sounds fun

>>72374
>the only short one for a while with a new season around the corner
Just checked and there's like 10 big sequels, damn. Even if the rest is nothing but trashy isekai, that's still a full stream.

Anyway, this is one of the relatively famous anime I never got around to, so I'll be there.

I'm interested.

raison d'etre

>>72394
raisin dater

>>72398
Don't mind if I do.

>>72374
Are you going to stream half on friday & half on Sunday then? With Saturday being a break

>>72406
Yeah, that's the plan. Saturday is going to be a nice relax day for anyone just watching Ergo Proxy.

>>72374
Did you factor in daylight savings? As in, is it EST (without savings - UTC-5:00) or EDT (with savings - UTC-4:00)

With daylight savings, so whatever is an hour earlier.

>>72374
To remind myself I made countdowns :p
Friday: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20240329T22&p0=%3A&msg=Ergo+Proxy+-+Friday&font=slab
Sunday: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20240331T22&p0=%3A&msg=Ergo+Proxy+-+Sunday&font=slab
6:00pm EST with daylight savings seems to be called EDT, and 6:00pm EDT to UTC is 10pm

we should have a counter script somewhere in the kissu-files repo I think...

Hope this works

>>72412
interesting

>>72412
I think it's wrong? Dunno what timezone is used

>>72414
it was a classic off by 12 error

>>72415
It's still off by an hour since they said daylight savings applies, I think?

>>72412
put that in the op

>>72417
sure

woah a live timer countdown??
Is this an innovation or have I just been missing it? Either way I like it.

I'm not the host, but it's in a little under two hours!

>>72472
It's been possible with mod-level html but it's quite annoying to set up. It's not like "clock timer #####" but instead 20 lines of html nonsense that I can't understand.

I'm not sure if this needs pointing out with a timer there, but nonetheless: STARTING IN ABOUT 25 MINUTES!

thank you OP & staff & whoever else for the stream :)

>>72477
Yeah, I think we should try to get into the habit of hosting more streams. If anyone needs help organizing or uploading stuff they can always ask for help here. Or maybe just offer ideas for them?
I need to figure out a Mewkledreamy Mix stream thing sometime...

>>72480
fixed

>>72488
Is this a Kotoko reference?

I have to say I barely remember anything but major plot points, so it's kinda like watching this again for the first time after being spoiled on it. And I've come to the conclusion I definitely wasn't wrong in liking it back then.

I like that it isn't just hard philosophy and he threw in a lot of silly jokes and action so that you're at least entertained. Kinda like a more hardcore Matrix

Tangentially related.

>>72531
This is actually NOT ironic by the way. This comment gets it. People used to slap Evanescence or Linkin Park into any random crap back then. Feel bad for the dude who made the video because it's just teens making fun of it now.

Finishing up today at the same time!

>>72551
yeah, you can see it here in the interview they have at the ten minute mark and how it's a bullied nerd making a tribute for something he liked (everything before the interview is kind of irrelevant)

>>72610
I liked dinosaurs as a kid too. Dinosaurs and robots to be specific. I kinda identify with this. I mean, how can you NOT like them? They look so cool and the period they belong to is so interesting. I also had a shitton of dinosaur related models and toys. I wasn't really bullied though. Maybe he went to a kuso public school. I went to a private one.

IT'S A PINO DAY
AND EVERYTHING'S OKAY
IT'S A PINO DAY
IT'S A PINO DAY

I love this silly toaster

>>72680
I'm really glad I rewatched this, this stream was like seeing it for the first time again because I honestly remembered nothing, and even what I thought I remembered was wrong. For instance, I though that in the crumbling ruins of the shopping center Pino died, but it was her father instead.

I have to say that it was pretty darn good. It lost me at parts, but overall quite great. I'm generally not a fan of stuff that gets too convoluted so I didn't like the identity-within-an-identity-no-wait-it's-his-identity-no-wait-that's-a-clone-no-wait-it's-her-identity-that's-a-manifestation-of-trauma-no-it's-a-shadow-no-wait-that-hidden-identity-is-a-hidden-identity-of-that-other-hidden-identity. That kind of thing cancels out personal theories (or episodes) in ways that you can't really predict so I don't really like them. But apart from that I liked it.

>>72682
I think your confusion wasn't really a central plot but a mix of it with the one episode that the mindfuck proxy was in. That wasn't anything about Proxy one itself, but instead a Proxy they encountered before Romdeau that was trying to get Vincent to kill Re-L. It was more of a self-contained thing.

