

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
  • Raul Creed

Voiced by: Hikaru Hanada (Japanese), Patrick Seitz (English)
Citizen Registration: 039666
DoB: June 18, 275AI
Age: 28
The newly appointed chief of the Citizen Security Bureau (市民警備局 Shimin Keibikyoku?), who reports directly to the Regent. His wife cannot have children and took on Pino as a surrogate prior to the beginning of the show.


Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (Japanese), Kirsten Potter (English)
Entourage AutoReiv
Raul Creed's robotic personal assistant (Entourage).

Voiced by: Sanae Kobayashi (Japanese), Yuri Lowenthal (English)
Citizen Registration: 021723
Chief physician leading the Proxy Research Team, Director of the Division of Health and Welfare (厚生局 Kōseikyoku?), and Re-l Mayer's personal physician. He has two robotic personal assistants (Entourages), Deleuze (Kiyomi Yazawa) and Guattari (Kanako Tateno).

  • Donov Mayer

Elderly debilitated regent (執国 shikkoku?) (also representative (代表 daihyō?)) of Romdo City. He speaks by proxy through the voices of 4 Entourages in the form of stone statues (called, as a group, both the Collective (総体 Sōtai?) and the Administration Bureau (管理局 Kanrikyoku?)) named after famous philosophers: Derrida, Lacan, Husserl and Berkeley. These AutoReivs appear as Michelangelo's statues from the Medici Chapel, 2 resting on either side of Donov's chamber.

Berkeley Voiced by: Hiroshi Shimaka (Japanese), Doug Stone (English)
Derrida Voiced by: Yoko Soumi (Japanese), Melodee Spevack (English)
Husserl Voiced by: Hidekatsu Shibata (Japanese), Michael McConnohie (English)
Lacan Voiced by: Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese), Barbara Goodson (English)


[edit] Other Characters

  • Romdo Dome City
    • Dorothy
    • Petro Seller - Vincent's Boss
    • Cage Seal - Re-l's Boss
    • Samantha Ros - Raul Creed's Wife
  • The Commune
    • Hoody
    • Quinn
    • Timothy
    • The Three Villagers
  • Proxies
    • Monad
    • Senekis
    • Kazkis Hauer
    • "Homeless" Proxy
    • Ophelia Proxy
    • MCQ
    • Will B. Good
    • Swan
    • Proxy One
    • Monad II
  • The Game Show
    • Somi-chan
    • AD
  • Mosko Dome City
    • Amnesia
  • Smile Land
    • Al & Pull
    • Rogi
    • Officer Woof
    • Officer Meow

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Ergo Proxy episodes

[edit] World View

[edit] Geography

  • Planetary Ecological Disaster
  • Romdo Dome City
  • The Commune
  • Mosko Dome City
  • Asura Dome City
  • Halos Dome City
  • Ophelia Dome City
  • Smile Land
  • Abandoned Dome City
  • Dome City Ruins
  • City Lights Bookstore
  • Regent's Throne Room
  • Proxy One's Blue Sky Room

[edit] Biology

  • Proxy
  • Pulse of Awakening
  • Amrita Cell
  • WombSys
  • Underground Mutants
  • Original Humans
  • Human Replicants
  • Infection - The World of Death

[edit] Robotics

  • Entourage AutoReiv
  • Companion AutoReiv
  • Armed AutoReivs
  • Knights
  • Cogito Virus
  • Turing Application
  • Hippocampal File

[edit] Vehicles

  • AHT
  • U4
  • Centzon Totochtin
  • The Boomerang Star
  • Light Railway
  • Underground railway system

[edit] Weapon

  • FP Ray
  • Rapture
  • "Regular Service"
  • AutoReiv Disposal Unit Issued Firearm
  • Re-l's Shotgun

[edit] Politics

  • Raison d'Etre
  • Regent
  • Administrative Bureau
  • Citizen Security Bureau
  • Citizen Intelligence Bureau
  • Immigration Bureau
  • Division of Health and Wealthfare
  • Sanitation Bureau
  • AutoReiv Control Division (AutoReiv Disposal Unit)
  • Temporary Immigrant Sector
  • Citizen Residential Sector
  • Project ADW

