Ergo Proxy S1E3: “Leap Into the Void”

The third and last of the Ergo Proxy episodes in this order! Things got more gripping in the previous ep, so let's dive right in.

Someone whose face the camera is careful not to show us is riding a subway train. They drop their tablet onto the floor, and it slides away as the train turns a corner. After that, we jump to Vincent wandering naked through a ghostly gray fog bank and trying to figure out why his hand has glowing Tron lines all over it. He babbles something about how "it's the dream again."

I'm guessing he's in a fugue state or something, while Fat takes over his body? Maybe.

After a minute, he spies a cloaked figure that he identifies as simply "him" standing a ways across the gray fog, next to some kind of building. Then, a volley of giant energy beams shoot into the sky from further ahead.

Vincent falls to the rocky ground, and the hooded figure stands over him and glitches in and out of reality. We saw Skinny doing something like that in the intro, so I'm guessing that this is a spirit world representation of Skinny. Or, more likely, Skinny also has a human "host" just like Fat does, and Vincent is seeing his own counterpart stand over him as Skinny knocks Fat over physically, or something. Maybe? I don't know.

Then the mist and sky lasers slowly fade out, and Vincent is laying on the floor of that train car. There's blood on his hands, and someone else is just leaving the compartment as he struggles back to consciousness. His tablet is on the floor in front of him, sliding around the compartment as the train navigates.

Okay. I guess he somehow got here from where Skinny cornered him before. And was sitting on one of the seats until his phone dropped from his hand and he collapsed. I'm gueeessing the guy who left the train as he was waking up is Skinny's own human persona, but who knows. Did it bring him here and sit him up on the seat after it beat him? No idea. His tablet/smartphone thing starts ringing. And, then the OP starts.

Huh. Was beginning to think that this show just wasn't going to have an intro sequence. Usually those start showing up in the second episode of the series, if not the pilot. Anyway, it's nothing to write home about. Not bad. It's definitely on the good side of anime-average. But still within that average range. Bleak landscapes, characters standing or posing, birds flying around, and snippets of mystical-looking text, while a moody English pop-esque number plays. It's okay.

When the episode resumes, Re-L is in a curving steel corridor somewhere and trying to call Vincent for the umpteenth time, to no avail. After a while, she exhaustedly drags herself into a big room full of monitors where Iggy is going through some data for her. I guess they met up again since the end of last episode, and that he didn't "go berserk" and kill her.

He's been looking over the Intel Bureau databank's access records. Apparently she's still allowed to look at that, despite her diagnosis and legal/professional situation. Iggy has found that someone with top-level access to the data has accessed it over seventy times in the last day or so, while keeping their identity anonymous. That's not typical of the Intel Bureau, or of the senior government people who are supposed to have that level of access. Re-L decides that high-clearance anonymous logins would be easiest to make from the Security Bureau's HQ; that's where Raul works, so she's probably seeing his search history from when he was going through the evidence at the end of last episode.

Speak of the devil, it cuts from there to Raul at home playing that piano we saw daughterbot playing with before alone in the dark. His phone starts ringing, and he ignores it for as long as he dares. Then we cut to Vincent, scampering through the darkness in a...place? I'm getting confused again. Also, whatever happened to those two guys breaking into the Creeds' house before? Well, whatever, after ten seconds of Raul playing the piano in his house we go to Vincent entering a dark room full of computer monitors, most or all of which are displaying data about the Creeds' daughterbot.

He hears his own AutoReiv, Barbara, calling his name, but she doesn't respond when he calls out in return. He follows her voice to a spot in the middle of the room where he finds her in pieces on the floor, her head playing a call for him to come to her on repeat. Just as he's realizing this was a trap, a bright spotlight comes on and a big, heavily armed and armored robot starts shooting to kill.

Actually, it's not a robot! It's a human soldier piloting a small (~2.5 meters or so) mech type thing.

Either way though, there's a big thing shooting lots of bullets at Vincent, and he just barely manages to flee the room without getting hit. Vincent is really, really good at running away from things that he shouldn't realistically be able to get away from, but then if he's actually a Proxy or possessed by a Proxy or whatever then that might just come with the territory. He leaps out of the searchlight, kicks Barbara's head across the room to make some noise and throw his attacker off, and then (after desperately firing back with his handgun and failing to penetrate the mech's armor) throws himself out a window just as the bullets are starting to sweep his way again.

