Ergo Proxy

Ergo Proxy is another show that has some cool ideas but doesn't quite live up to its potential. It tells the confusing story of a future where Earth has become sparse and people live in domes protecting them from the harsh environment. There are monsters called Proxies around, and the story is about the truth behind their existence. It starts fairly promisingly with some stylized action scenes showing off the Proxies' power, but that happens less often as the show goes a different route. At first I didn't like Vincent, who seemed like an annoying plot-device character. It soon became clear he was a protagonist along with Lil, and he developed into someone more tolerable. I don't get Lil's eye shadow, but she's a decent heroine. There's also Pino, the adorable infected android who accompanies them and adds a lot of humor to the series which can otherwise get a little monotonous.

The story is pretty interesting, although I wasn't a huge fan of how it was generally presented. There's a lot, and I mean a lot of dream sequences, introspection, mind games, and any other explanation you can think of to provide justification for confusing, brain teasing episodes that slowly reveal plot details while messing with the viewer's heads. None of them are really bad, it's just that kind of thing takes up so much of the show that you have to wonder how much time they spent working on kooky fantasies instead of making sure the show's story structure was solid. The pacing is a little off, with a lot of the aforementioned trickery and filler before it ends a little abruptly. I get the feeling the creators liked Evangelion and were influenced by it pretty heavily. There's nothing wrong with having a show that's a little out there, but I thought they spent too much time dabbling in that instead of elaborating on the world they came up with. I think it was a pretty decent show, but not what it could have been.