[edit] The Creators

  • Proxy Project
  • Boomerang Project
  • Proxy One's Revenge
  • Proxy Pendant

[edit] Trivia

  • Episode 1 begins with a quotation from Michelangelo's reply to Giovan Battista Strozzi's epigram [2] for the Night Stature in the Medici Chapel. The opening sequence from Episode 3 onwards features fragments of this quotation in Italian as part of the background graphics montage.
Caro m' è 'l sonno, e più l'esser di sasso, Welcome is sleep, more welcome the sleep of stone.
Mentre che 'l danno e la vergogna dura: Whilst crime and shame continue in the land;
Non veder, non sentir, m' è gran ventura; My happy fortune, not to see or hear;
Però non mi destar, deh! parla basso Waken me not - in mercy, whisper low.
—Michelangelo Buonarotti
  • In Episode 1, when Vincent is pouring milk into his alphabet cereal, the letters float up in such a way to spell "Awakening".
  • The robots (AutoReivs) in the show are installed with a Turing Application program that can be switched on and off, allowing normal human-like conversation between humans and robots. This is named after Alan Turing, who proposed the Turing test as a test of AI sentience.
  • In Episode 2, the baby carriage falling down the stairs during the Central Mall massacre is reminiscent of the Union Station shootout scene in the film The Untouchables, which is itself a reference to the Odessa Steps scene in The Battleship Potemkin.
  • Episode 3's title is taken from the title of a science fiction novel "Прыжок в ничто" (Leap into the Void) by Alexander Beliaev.
  • During the intro theme song, after the head of the kneeling AutoReiv is seen, there is a short sequence showing an electron-microscope image of the Ebola virus.
  • In Episode 3, Re-l Mayer's ID Card No. is re-l124C41+ (homage to Hugo Gernsback's Ralph 124C 41+), a word play - Real one to foresee for one.
  • In Episode 4, the character Hoody is reading poetry by Joë Bousquet, a 20th French surrealist poet who later had enormous influence on Gilles Deleuze.
  • In Episode 5, Hoody mentions a boat called the Centzon Totochtin, named after the group of 400 rabbit-deities from Aztec mythology.
  • In Episode 7, the Amrita immortal cell line is named after Amrita, the immortal drink in Hindu/Buddhist mythology.
  • In Episode 10, you can see Dai Sato's name engraved on one of the tombstones right before the opening of the anime.
  • In Episode 12, FP Ray is probably based on FP Sync (Focal Plane) mode flashlights used for syncing with cameras operating at high shutter speed (1/100th of a second or faster).
  • In Episode 13, the title Conceptual Blindspot (構想の死角?) is also the Japanese title for the TV series Columbo 1st season episode "Murder by the Book" (1971).
  • In episode 19, the episode "eternal smile" mimics Disneyland, in which the creator Will B. Good is an exact replica of Walt Disney. The two characters who accompany Pino through her journey in this episode seem based upon the two main characters from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. This is furthered by the constant reference to Will B. Good as "the creator".
  • Episode 22's title - "bilbul" - is drawn from the Hebrew word בילבול, which means "bewilderment".
  • In Episode 23, Daedalus' duplicate of Re-l is given wings and thusly flies too high into the sunlight which causes her to die. This is a direct reflection of Icarus from Greek Mythology whom is given artificial wings by his father Daedalus and perishes when he flies too close to the sun. In this episode is also a statement made by Proxy One to Ergo Proxy saying, "Certainly, the Ark and the Cradle were necessary for your education." The statement refers to the journey taken by Vincent Law on the Rabbit into "the dead, ashen world spread out before [him]..." as well as his reclaiming (or actually, discovery) of Proxy One's memories. Both events mirror the Jewish parables of Noah and his Ark, and the finding of the baby Moses in the cradle of reeds (a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch).

[edit] Theme songs

The series' opening theme song is "Kiri" by Monoral and is first shown in episode 3. The ending theme song is "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead, although the preview version of the first episode did not feature it.

[edit] Staff

  • Director: Shukou Murase
  • Chief Writer: Dai Sato
  • Script: Dai Sato, Yuko Kawabe (Office Crescendo), Seiko Takagi, Yusuke Asayama, Naruki Nagakawa, Jun'ichi Matsumoto
  • Character Design: Naoyuki Onda
  • Music: Yoshihiro Ike
  • Sound: Keiichi Momose
  • Production Committee: Manglobe, Geneon Entertainment, WOWOW, Geneon Entertainment USA

[edit] Merchandise

  • "Centzon Hitchers & Undertaker" Ergo Proxy Comics - illustrated by Yumiko Harao, serialized by Shogakukan Monthly Magazine Sunday Gene-X from March 2006
  • "Centzon Hitchers & Undertaker" Comics Vol.1 by Yumiko Harao
  • Ergo Proxy DVD Vol.1-4 - Region 2 (Japan) DVD
  • Ergo Proxy DVD Vol.1 (English Dub) - Region 1 DVD from November 2006
  • Ergo Proxy Soundtrack OST.Vol.1-2 CD - composed by Yoshihiro Ike

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Ergo Proxy 3" Keywords. Retrieved on 2006-10-26.
  2. ^ Ergo Proxy::CHARACTERS. Retrieved on 2006-10-26.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../e/r/g/Ergo_Proxy_b78b.html"