This review contains spoilers for the whole series. Proceed at your own discretion Ergo Proxy is a series that tends to be polarizing to some degree. Ive seen it around for many years in the anime space as a bit of a cult series and the reactions tend to be either that it was an amazing and unique experience with interesting themes or a pretentious esoteric slog. There didnt seem to be too much middle ground between those two opinions. Having finally watched the show I dont think either is really correct although Id probably find the more negative assessment more accurate for a few reasons. To begin with the show is bound to disappoint some people because its promotional material the other kinds of shows that are recommended with it and even the first few episodes of the series give the impression that its going to be a very different type of show than what it actually is. It seems like its going to be a cyperbunk thriller action show ala Ghost in the Shell or a mind screw series like Serial Experiments Lain. But it isnt very much like either of those series. The initial setting of the series Romdeau does have a few Cyberpunklike traits but not all of them theres no mention of any corporations running things its all a centralized authoritarian government and more importantly the series is not interested in dealing with any real cyberpunk themes or narratives. This isnt really bad in itself. However the way Ergo Proxy executes on and communicates its themes and concepts is something I did find myself taking a lot of issue with. The series can be distinctly divided into two halves: the first half takes place mostly in Romdeau and some surrounding areas and follows a pretty serialized narrative establishing the setting and most of the series concepts. The second half is when main three characters Vincent Rel and Pino have all finally gotten together and decided to go on a journey to find out about Vincents past and what the Proxies really are. This second half overall is more episodic as the episodes tend to be split between either character building episodes or the gang running into a Proxy of the week with a few episodes that take place back in Romdeau moving the main story forward until it finally gets serialized again for the last 3 episodes. The first half of Ergo Proxy has a pretty big issue: it doesnt give any sort of meaningful hook for the audience to latch onto whether its in terms of characters themes or anything else. This is because it either gives too little information or the information it does give is poorly conveyed or obscured along with some baffling writing choices. To begin with Romdeau as a setting feels really undercooked. Technically we know all the key information about how it works for the story to function i.e its an authoritarian city with a big class divide between model citizens and immigrants to the point of segregated living quarters for both. But it still somehow feels really insufficient. We never get that great a sense of what living there is like or how its organized. We dont really have any viewpoint to ground us into the setting. The closest we get to this is the opening episodes with Vincent seeing him do his job as an immigrant. But that doesnt last very long and even then we have little idea of how that whole system of jobs is organized. The first episode alone really does a poor job of establishing things really it doesnt even explain exactly what an autoreiv is. In terms of characters there really is very little to sink your teeth into: ReL is the only standout character in the beginning as at least she has something of a strong personality and tries to make decisions and move the plot forward. But she isnt magnetic enough to carry the story forward in light of all other issues. The other lead Vincent is not a particularly compelling character for the first half of the story. He is extremely reactive wishywashy and doesnt have much of a personality to speak of. This is something of an intentional decision as part of Vincents development is him slowly becoming more assertive however I dont think there was a very good balance struck here as it just means he ends up being a lackluster main character who just gets bounced around plot points without any real pull to him for a good while. The other characters are mostly not worth talking about as the show fails to give much of a reason to be invested in them and what strikes me as baffling is theres two big examples where the show could have done something especially in light of later information. The first is ReLs grandfather Donov Mayer. He is basically the head honcho of the city and ReL states towards the end that all she ever really wanted was to be loved and recognized by him. But he isnt really a character at all. He never speaks despite the characters going to see him multiple times. Instead the bizarre council of greek statues speak for him. His relationship with ReL is never really explored in a meaningful way throughout the show and its only in the very end that we learn anything of substance about him as a person after hes already died. It feels like a very strange omission to have such a theoretically important character handled this way. But whats even more bizarre is what happens with Raul. I honestly did not care about him for the first half of the story as he didnt have much of a defined personality at all outside of being vaguely smug. But in the second half of the story we find out that Vincent was indirectly responsible for the death of his wife and son as well as taking his robot daughter Pino with him. This ends up humanizing him a fair bit and makes him much more interesting as this actually does ground his character and his mental breakdown that he later undergoes but the