ergo proxy 1

Disclaimer: the level of Japanese spoken on Ergo Proxy is roughly about the same as Stand Alone Complex… in other words, I’m in above my head. For example, whenever Ril is talking about the virus, I had my Matt Hasselbeck “How the heck do I run a two-minute drill?” face going.

So why am I even bothering with this exercise? (1) Ergo Proxy is win and gold. (2) It’s native 720p. That’s 1280 by 720 at 60 frames a second. (3) I’m tired of posting about Mai Otome and Shakugan no Shana. Seriously. I need a break. Humor me. Please. (4) Reason upcoming. Stand by.

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The best way to describe Ergo Proxy is “CSI meets GitS meets Bladerunner” with only a hawt gothic girl replacing hawt military girl and androgynous android replacing ta-chi-ko-ma-kun. Ril is the hawt gothic girl, and she is a detective for the Citizen Security Bureau for Romundo, a city-state where androids live amongst men. Her partner is the android Iggy. The setup is pure Bladerunner… if Ril doesn’t start questioning her humanity by episode six, I’d be shocked.

The episode begins with a mysterious lab performing an analysis on a homicidal-looking android, but things do not go right, and the android is able to free itself from the restraints. If Lucy escape was a 10, this would be a 2. File this info away for a second.

The show then literally cuts to the chase as a female android is pursued by two entities: a berserk industrial robot and a human (Vincent, I think). The human ends up killing the android, and the robot gets rid of the human… Ril and Iggy are dispatched to investigate the case because it is in a series of murders in that area. The two go visit the first clue in the case, the android’s dead body, and interview the robot’s maintainer (?) Vincent. Sensing that this wasn’t going anywhere, they decide to visit the former residence of the dead android.

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There, they run into the android that escaped from the lab earlier, but Ril is caught off-guard– allowing it to escape. How do we know it’s the same android? Matching claw marks from what was left here and what was left at the totaled lab. Ril then sees odd behavior from a random hooker-bot she saw earlier and then gets jumped by the berserk industrial robot. More prepared this time, she incapacitates this robot… but the hooker-bot runs away from her suspiciously afterwards. The two then visit where the android died, but they’ve been tailed by a monster all this time. Ril is definitely no Motoko in the military-awesomeness department… then again, who would be? Ril is, though, on par with Motoko in the blatant fanservice department as Iggy drops her off, and she promptly strips. Did I mention that this was in 720p? See why I have to blog about this? Let’s fill in:

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(4) Ril Goodness

Let’s see that in its native height:

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HDTV = Godly

However, right before this PG-13-ish anime could earn an R-rating, the monster that was tailing Ril ambushes her scaring her shitless. To make things more fun, the escaped android drops in as well to make it a nice threesome. Iggy, in the meanwhile, notices that Ril left her PDA in his ride, so he heads back to her place. Vincent (I think) runs past that hooker-bot, which is dead now, and I’m guessing that he’s headed for Ril’s place as well. What a party. To be continued.

Emm. Hun. Wow. Speechless. I enjoyed the episode tremendously even with my limited ability to process Japanese technobaubble, and what I did understand was suspenseful in a way that made me want more, and not in a Mai Otome train wreck kind of way. Still, I can’t shake the Bladerunner overtones. The production values are as advertised: beyond awesome. I forgot that I was watching a TV show… everything just felt like a slickly produced movie. The details. The fluid motions. The way the camera pans and focuses. Check out some of the full-sized screenshots below, and that doesn’t even incorporate the dynamic 5.1 surround sound or the fluidness of the show. There’s three things Ergo Proxy needs to do to earn Best Anime of 2006, and it’s simple (1) keep up the high production values (2) more, more, more fight scenes and (3) more, more, more Ril fanservice. Everything else is just cake.

(Meta: 720p60 is a grade of HDTV. Generally, most anime widescreen prior to Ergo Proxy has been shown in 480p, the DVD/EDTV standard. Blu-Ray is supposed to be able to support 1080p, which would be 1920×1080.)

