Daedalus looks like he’s lost his will to live, now that he’s lost Real and the Monad Proxy as well. However, he hasn’t been still, and Raul realizes that Daedalus has been behind the recent blackouts. The 2 minute 17.23 second blackouts are not enough to threaten the life support (which have a 3 minute limit), but they are enough to catch the Entourage’s attention. Raul pays Daedalus a visit and lets him know that the Council was behind Real’s assassination. However, in exchange for Daedalus’ help, Raul is willing to give him a toy: the remains of the Monad Proxy. Daedalus is extremely happy to see the Monad Proxy (which clearly has boobs this episode), and calls it “his Real”.
Speaking of Real, she’s alive of course. She and Iggy are in some remote suburb with no humans, only automated robots that continue to do their chores. While Iggy is off exploring, Real happens upon a little girl (let’s call her “chibi-Real”), and the little girl steals Vincent’s pendant from Real. As Real chases chibi-Real, chibi-Real asks Real if she really wants to see Ergo Proxy again. Chibi-Real wonders if Real will just watch in terror again, and be unable to do anything; however, Real says she will continue to seek the truth. Chibi-Real returns the pendant and puts on some eyeshadow before putting Real to sleep. Iggy finds her asleep and they board a conveniently placed aircraft. Real is armed with two bullets filled with Orbo a liquid that destroys Amrita cells, courtesy of Daedalus. As she leaves, the robot city pauses for a split second, but then continues on as if nothing has changed.
This was a confusing, but still exciting episode. I really enjoy the little mind games being played between Raul and Daedalus. Although Raul now knows of the other Proxy, and feels like he has Daedalus under his control, Daedalus conceals his true goal, and will most likely betray Raul sometime in the near future. Every time Raul thinks he’s won, he ends up getting outmaneuvered. Maybe I’m a bad person, but those really awkward scenes where Raul was all up on Daedalus had me rolling in my seat.
Meanwhile, it looks like Real is off to Russia to go sell some jeans and look for Vincent. However, will she shoot him when she finds him, or will something else happen instead? And what is Real’s connection to Monad Proxy? Maybe Real is the “real” Monad Proxy and the funky remains of the Amrita cyborg are just an experimental copy? My mind is spinning, but as with the other post comments, I’m sure my fellow viewers will come up with some great theories!
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Kabitzin – who has written 1940 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
This reminded me a lot of the episode of Texhnolyze when they visit the town above Lux.
Anyway, wasn’t this episode emphasizing the impression that Daedalus isn’t male at all? I mean he was cuter than Haruhi this time. Raul said something like “I know you’re male but…” and I expected him to reveal that he isn’t. I guess we have to wait until the onsen episode to be sure but who knows, Daedy is such a great hacker he might bring his holo wang with him.
OMG…. holo wang??? I don’t even want to know!
It would be funny if Daedalus was a sneaky Haruhi… Raul is already on the prowl for a rebound T__T.
It looks like that you’ve been watching Ani-jiyuu’s fansub. I don’t think that line about Tasha was translated correctly. Tasha is not a name but a Japanese proper word meaning the other person.
Ah, thanks for the info, but I assume that he is still talking about his wife, right?
I also believe the Ani-jiyuu’s version to be not very accurate. The Shinsen one seems more proper to me.I must say I’m in total awe of the show because of its last (i.e. 12&13) installments. It gets re-lly intense.
Speaking of Ep.10, I’d like to make some more brainstorming on it when I have the time, it’s a rather weird (haha…like, the rest is “normal” ^_^ …) episode.
I want to tell you that I think I’ve found a sort of overwhelmingly HUGE spoiler that was under everyone’s eyes for a long time, I’m pretty sure some other people has seen it, I post it here just in case. It’s my speculation, but I fell off my chair when I’ve seen it.
No Raul was not even talking about his wife. Raul was comparing himself with Daedalus.
at 34sec
Raul: “Acknowledging myself, now I am moving towards a high-up place without the need for the existence of others, even now not even the existence of the monster. However he [Daedalus] is different. With the beloved Regent’s grand-daughter having met her end, together with the Proxy named Monad whose whereabouts were concealed by him personally, he has lost his raison d’etre.”
A rather complicated sentence.
Haha, yeah the last scene with Daedalus and Raul definately had a weird atmosphere.
