Ergo Proxy

""Fellow citizens! The time is now to consume. Why skimp, when you deserve more? Fellow citizens! Do your part, and make waste. Life is easier when you lighten the load. Fellow citizens! The time is...""

This 23 episode sci-fi anime from Manglobe is set in a ravaged, blasted future where humans have confined themselves to domed cities in order to survive. Ergo Proxy is the story of an amnesiac immigrant named Vincent Law and the intelligence operative Re-l Mayer, as they are caught up in the tangled web of secrets surrounding the city of Romdeau and the truth behind the chaos. Central to all of this is the nature of the utopia of Romdeau and the powerful, mysterious monsters known as Proxies.

Ergo Proxy is notable for its beautiful animation as well as its love of Mind Screw. It contains elements of Post Cyber Punk, Steampunk, and Film Noir; and draws motifs from advanced psychology and philosophy.

Has a character page.

Compare Texhnolyze, Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex.

Tropes:

 * Above the Ruins: The last scene shows  It's a very badass ending.
 * Achilles Heel: The There's a good explanation for it, as
 * Action Girl: Re-l Mayer, some of the time.
 * Adventure Towns: Not always in a good way.
 * After the End: Most humans live in domed cities to escape the diseases in the wasteland outside.
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: Every robot apart from Pino and arguably Kristeva. While there are a number of Cogito-infected AutoReivs that don't go on murderous rampages, they do inevitably go insane.
 * All of the Other Reindeer: Vincent and Re-l both have feelings like this. Vincent feels that he'll never become a Fellow Citizen, while Re-l just feels that she's too different from all of the other residents of Romdeau.
 * All There in the Manual: Some nigh unreadable text in the opening credits actually reveals most of the backstory.
 * Ambiguously Gay: Iggy. Later episodes reveal that Re-l deliberately chose him to sound this way.
 * Amnesiac God:
 * Anti Villain: The Walt Disney Captain Ersatz, Will B. Good, in Smile World.
 * Apocalypse How: Class 1.
 * Arc Words:
 * The Pulse of the Awakening.
 * "Raison d'être."
 * Ascend to A Higher Plane of Existence: A possible interpretation of the fate of.
 * Badass Longcoat: Re-l and
 * Beautiful All Along: Vincent starts the series looking kind of short and dumpy. Once he opens his eyes and lets his hair down, however, he's revealed to be rather attractive. After he also seems to grow a couple of inches, though this could just be down to him walking more upright. Fridge Brilliance hits when one realizes that