Back to Raul, who is now standing in the Regent's office being grilled by the creepy statue-robot-things. They're not happy with his failure to make any progress on recapturing the Proxy(ies?), and are threatening to replace him just as they replaced his recent predecessor. Then...it turns out that they aren't actually talking to Raul. They're talking to his secretarybot. She apologizes profusely for her failures and begs to be given another chance, while Raul just kinda stands there next to her. I am...confused.

Cut to some outside-type place, somewhere, who knows. There are cops running around shouting exuberantly about how they're gonna catch "him" and get a big promotion, so I guess this is wherever Vincent is hiding now. Raul's robodaughter is also hanging out here in her pajamas, listening in on the cops. She then wanders off into an alley, and runs into Vincent.

Vincent recognizes her as the Creed daughterbot they paid him to tinker with before. She doesn't recognize her name when he calls her by it, though. Odd. Symptom of the Cogito virus, maybe? First they forget their names, then they want to kill all meatbags?

In her new apartment many stories over Vincent and robodaughter's heads, Re-L is attempting another phone call. Busy signal, no matter whether she tries from a landline (hahaha we'll still have those in the future right) or her cell phone. She's still trying to reach Vincent. I guess he either left his phone on the floor of that subway car, or it just isn't working.

Back to Vincent, creeping through alleys and avoiding the armed patrols searching for him. Daughterbot is just kind of tagging along after him now. She trips and falls down, and Vincent has to put a hand over her mouth and pull her into a crevice before the searchlights can turn toward the noise. Also, she asks him if she (Pino. Right, her name was Pino) is "supposed" to be herself, which neither he nor I know how to interpret.

Then, he notices that she's had his cell phone this whole time. Did he forget it at the Creeds' house or something? I'd been assuming that tablet thing that he dropped on the subway was the thing Re-L was calling, but this is a much smaller phone. Anyway, he finally answers Re-L's call (Pino tries to answer herself, but he grabs it out of her hand) and the two get to talk. Unfortunately, Vincent is so mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted at this point that he can't answer her questions about his trinket being at the crime scene. All he can do is almost tearfully babble about how they're trying to kill him and he has no idea why, and that he needs to get out of the city.

She hears trains passing by in the background, and realizes which train crossing he must be passing; the one near the waste vent in the side of the dome. When asked, he confirms that he knows the polluted atmosphere outside will kill him, but at least this way he gets to die on his own terms.

She urges him to stop, and tells him she'll meet him somewhere nearby, but he just drops the phone on the pavement and continues on his way. Panicking at the loss of her lead, Re-L hurries to her car to intercept him. A different, more slow and contemplative, piece of awesome music plays as she sets out and he and Pino reach the labyrinthine venting facility. Fortunately, Vincent is slowed by a big sack he's carrying with him. Not sure what's in it. Can Re-L reach him before he commits suicide?

And...if she fails, will that actually be suicide for him? Or will he turn back into Fat as soon as he exits the dome and happily run off to his natural habitat of radiation and acid rain?

Re-L gets pulled over by Security Bureau cops as she speeds to the edge of the dome, but her Inspector badge is enough to get her through.

The camera lingers a bit on the cop and his AutoReiv after she drives on past, in a way that makes me suspect that he knows her status has been revoked (ish? she still seems to have data access that a normal civilian shouldn't, at least) and let her through anyway as part of some sort of plan. We'll see.

Vincent drops the mysterious sack he was carrying as his attempts to find his way out the waste vent exhaust him. Pino picks it up and brings it after him. Awesome music continues. When he reaches yet another dead end and starts to despair, Pino retrieves a flashlight from inside the bag and starts leading him somewhere.

She seems to know the way. To somewhere, if not where he wants. He muses that whenever an AutoReiv comes down with the Cogito virus, in addition to attacking people, it travels along a particular route through the city before inevitably getting stopped. Presumably, that route led here. And, presumably, he himself was led in this general direction by the same forces.

Cut to the Regent's office. The mysterious statue cabal are talking about how Re-L's intuition is much sharper than they'd counted on, and wondering who she takes after. Apparently, the citizens are all "modeled on pre-arranged information." So, they ARE all synthetic life forms of some kind, then? What about the immigrants? They also hint that if they don't get this whole business hushed up again soon, Rondo City's entire raison d'etre will collapse.

Iiiinteresting. Sounds like either the world outside ISN'T actually a polluted hellscape, or the citizens' synthetic bodies are able to survive in it just fine. That still makes me wonder about the immigrants, though. And, how is Re-L the Regent's "granddaughter" if they're all androids?

Back to the vent facility. Re-L has arrived, and quickly runs to the vent controls just as Pino leads Vincent up to them.

