Ergo Proxy 11

First off, although this episode is rather confusing, the majority of the time is spent showing how Vincent finally accepts his true identity. When we see Vincent, he has gotten lost in that pesky fog of war again, and he happens upon a dark, messy bookstore called City Lights Bookstore. Yes, Vincent has somehow gotten lost in San Francisco and an old hipster will be his guide through this trippy self-discovery.

The old man snaps his finger and freezes time, and Vincent embarks on a series of flashbacks, only the people he knows all are wearing the Ergo Proxy mask. Much is made of how the relation between society and language form a chicken-egg situation, and we find that all the books scattered around the store are titled “Vincent Law”, and the pages are all blank. The voice of Ergo Proxy asks 0724FGARK Vincent Law to remember his past, and the farthest back he can remember is a terrible, unexplained incident destroying the Moscow Dome. It was while Vincent was looking for a job in immigrant sector FG that he first spotted Real. Although Vincent doesn’t remember much about his life, he does have an extremely clear vision of Real’s cleavage burned into his brain.

Ergo Proxy continues to lecture Vincent, trying to make Vincent realize they are the same entity. There is a discussion about pulse and lifespan, and Vincent finds they have the same heartbeat. The old man tries to stop Ergo Proxy at this point, but Ergo Proxy tells the Memory Guardian to stop interfering. Finally, Vincent realizes that he was the one who broke in and tried to catch Real taking a shower, and suddenly he is trapped in a glass case of emotion. However, now that Vincent has accepted that he is a stalker and a Proxy, all the books in the bookstore are neatly stacked on the shelves, and he is back in the store. When Vincent truly comes to, Real has found him lying on the ground, and we see Pino’s silhouette in the background.

Wow, awesome episode! In spite of all the philosophical meanderings, I really enjoyed Vincent’s path of self-discovery. However, as Ergo Proxy notes, Vincent is still merely loitering at the entrance of the forgotten truth that needs to be discovered. I wonder if the books being blank were a nod to Vincent’s erased memories. All the time-stopping really reminded me of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, and Vincent is probably wielding either The World or Star Platinum as his stand. However, I think there is still much to be explained about the bathroom scene. There was little mention of the Amrita Cyborg in the flashback, but in the scenes we were shown at the beginning of the series, it seems like the Amrita Cyborg trailed Ergo Proxy to Real’s place. So what exactly happened there?

Sadly, the real reason why Vincent’s memory was erased was that the super high-definition videos of Real in her underwear took up way too much of Ergo Proxy’s mental hard drive, and stuff had to be erased to make room for the fanservice shots. In a nutshell, that is the tragedy of Ergo Proxy. Well, that and the fact that Ergo Proxy destroyed the ozone layer and killed all the cute penguins.

Related posts:

1. Ergo Proxy 09
2. Ergo Proxy 12
3. Ergo Proxy 05