37 Responses to “ergo proxy 1”

  1. afaik, a lot of other anime was shown in 720p, check gits sac 2nd gig on NTV, paradise kiss, kamichu and tide line blue on EX…

  2. uh nevermind, you said ‘most’ anime before proxy ;P

  3. As much as I liked this series, I’m not gonna download it, for the fact that I don’t want to spoil myself way ahead of my first purchase of the DVD. Seriously, HDTV? Time to change my CRTs? Must contemplate…

  4. I’ve been anticipating Ergo Proxy since seeing the trailer, but I didn’t know it’d be in 720p. mmm, yummeh.

    After saving up a month’s pay and buying a 20″ screen capable of 1600×1200 a year ago, mostly to fit more code on the screen at a time, I was vastly disappointed at watching anime, when the normal size would fit maybe a little corner of my screen.

    I think Jinki:Extend was the first 720p anime I watched, and it was drool-worthy to actually see an acceptable amount of my screen used up, and have it look awesome on full screen. Too bad even despite Aoba’s cuteness, it just was a total bomb of a series.

    Kamichu! however, I think is totally deserving of HDTV, its artwork so colorful and well done, and I’m really enjoying it thus far. I hope that some subbers pick up Ergo Proxy in HD goodness.

  5. Oh, so lovely. Is this subbed yet?

  6. We need more cyberpunk anime. This looks like a good start.

  7. Actually, about Ergo Proxy, while I cant find the episode in the same quality, I have both previews/introductions in 1080p. Cant even play it on my PC, haha. :x 720p plays migty fine though, so yay.

  8. AMAZING QUALITY.. ITS JUST IM SPEECHLESS.. ITS BEAUTIFUL!

  9. PLease can you take another screenshot where Ril is holding the shotgun?? The one you have has the shotgun in focus and Ril out. if you can do that please that would be great. I want that as my wallpaper :D

    jason: Free Image Hosting at <a href='http://www.ImageShack.us' rel='nofollow'/>www.ImageShack.us</a>

  10. does any one know who is subbing this i been looking for about 2 days now and cant find nothing

  11. Jason thanks a lot man!

    Celastin I talked about this on Bakafish forums. Bakafish also did the Special episode 1 of the Hellsing Ultimate OVA. Unfortunately the pc of their translator is broke (or some other problem with it).

    I know another friend who was interested in translating it but said it would take about 2 weeks for him. He’s doing it alone. I’ll ask him to make a subtitle file (.sfv) only, perhaps that will take a lot less time.

    Anyhoo if something does indeed come up, I’ll post it here.

  12. Anime-Kraze subbed the trailer, and Ergo Proxy on their projects list. This leads me to believe that they’ll sub it (eventually) :P

  13. The credits did say Geneon/Geneon(USA), so I think it’s been pre-licensed. The Italian(?) that appears for a split second at the beginning plus the technical dialogue means it’ll take a while…

    Virus? I didn’t hear anything about a virus… but all I needed to know was killer android, monster, fembots who treat human workers like crap, and stripping girl. >.>

  14. For the italian at the beginning of the show (and some digression on art history), check my entry at Sea Slugs:

    http://www.seaslugteam.com/arc.....mment-7161

    The SoftSubs translation of it was not very well done.

  15. So long as they stick with the Blade Runner movie and not the book this should be fine.

    Repilcants = autolave

    Heck they even have the same designations like the “companion” model.

    If the there’s one with a snake and Roy Baty the circle will be complete. I love the sawed off Spaz 12, too bad she could never handle the recoil. Well at least she shoots better than a certain VP.

  16. This series looks awsome. Shinsen is subbing it, as well as some others. Check out Anidb.net and take your pick of groups.

  17. is it really a horror series, with a M rating?

  18. This anime is available at animedc.org and anime-me.com
    I love it so far, I’m up to ep. 5 and am addicted to it, the best anime so far this year.

  19. I started watching this series off of a projector. Onto a bigscreen, definitely looked good. I’m just about to start episode 5 and the series is still very interesting. Doesnt compare to Noein (which i believe came out this year aswell) but still good

  20. BakaUpdates has a complete archieve for people subbing it, so search “Ergo Proxy” on there to find lots of BT hits. I prefer Ani-Jiyuu (Anime Jiyuu) because they have a descent size and are relatively fast with their releases. They’re up to ep. 9 right now. They’re my recommendation. This series is awesome.