Re-L shows that she is unarmed, which manages to get Vincent's trust. That said, as soon as he comes within arm's reach, she hits him across the face, throws him against the wall, and starts interrogating him.

ACAB.

A nice reminder that even though the show's gotten me to root for Re-L, she's still spent years or decades as an enforcer of a tyrannical regime, during which time a big part of her job was persecuting people like Vincent. And, while she's been forcibly turned against the dictatorship, she hasn't really done any self examination.

She demands to know why the security bureau is chasing him, and shakes him when he says he doesn't know. She asks him how his amulet got into her apartment after the Proxy attack, and he again doesn't know. When she mentions a monster, though, he says that he was attacked by one at the mall, and that the Security Bureau has been after him ever since.

Re-L realizes, then, that if she didn't have the privilege of being both a high-profile inspector and the dictator's granddaughter, she'd be in the same position as Vincent. Hunted down and killed for having seen a Proxy.

Just then, some Security Bureau armored infantry and AutoReivs shine their spotlights on the two of them (Pino has wandered off somewhere). That cop who stopped her earlier was indeed up to something, it appears, and now they've tracked her here.

Raul's voice speaks over an intercom, telling Vincent to surrender himself immediately or be killed. He doesn't seem sure of what to do with Re-L, though, which they can perhaps take advantage of. Vincent accuses her of having tricked him, but she insists that she had nothing to do with this.

Just then, Pino opens the air vent, and atmosphere starts flying out through it, knocking the humans and AutoReivs to the ground and staggering the mechs. The air is rushing outward as if there were a vacuum outside, though I suppose this could be a powered venting system that sucks the air through the opening artificially. Re-L manages to grab onto a railing, and tries to grab Vincent as well, but she loses her grip on him.

Pino is still clutching the controls, which are around a corner from the vent, so she's able to hold on as well. I'm surprised that she's choosing to, though. I was under the impression she was trying to get out herself. Also, it seems like the cops brought Iggy, who is trying to pull Re-L back out of danger despite her own resistance and the hazardous winds themselves.

Vincent, meanwhile, is sucked outside, and is caught on some sort of grating as the atmosphere blows out all around him. The world beyond the dome is full of shifting gray mists; the world of his recurring dreams.

He thinks to himself that this was inevitable. He could never become a citizen. Not with what the system requires of people. Meanwhile, the security forces have no choice but to close the hatch again before the dome loses too much air and causes environmental maintenance issues. As the hatch closes, Pino climbs out after him; she was just waiting to pick up the sack again, that's cute.

Re-L calls for Vincent to climb back in before the hatch can close, and promises to use her favored status to protect him. He does not. He simply looks back at her, and his eyes change color again, like they did when he was cornered by Skinny and (I suspect) about to transform. Then, he wriggles himself free of the grate and lets himself go.

He and Pino fly away into the gray fog, and the hatch closes behind them. The end.

Unfortunately, I don't think that I can be fair to Ergo Proxy. It's a very slow-paced show, and takes a lot of attention and mental energy to be able to follow. Which is fine for me, usually, but not when I have to liveblog it. These three episodes took at least twice as much time and effort as normal for me to review, and probably much more than that. I think I would have enjoyed the show much more if it weren't for that. If I ever do more Ergo Proxy episodes, I'm going to have to adopt a different format.

That said, aside from being deliberately obtuse at times in a way that I think overshot the creators "artsy" objective and landed in the realm of pretentious and frustrating, this show did pretty much everything right. It looks nice, if not exceptionally so by high budget anime standards. The English voice acting, at least, was excellent. The writing was a bit hard to take seriously at times, but it didn't seem to want to be taken seriously at those times, and those moments of absurdist dark comedy and low-hanging social satire complemented rather than diluting the desperate tone. It also helps that that social satire is probably more relevant today than it was when the show came out in 2006, with the escalating relationships between big data and government and the rising specter of ecofascism starting to appear ahead of us. I also liked how Re-L was handled; the show humanizes her without whitewashing the fact that she's a cop in a nativist cyber-dystopia, with all that that entails.

I obviously haven't seen enough to solve the puzzle plot involving the statue council, the nature and purpose of the dome, the Proxies, the Cogito virus, and ancient Hindu mysticism, and the few parts that I *think* I figured out (Vincent being possessed by a Proxy or whatever, exposure to Proxies causing the Cogito virus, etc) could very easily be wrong. It's a puzzle I'm fairly invested in, so I might continue this show on my own when and if I have time. Although, like I said, I'm not sure if I can review any more of it at, least in my usual Let's Watch style.