The gameshow episode is particularly good for showing these changes; Vincent starts in his "I am meek and small" appearance from the beginning, and gradually returns to his later look as his confidence improves. "Chat mode off!"
 * Big Damn Heroes:
 * BLAM Episode: Smile Land.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: Several episodes do this on the side
 * Breather Episode: Episode 16, "Busy Doing Nothing." The episode is taken from the point of view of Re-l as she suffers from Cabin Fever after their ship is stranded for several days from lack of wind. She keeps a diary of her observations as well as her intent to busy herself with almost meaningless tasks to prevent herself from going crazy. As the episode goes on, Re-l begins to loosen up as she sees Vincent and Pino making the most of their situation by just being laid back.
 * But What About the Astronauts: Well...
 * Call a Rabbit A Smeerp: Robots are Autoreivs, though that's pretty much the only example.
 * Camp Gay: Iggy. He's even billed as "Iggy, the gay robot" in the Japanese commercial included on the special features disc.
 * Character Title
 * City in A Bottle: Romdeau.
 * The Comically Serious: Re-l keeps a diary of their journey, recording daily occurrences with utmost gravity. It is Serious Business.
 * Cool Boat: The Four-hundred Rabbits. It hovers!
 * Cool Guns: Re-l's gun looks somewhat like a sawed-off shotgun.
 * Crashing Dreams: Vincent, when he's sick and unconscious at the Commune.
 * Creepy Child: Pino, before she left the city.
 * Also the
 * Cry for The Devil: Happens with Raul towards the end of the series, showing him as more complex than his Smug Snake personality would suggest.
 * Cyberpunk: Well, it appears to be from the first few episodes, at least. "Post Cyber Punk" is another option,.
 * Deadly Euphemism: Rapture. After all, it is a great sin to give a name like rapture to a
 * Deadpan Snarker: Re-l's condescension knows very few limits.
 * Death Faked for You:
 * Death Seeker: Several of the proxies; notably, the super-cheery MCQ seems keen on ending it all.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: "I'm no longer conducting examinations anymore."
 * Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: The Proxy-killing bullets.
 * Did You Just Have Sex:
 * Distracted By the Sexy: Re-l to distract him long enough so she can hide her gun.
 * Dogged Nice Guy: Vincent to Re-l.
 * Driving Question: "What are the Proxies?"
 * Emotionless Girl: Re-l gets very close to this a lot of the time. She is, however, very well acquainted with anger and exasperation.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: By the end of the series, Raul is on the wrong side of sanity, but he still comments that Daedalus is over the edge.
 * Eyes Always Shut: Vincent Law in his "harmless immigrant" persona.
 * Eyes of Gold:
 * Flash Step: Any Proxy fight; often taken to extremes. Completely justified, but still, extreme.
 * Gambit Pileup: This show is a good example of what can happen when you plan too much.
 * Genre Shift: The first few episodes are straight-up Cyberpunk and Film Noir, but as soon as  those themes are downplayed in favor of the post-apocalyptic setting. Then another Genre Shift occurs towards the end of the series , and the Cyberpunk and Film Noir themes return at full throttle.
 * Green Eyed Monster: The main reason ends up losing it big time.
 * Green Eyes: Vincent, used to great effect artistically. His file in episode three may say that they're blue, but there's a reason for that.
 * Harmful to Minors:
 * Humans Are Bastards:
 * Icarus Allusion: One of Daedalus's creations is given wings and dies from exposure to the sun (not because of wings melting, but because she was a Proxy and sunlight is their Achilles Heel).
 * Industrial: The entire soundtrack barring the opening and ending themes.
 * Jerkass: Re-l. She starts to get better after
 * Journey to The Center of The Mind: Too many to count.
 * Killed Off for Real: Good God, where to start? The majority of the secondary characters don't survive to see the end of the series, including . As far as the main cast goes   don't survive to the end either.
 * Lecture As Exposition: Technically, Game Show as Exposition.
 * Let's You and Him Fight: Two Proxies in the same room? They have to fight. At least one Proxy is shown to be tired of having to kill his kindred every time they meet.
 * This was mostly because
 * Limited Wardrobe: Re-L lampshades this at one point ("I've been wearing this for twenty-four hours" ); Iggy tries to take her clothes shopping.
 * Literal Metaphor: All over the place, to the extent where it's hard to tell whether some things are actually happening.
 * Lotus Eater Machine: A tactic frequently employed by battling Proxies.
 * Luminescent Blush
 * Kryptonite Ring: UV bullets.
 * Magic Pants:
 * Male Gaze: In the flashback Somewhat Narmful.
 * The Masochism Tango: Oh, yes. Right down to shotguns being waved in people's faces, and stalking someone across most of a continent because they didn't bring you on their awesome wasteland adventure.
 * Maybe Ever After: In the end,
 * Meaningful Name:
 * Pretty much everybody's name either has a meaning within the show, is a reference to a well known story , has a meaning within the context of the show's philosophical psychobabble or are a reference to notable philosophers and psychologists. The extensive proliferation of meaningful names would be insufferable if they didn't reference how pretentious such a naming scheme was in the dialog.
 * Vincent "Law" is key in exploring the boundaries of the established laws, and fails at his own quest to obey the law to the letter.
 * Medium Blending: The live action pigeons in the intro.
 * Mind Screw: Too many to count.
 * Mini Mecha: Or maybe Powered Armor; some (?) of the "armed autoreivs" seem to be controlled by a human riding on their backs.
 * Mr. Alt Disney: Will B. Good
 * Ms. Fanservice: Re-l and her ever-present generic white panties and undershirt. Her Spy Catsuit also qualifies. Still fairly mild by anime standards, since she at least tends to wear a coat.
 * Nietzsche Wannabe: Raul becomes one of these with some Dark Messiah pretensions.
 * Notice This: The glint on Swan's pendant.
 * Ominous Latin Chanting
 * : Proxies.
 * Eerie Pale Skinned Brunette: Re-l, taken to Amy Lee extremes--but with the permanent overcast and all it's not like there's a lot of sunshine to bask in.
 * Personality Chip: The 'Turing Program' that houses AutoReivs's personality can be turned off should it get inconvenient.


