Having caught up with the current progress of English-language fansubbers on this title, I’m finding Ergo Proxy to be well worth the time. Previous concerns have been largely unfounded.

Ergo Proxy is well-paced, and clearly the work of some people that seriously know their craft. The presentation of the character Vincent Law is a good example of this. Present from the first episode, this guy goes from some rarely-even-in-focus immigrant nobody to the major focus of the plotline. The first three episodes present him as though he is simply fodder for the unfortunate events around him; there’s a killer on the loose, and some poor immigrant schlub is taking the fall for it. It turns out he’s actually one of the key figures of the show. As the episodes progress, so does Vincent, maturing in a handful of episodes from the round-faced, timid immigrant (the camera rarely even has his face in-focus during the first few episodes) to a somewhat haggard, rugged survivalist (though still somewhat timid; it’s endearing).

The supporting cast do their jobs well, providing a well-timed stream of information about the world in which Vincent and Lil live. Dedars, shown above, is Lil’s childhood friend and confidante, and knows far more about the Proxy situation than he initially lets on. The persistence of characters that Lil interacts with after the first couple episodes acts as an excellent foil to the more transitive encounters of Vincent, showing a degree of stability that in contrast makes Vincent’s situation seem even more precarious.

Pino is another example of the craftsmanship in Ergo Proxy’s storytelling. A robot that is programmed to behave like a child, she is compulsively optimistic and naive. In the face of the death, tragedy, and ruin surrounding her as she follows Vincent, her attitude sheds light on dark situations, and prevents the tone of the story of wallowing in a misery that would desensitize the viewer to the gravity of the events at hand. As with Vincent, I had initially presumed that she was simply there to act as a sympathetic victim that would be killed off early on. Instead, she endures as an important instrument in the storyteller’s toolkit.

To my great surprise Lil Mayer, the goth chick with too much eyeshadow that took up so much of the screentime early on, has been fading into the background as the story progresses. She appears to reflect the conscience of Romdeau City, and the further Vincent’s adventure takes him away, the less relevant she is becoming.

Lil-as-the-city may turn out to be her primary role, as Vincent’s self-perception grows. At first, the city is important, the attention of the government is oppressive and pervasive, and the cameras follow Lil. While putting this review together, it was actually difficult to find individual frames that prominently show the poor man’s face. Later, Vincent flees to live in the city’s shadows, and while the dome is still there, looming over everything, it no longer controls his life, and the camera strays to Vincent more. We see that he has green eyes (though his personnel file shows they are officially blue). Still later, Vincent flees the shanty-town with Pino, leaving Romdeau behind. Lil appears less and less, her only screentime in episode nine being in the opening credits.

Which brings me to the subject of opening credits. I often don’t watch them. I hadn’t on this show for the first four episodes, and I must say the story is better for it. The opening credits tend to show the director’s hand a bit. No, they show the director’s hand a lot. Most shows use the same intro credits from episode to episode, and are frequently crafted to reflect the mood and themes of the series. What do we learn from the opening credits to Ergo Proxy? Well, we learn that Vincent and Pino are important enough of characters to merit a great deal of screentime. We learn that Dedars isn’t. We learn that the long-haired monster-thing is more-deserving of screentime than the neck-brace monster-thing. We learn that some kind of rugged post-apocalyptic desert is a thematically-appropriate backdrop for much of what the story is about. From just watching the first couple episodes, you wouldn’t have known that, and the story would have been more compelling. By the time I actually watched the opening credits for Ergo Proxy, none of this was a great surprise to me (though I had still harbored a notion that the focus would return to Lil). For the same reason, one shouldn’t read blog entries about shows one hasn’t seen yet.

Further evidence that this show should appeal to detail-oriented geeks is available in the trivia subsection of the Ergo Proxy Wikipedia entry.