    – Craftuser

  21. Seen a lot of subbers, but sticking with Ani-Jiyuu… I’m not sure, but they say her name is Lil though, not Ril, and a few other different spellings of names/places. Animenewsnetwork.com is about 90% right about everything that I’ve checked, but Lil sounds kinda better in my opinion lol. This series is slick so far, I usually prefer straight action with little story, but this is something I seem to like a lot…

  22. You can find this anime subbed for direct download at narutofan.com eps 1-10 currently (6-05-2006)

    however the download is only available if you are a narutofanplus member (not free), but its worth it IMO- they have naruto subbed 1-187 right now, plus loads other anime including bleach and hellsing ultimate.

    im not sure if the version they have is 100% resolution but from what i can tell there is either little or no compression on their downloads-as long as they have a good raw-(so they .zip ’em)

  23. about the naming, a lot of names for anime chars have the l replaced with an r. from what i know this has to do with their speach.

    e.g. alucard-arucard, krillin-krurin there are others that i cant think of off the top of my head but it seems to be a pretty consistent thing

  24. guys dont give narutofan anything. they are making money by stealing other peoples hard work.
    an alternate site to get manga is
    http://www.stoptazmo.com/
    and you can get anime via bittorrent
    http://www.animeyume.org/
    is a good place to start
    please dont support crimials like narutofan

    just my 2 cents

  25. this series rockz
    I watched to ep 14 now and hell, I want more ;P
    watch the high-res version from SHS
    it rocks

  26. I have been keeping up with this anime as soon as it gets fan subbed. its up to episode 24 at anime-eden.com . WOW!! So many plot twists… its incredible, its a psychological thriller where everything gets twisted around… im mesmorized..

  27. Erm… Ergo Proxy is only 23 episodes long.

  28. Loved the first few eps, but ended disappointed. The quality of the animation had a pretty severe dropoff after the first few episodes, and the plot basically meanders aimlessly through huge swaths of the middle of the run. While almost all plot points are wrapped by the end, most mysteries are solved by the deus ex machina approach of having godlike characters parachute in to declaim the answers, then leave the story to it’s aimlessness. Character motivation was questionable throughout. Loved the art direction and the first few episodes, but things went downhill fast.

  29. awesome anime, one of the best of 2006. graphics = beautiful, i love the whole dark noir cyber urban feel to it.

    The characters take time to develop, the character of vincent, the whole clumsy polite male lead thing sometimesm works well and is sometimes downright annoying. If you are the kind of person that loved FLCL, Lain, paranoid agent, then this is probably going to be a delight for u, if you thought the aforementioned anime were too crazy, then to some extent you may feel the same about Ergo Proxy.

    After the first 10 episodes, it does get really interesting, and you gradually notice that the anime delves deeper into issues of self identity and our reasons for existence

  30. Oh man how it lags to watch on PC if you run something on the background even if its just MSN and some websites. :S (MKV by the way)

  31. Oh man how it lags to watch on PC if you run something on the background even if its just MSN and some websites. :S (MKV by the way). Great show the script writer is brilliant and the story its one of the best ive seen so far! :D 20/10

  32. Ergo Proxy was a pretty sweet series, but it left a lot to be desired. The episode titled something like, “Busy Doing Nothing” is the best fucking episode EVER.

  33. luvz da site!

  34. Hello, I am not sure where to post this but since I see Ergo Proxy is the main subject in this thread I figured that I may be able to get some help. I am a rising anime fanatic and as such am sort of a beginner when dealing with the numerous complications that follow from downloading anime. I will get to the point… I downloaded episodes 1-23 of the Ergo Proxy series only to find out the subtitles were in Spanish. (I feel like a complete idiot) However, I do have VobSub (not too sure how to use it) and was wondering if anyone knew where I could find the English subtitles in a format that could be used with VobSub so that I can not only enjoy the beautiful art work but can also enjoy the story line of Ergo Proxy.

  35. does any one has the manga or know a site where i can get scans from ( im talking about Cenzon Hitchers and undertakers)

  36. I watched the whole serious it was quite Impressive Im not gonna lie. it would be pretty sweet if they decided todo an epilogue series to it cause the way they left it off u could it would seem.

  37. Where did you the screen shot RIL GOODNESS? I couldn’t find that exact scene in my DVD. there is similar scene in the later part of the first ep. but that scene is blurred:(

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