And Wyk72, I’m afraid to click your spoiler link.. Usually too much insight from your comments leaving me feeling like an idiot. ^^
So many subtle hints again in this ep.
Young Daedalus has personal photos of Real as a young girl and we now see her in mid to late twenties. This might again suggest Real is the product of some sort of cloning from Monad Proxy, who Daedalus at the end calls “my Real”.
There was the comment by the Council that the Jibar Field, which surrounds the Dome, has been affected by the destruction of Proxy. We only see Monad Proxy on the job briefly in the first episode, lying in some contraption pretty much wired in before she makes her excape. Maybe the job just wasn’t fun any more?
The Ray Bradbury suburb was excellent, even down to the EC Comics reference “Chief Writer DaJ Sato” inscribed on a bell shaped tomb stone at the Cemetery. Real and Iggy do not appear to be in Romdeau any longer, since Iggy comments that the town is retro, but with up to date technology. Was there any meaning to that little bit at the very end, where we see something is slightly out of whack with the program, as the robot newspaper carrier misses the porch?
A_Traveler wrote:
> This might again suggest Real is the product of some sort of cloning from Monad Proxy
My exact thougts lately. I believe we have a fairly classic “reminescence” theme developed, i.e. a clone that, (like monozygotic twins) has some sort of inexplicable link to its “parent” organism. I believe it’s called “genetic memory”. In the anime, we have this Chibi-Real (as Kabitzin aptly called her) part which should suggest just this, i.e. Real dreaming of herself. In the dream, she feels she has to meet Ergo again, but she doesn’t know exactly why. She feels her “reason d’etre” is at stake. That explains her obsession with Vincent.Maybe the feelings that Monad had for Ergo, are still alive somewhere in her cloned cells (absurd as it sounds), and pull Real’s strings in a subtle way?
The “memory” theme keeps coming out in Ergo Proxy, memories lost, memories kept inside as a precious treasure (by Monad, for Ergo’s sake), memories transferred….what are we without memories? Vincent without his memories was trying to live a fake life in Romedeau, as a “model citizen”, but due to his failure – and due to Monad’s sacrifice – he finds, slowly, his real self, and embarks in a journey to find his origin. Kind of “Siddarthian”, if I may dare to say. Real says, in ep 7, that she simply lived “as she was told to”, but the meeting with Ergo awakened something in her, so she starts chasing Vincent, feeling the link between the two (Ergo&Vincent) – and some kind of subtle attraction for him, I believe.
It really gets better and better from now on, execpt,in my humble opinion, ep.11 (too psycho-centric).
We’re “getting to the point” albeit slowly.
A_Traveler wrote:
> Was there any meaning to that little bit at the very end, where we see something is slightly out
> of whack with the program, as the robot newspaper carrier misses the porch?
Yes…another Proxy (Real ^_^) has been in the city. And the androids there got Cogito, because of her presence. So they stopped working “robotically” – you can see the robot distributing newspapers simply stopping and running away.
My speculation on this is based on the words we’ve read in ep.2 when Real was fiddling with Daedalus’ terminal.
I report them again:
“The membrane surrounding Amrita cells is intensely activated when it nears [words missing]”
“This may be the result of a megnetic field radiated by the proxy.
[or] an antibiotic reaction to an unknown body.”
“[words missing] this reaction allows us to identify a proxy.”
This “field” emanated by the proxy has 1 great effect:
It stimulates “life” in a wider sense. Without this “field” there’s no life: that’s why the Regents of Romdeau (the 4 statues) are so worried: they know that without the Proxy, the field around Romdeau is weakening. That explains also why, in the first episodes, they were so terrified when Raul mentioned to “kill” the Proxy. If you remember the scene, they were scared to death just by the thought of the proxy being hunted. They said to Raul: don’t worry about human casualties (after all, we can produce (!) more humans) – just absolutely *don’t kill it*, killing the Proxy would mean killing the romedeau’s…REAL life-force!
When Vincent left, they “felt” that the Proxy wasn’t in Romdeau.
My speculation is that the man behind all is Mayer. He knew that Romedeau was doomed to death, without a Proxy. So he stole (in some way) the Proxy in Mosk, Monad, and kept it under control, in sleep, torturing her to steal the “Amrita cells secret”, and turning her into a patched-up, horrible, Cyborg. He also managed to make a clone of Monad, making her believe to be his granddaughter, in an attempt to control her better.