execution of getting to that point feels totally off. I can sort of see what they were doing wanting his relationship with Pino to be a meaningful reveal but I think this whole arc would have had much more impact if we had seen Raul actually be a loving father and husband to his family before it happened not to mention it would give the audience much more of a reason to actually care about him as a character. There isnt really any meaningful exploration of themes in the first half either. We get a lot of gesturing towards themes with the aesthetic and the philosophical and mythical references the show has but there really isnt any attempt to engage with the existential or philosophical ideas being gestured at. The show spends most of its time trying to set up a mystery with the Proxies but it doesnt give a whole lot of reason to care about that mystery and as a result the show doesnt have much momentum pulling the story forward and it becomes even worse in retrospect as you realize that certain plot points the show takes time to establish end up feeling pretty pointless. Take the Cogito virus for example. It basically gives the autoreivs something resembling sentience and the opportunity to grow from their programming. The way the early episodes go makes it seem like its gonna be a big deal and explore the typical themes of robot personhood and humanity but that mostly doesnt happen. It basically only kinda matters in a few instances one of which in the finale feels rather abrupt. It makes you wonder what the point of establishing it that way even was as Im sure there were simpler explanations to be had as for why characters like Pino and Iggy end up the way they do. So far Ive mostly just been trashing the show. So why is my score at 60 instead of something lower? Thats because in the second half the show actually becomes much more enjoyable. Episode 11 is where this transition occurs with the first episode Id consider actually good as its a story about ReLs robot servant Iggy essentially losing his mind to the virus due to the grief of having the reason for his existence denied and snapping as a result of all the built up resentment. It turned Iggy from essentially a nothing butt monkey character into one of the most compelling of the show even though its his last appearance. The reason this episode is good is actually very simple: it not only follows up previously established characterization in a logical and compelling way as Rels poor treatment of him was basically left unaddressed until then but it also FINALLY is an attempt by the show to meaningfully engage with the kind of themes that it suggested it would from the start. And this is something that the show largely sticks to from that moment on. There is a real attempt at trying to explore the relationships between the characters their motivations and exploring themes of consciousness personhood and reasons for being. There are two pretty good examples of this: the first is the episode where the crew gets stuck in some windless weather and have no way to propel their ship. the episode is entirely about ReL struggling through the monotony of their slowly dwindling supplies and being frustrated with Vincent and Pinos carefree attitude towards the whole thing until in the end she realizes they were right and that it was better to not worry about a situation you cant change as oppose to trying to find the levity and beauty of things where you can. This episode doesnt move the larger plot forward at all but its a nice character focused episode that brings rel closer to vincent and Pino. The second is the bizarro episode of Smile Land. Pino is whisked away into a dark parody of Disneyland where the Proxy Will B Good a transparent analogue of Walt Disney has decided he wants to create a saccharine utopia for his citizens to protect them from the horrifying end that is slowly creeping in. This could have been just a weirdo diversion but it was honestly pretty entertaining for its take that at the artificiality of Disney while tying it into the broader themes of the show. What stands out the most here is two things: first is that Ergo Proxy is a bizarre example of a show that mostly got better when it became episodic as opposed to the other way around. But the second is that for all of Ergo Proxys reputation of being an esoteric mind screw affair all the best moments of the show are when its not being that and instead focusing on straightforward explorations of character and theme. The finale of the show actually suffers a bit from going back a bit more to the esoteric direction of the early episodes where characters go on about vague highbrow stuff thats difficult to parse but by then you at least have some reason to care about the characters and the ending is actually surprisingly uplifting and affirming. I want to be clear here and say that Im not trying to make an antiintellectual argument. I dont think there is an issue with things being weird and not having immediately obvious meaning ala something like David Lynch movies. Its not wrong to want the audience to interpret things and not spell out everything laboriously. But I never felt like Ergo Proxys vagueness made the show more interesting and even with more experimental or opaque fair you still need to give people a reason to care about your story. And Ergo Proxy really struggled with doing that. Ultimately even with this much more enjoyable second half Id hesitate to say the show got amazing and with a first half that was so lacking in things to care about it really does leave Ergo Proxy in a strange place where theres certainly stuff to enjoy but you have to endure an absolute 10 episode slog to get to any of it. It makes it a very difficult show to recommend to most people.