On a recommendation, I downloaded a few episodes of Ergo Proxy and finally got a chance to watch the first episode. One episode into a series is rarely a good point at which to make sweeping statements about it, especially when so many people have already seen up to episode 9 now, but here’s my two cents anyway.

One of the first things that struck me about this series before I gave it a shot was the alarming amount of eye makeup on this prominent character, presumably the main protagonist of the show. Her name is Lil, she’s a citizen of the dark-future megalopolis the story takes place in, she’s handy with a gun, and affects the kind of painfully-disinterested ennui that I generally associate with Vampire: The Masquerade enthusiasts and people that own too many Morrisey albums (frequently the same people). Shallow person that I am, this was enough to delay my acquisition of this title.

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This is not a post about the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I have not jumped on the bandwagon to rabidly obsess over this refreshing island of excellence in a sea of animated mediocrity. Nay, this is a post about a couple of other series that I’ve been trying to follow recently, Shakugan no Shana and Fate/Stay Night.

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I’ve been in a bit of a rut in regards to anime lately. There just hasn’t been a lot of new stuff that has caught my eye. A recent exception to this is Fate/Stay Night, a series that is apparently closely-related to Tsukihime, a title that I just never got around to watching. As a series based upon a videogame and manga that are spin-offs from another video game, manga, and anime, this is a pretty good title.

The basic premise is that Emiya Shirou is an untalented sorcerer that gets thrust into a seven-way war between master sorcerers and their summoned servants. He has no knowledge of what the war is about or what these supernatural servants are, but comehow ends up reflexively calling forth a Saber-class servant. From the reaction of the other mages, this is a prestigious servant, especially for an unskilled knucklehead like Emiya. The plotline alternates between big supernatural battles with arcano-jargon speeches about legendary heros and the personal interactions between two of the competing sorcerers, who happen to be classmates.

So far I’ll give it a B-, the animation and character design are excellent for a television series, the characters are reasonably appealing, but the background details are presented in such a way that it’s obvious that the writers either expect the audience to already be fans of the setting or are willing and ready to perform all manner of research to figure out what’s going on. These aren’t obscure Japanese-culture references that we westerners wouldn’t be in on, but strange western lore about legendary figures like Cuchulain that I cannot imagine are common knowledge to the original Japanese audience. Odd.