It’s because of Monad presence, that Cogito starts to spread in Romedeau.
Mayer wanted to build the perfect city, where life, even human life was totally and completely under his control.
Men are not really men in Romdeau, they’re just like androids, assembled and programmed by the “bureau”. But life – the self-awareness problem – keeps on coming up, despite his repression system.
In other words, Mayer wants to play God, but he creates not men, but useless bio-androids callend “citizens” and autoreivs. “Cogs” for his Romdeau. That’s maybe why the Proxy just prey on them – they’re not really humans, they’re just pawns with no more self-consciousness.
So, without a Proxy, there’s no REAL life, which is DIFFERENT from purely biological life, so different that even artificial beings like androids start to “get it” (cogito). I believe they would mean that real life is self-awareness, and the “reason d’etre” problem – so the phrase “cogito ergo sum” gets a very strong meaning here, becoming almost the leit-motif of this episode of Ergo Proxy. “I think therefore I am” – so even if you are a man and don’t think by yourself, but let the system think for you, you’re not _really_ alive. And android that can think and find his “reason d’etre” is more human than you. That’s the message I believe.
Cogito is not a “virus”, it’s…life itself, spreading even into androids.
(remember Pino? She was infected by Cogito just when Monad was passing her by in the Mall scene).
The Proxy is the “bearer” of it, and it’s immortal. In ep.7 Daedalus calls it “the very lifeforce of Romedeau” “a God”.
We also see that every proxy seem to have its own (Cogito) autoreiv – or an antire army, as we see the autoreivs of Kazkis-Proxy awakening – just after he trasforms himself.
These are 100% pure speculations and uncomplete hypothesis, of course.
Regarding the holo wang, well, normally that shouldn’t work because the Autoreifen would complain. However, if you look carefully you’ll see that Deadalus wears some kind of anti-x-ray protection in front of his bermuda triangle.
I wanted to say, WyK72 has really thoughtful theories! I really agree with the idea that the Proxies spread life itself, a form of it as Cogito, as that really seems to fit with “Cogito ergo sum.”
What I’ve been thinking is that Real and Monad could have been physically separated by Daedalus to allow better conditions for research. Real was “stolen” from Moscow (Moscau) Dome, separated from the Monad part of her, and then raised by Daedalus as Mayar’s grandchild. Thus, neither part was complete (being only half of a whole), but Monad was awakened by the appearance of Ergo/Vincent and all three of them were inexplicably drawn to each other.
When Real was injured by the homicidal Autoreivs, Daedalus replanted the Amrita cells in her. This could also explain why he called Monad “my Real.”
But it could also be that Real was cloned from Monad in an attempt to create Proxies. Either way, I think she must have been extremely valuable to Romedeau to have the status of Mayar’s grandchild, and that means it’s very likely she originated, in some way, from a Proxy.
> I wanted to say, WyK72 has really thoughtful theories!
Oh yes, I realize, reading them again, that’s absolutely over-analyzing , but sometimes it’s fun to do: the show provides vast amounts of fodder for speculations of any kind, perhaps it’s one the strongest points of Ergo Proxy.
I do not consider it as a Real (pun intended) “masterpiece”, but it can make you dwell into your thoughts for an entire weekend, and can keep the tension enough to make you wait anxiously for the next ep.
It’s an anime very very well done, in this sense.
An episode with everyone encountering their own episode of existential crisis. However I have to express that I’m disturbed by their use of “Cogito ergo sum”. The quote was originally used by Descartes and he was trying to prove that “he thinks, therefore he exists”, yet the problems the characters encounter (namely, the need to find a reason for their existence) hardly relates to Descartes’ quote. They are not doubting their own existence, they are simply trying to find a reason for their existence (or the phrase used by Ani-jiyuu’s sub: raison d’etre). Well, it does relate in a limited sense I guess; we may not exist if we don’t think (which sounds awfully weird).
Philosophical mumble-jumble aside, did anyone find Ani-jiyuu’s sub extremely weird? Raul tells Dae (a female looking character) “I’ll give you a toy, and only adults can play with it, so it’s an adult toy”. I don’t know about you but that scene definitely looked weird and a tiny bit Brokeback to me.