 * Quivering Eyes
 * Rage Against the Reflection: Done by Raul, and then later Vincent.
 * Real Song Theme Tune: The ending theme is a heavily cut version of "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead.
 * The Reason You Suck Speech: When Iggy  he really let Re-l have it. After that, she progressively gets better. And by "progressive", we mean a really slow defrosting stage.
 * Recap Episode: The odd gameshow episode functions as this, except that the rest of the cast who aren't traveling in the Power Trio get to see the Clip Show elements as well, and thus learn plot important information.
 * Red Eyes Take Warning:
 * is shown in darkness with red eyes in one scene
 * Subverted with, who is also shown with red eyes at times
 * Uninfected Autoreivs tend to have red eyes when being overridden remotely.
 * Red String of Fate: The has a red ball of wool.
 * Replacement Goldfish: Dr. Daedalus attempts to clone the woman he is infatuated with.
 * Ridiculously Human Robots:
 * The Cogito infected AutoReivs. Mind you, they weren't built like that on purpose; they gain souls when infected with Cogito.
 * Kristeva is a robot that, for some reason, wears lipstick.
 * Robot Kid: Pino.
 * Robot Religion: Apparently, the first thing a Cogito-infected Auto Reiv does is pray.
 * Royal We: Re-l's grandfather, the regent of Romdeau, speaks in this manner through four Auto Reivs.
 * Rule of Cool: When asked why he named the show "Ergo Proxy," those being two words that would never otherwise be next to each other in a sentence, the writer, Dai Sato, said, "It sounds cool."
 * Scavenger World: The settlement outside Romdeau.
 * Scenery Porn: Either that or Scenery Gorn, YMMV, but you can't deny it's beautifully done.
 * Self Parody: A brief one; when Vincent is sick and hallucinating, he has a nightmare where Re-l's already-copious eyeshadow expands to exaggerated proportions.
 * Shout Out:
 * Pino is named after the creation of a certain Japanese Doctor, who was herself named after "Pinnochio."
 * Vincent also bears similarities to the Final Fantasy VII character Vincent Valentine. Aside from having the same name, both wear red capes and
 * Episode 15:
 * 2001: A Space Odyssey
 * While it could be referencing any number of game shows, the chair setup and lighting for the final quiz is clearly based on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, and the episode title is presumably a reference to Jeopardy.
 * Rogi the Cricket needs little explanation.
 * Re-L Mayer's citizen Number is 124c41, Hugo Gernsback wrote a novel with the title Ralph 124C 41+, see the similarities?
 * Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: So gritty that you can't even see the picture half of the time.
 * Smarmy Host: In the game show episode, Vincent and co. end up trapped by a Proxy who acts as a gameshow host and has this personality to a T, and delivers exposition in the form of quiz questions.
 * Something Completely Different: Happens twice; the first time with the Gameshow episode, and the second with the Who Framed Roger Rabbit -esque episode. Both utilise a completely different format of telling the story; the first with a gameshow/clipshow, and the second by seeing Toon World from Pino's perspective.
 * Souvenir Land: Has its own episode.
 * Spell My Name With an S: Re-l vs Real, Romdo vs Romdeau, and countless others.
 * Seeing Re-l's name on a computer in one episode suggests that both spellings could be correct, as it shows "REAL" with "RE-L" superimposed on it.
 * Spoiled Brat: Re-L pulls this off when she first joins up with Pino and Vincent on The Thousand Rabbits. She gets better eventually.
 * Spoiler Opening: Both  and
 * Spotting the Thread: In the episode "Ophelia"
 * Super Powered Evil Side: The Proxies.
 * Super Powered Robot Meter Maids:
 * Averted with the "civilian" robots who die incredibly easily; the military robots are entirely distinct.
 * Also averted in several specific cases with Pino, a companion-type AutoReiv, having no useful features whatsoever, except for being mind-bogglingly adorable.
 * The Proxies themselves are ludicrously potent, possessing honest-to-God superpowers, when their job was
 * Supporting Protagonist: Depending on your perspective, either Vincent or Re-l could be this.
 * Surprisingly Good English:
 * The opening, "Kiri" by Japanese duo Monoral, is sung entirely in perfect English. Both members of the band are fluent.
 * Anytime English shows up in the episodes (the "fellow citizens" broadcast or just in the grocery store) it's also very good.
 * Take My Hand: Pulled a few times. The crowning moment came from
 * Title Drop:
 * Tomato in The Mirror:
 * Too Dumb to Live: A mall full of people and AutoReivs come across as having the worst reaction times in the second episode. So they'll just gawk at an immigrant running hurriedly by them, firing a gun, and won't even look back at the long-haired freak chasing him in a very noisy Foe Tossing Charge? Sure, they finally start reacting and getting the hell out eventually, but only after the Proxy's already cut a bloody path through half the main hall right in front of them.
 * Tsundere: Re-l can be quite unpleasant to Vincent (when she's not threatening to shoot him that is).
 * Took a Level In Badass: Several.
 * Unexpected Genre Change: One episode features the characters on a game show, albeit the questions are relevant to the plot. Later in the series, there is an episode that seems like something out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. This is also mind-bogglingly canonical and relevant.
 * Unresolved Sexual Tension: Complicates things between Re-l and Vincent. Better keep that pistol handy.
 * Uterine Replicator: All citizens are born from artificial wombs.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means: The Proxy Project.
 * Viewers Are Geniuses: Philosophical, literary and even programming references. A lot of fansubs give a crash-course in philosophy at the end of almost all episodes. Thanks!
 * Viewer Friendly Interface: Averted; computer terminals are just as cluttered with windows as any of ours would be, although depressingly blue-tinted.
 * Walking the Earth
 * Wasteland Elder: Hoody and a bunch of others in the Commune.
 * We Are As Mayflies: Completely averted with the immortal Proxies.
 * What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic:
 * Too many to count. At one point, a character even lampshades the pretentiousness of calling a "Rapture."
 * Why don't we start with the Council members? We have Derrida, Lacan, Berkeley, and Husserl. Speaking of pretentious...
 * The Cogito virus.
 * Raul's AutoReiv, Kristeva.
 * Daedalus, and his autoreivs Deleuze and Guattari.
 * In the very last scene of the show,
 * What Measure Is a Non Human
 * White Mask of Doom / Cool Mask: Ergo Proxy himself with his half-face, Harlequin-esque... thing.
 * Whole Episode Flashback: The episode "Ophelia" starts out with the Vincent, Re-l, and Pino on the Four hundreds Rabbit bickering about something that previously happened. The rest of the episode flashes back to what had happened.
 * Will They or Won't They: Vincent and Re-l.
 * Winged Humanoid: in the last episode.
 * Worth Living For: Deconstructed. With the theme of raison d'etre in the story, characters presented with them are willing to go outstanding lengths in order to achieve it - even if it means losing their sanity over it.
 * Yandere:
 * The Cogito virus makes infected AutoReivs experience human emotions. Entourage-class robots can arrive at psychotic jealousy from their initial quiet obedience
 * Daedalus also qualifies, especially when
 * Daedalus also qualifies, especially when


 * You Call That a Wound: Upon taking a UV shell to the arm,