>>72680
She toots. It was nice seeing her character progression as she gradually became more and more "human".

>>72681
I hadn't seen Ergo Proxy before, but yeah. I was thinking the same thing. At the beginning of that episode Pino was drawing a picture of a rabbit in the same style that Timothy had before he died. Timothy's picture was two rabbits jumping and Pino's was just a single rabbit jumping. I was very worried that meant Pino was going to die and seeing her instrument with the "If you're reading this" note made me genuinely sad that she had died unceremoniously.

>>72531
>>72610
Anomalocaris ALMOST made a cameo in the show. We were so close.

Hmmm. It was cool, but I have to say I wasn't the biggest fan.
One of the biggest issues I had is that by episode 3 you know that a) there's a proxy pursuing Vincent, b) the same proxy was chasing after a creature that appeared in Re-l's house, and c) that creature was carrying Vincent's necklace. Its implications are what drives the core of the plot for most of the show but they're not spelled out until episode 8 a couple hours later, where it kicks into high gear due to a random encounter disconnected from prior events. It's this early part that turns off a ton of people, not the crazier more abstract stuff later, those who dropped it did so not because of a 2deep4u philosophical message but because they simply found it boring. The same doesn't happen with Ghost in the Shell or Blade Runner or what have you.

There are people who also get annoyed by those other episodes that don't really advance the narrative like the lake or Disneyland, and of course, those are there for a reason, but at the same time this doesn't mean the viewer is stupid so much as it's Ergo Proxy not doing a good job at integrating these ideas into the plot. It's cool that they made the infodump into a game show... but it's still a massive infodump, fairly blunt as far as worldbuilding goes. The setting itself doesn't have much to write home about either. It can't be said that its take on robots is original, because robots turning out to be identical to humans is as old as the word "robot" itself, but I'll give them credit for Pino at the end learning to draw images on her own.

I'm not fond of Vincent, either. He takes way too much to time to accept something everyone keeps telling him constantly. With Re-l it makes sense for her development to be gradual, but Binsu is constantly running away from a fact that every other character knows. Yes, he's having a hard time with it, but so does a certain type of romcom MC and neither sits well with me.

It seems to me that in part its reputation for being profound and analysis of it form a sort of feedback loop. One commenter elsewhere brought up Sartre and his idea of how existence precedes essence in relation to the characters losing their raison d'être (pardon my French), but in reality you can apply this to any story where a character is forced to find a new purpose, sometimes even die trying. Would they have referenced this philosopher if EP's characters weren't explicitly using the term, would it have attracted as many people actively seeking philosophy in anime? I don't think so. It's comparable to how Persona rightly attracts all that Jungian analysis, but the level of esteem ascribed to EP by its fans appears to be much higher. Doesn't make it pretentious though, that's not the word I would use. The topic is very much there.

Someone said at one point that Texhnolyze is better at delivering the same message, and I'd have to agree, at least in one of EP's main themes. Both deal with the hubris of pursuing divinity but while in this anime they survive the collapse and end on a happy note, Texhnolyze on the other hand goes all the way through and frankly its surface twist and ending I found much more memorable. Or Fullmetal, by being actual rather than symbolic with some other stuff I saw brought up. And of course, Eva. Ergo Proxy seems too varied for its own good, and doesn't manage to tie itself together in a satisfying way. You know what's good, though? Shimeji Simulation, ultra-mega-hyper recommended.

>>72755
>Both deal with the hubris of pursuing divinity
I disagree with this being Ergo Proxy's main theme though, it's just a side one for the most part. It's true for Tex when it comes to the surface world however. Ergo Proxy's main themes are existentialism and "what does it mean to be human/what makes someone human".

By the way, Pino is supposed to be a Pinocchio reference if you didn't get it. You know, PINOchhio, the wooden puppet who gradually becomes like a real boy. Ep 19 really makes this obvious with the talking cricket that Pinocchio meets in his journey being there.

>>72772
If it's not the main theme, it at least underpins the entire story. Vincent's trauma, the council and the organization of the dome, everyone's reasons, the breakout and the whole hunt, it's all directly based on humanity creating these mini-demiurges and its folly.
>>72774
Yeap, yeap.

>>72775
Yeah, but that's the plot, not necessarily the main theme. Deus Ex Machina and all of that. This is a much stronger theme in Tex with Kano desiring to transcend humanity to a higher state and the surface world being akin to the Buddhist purgatory.

>>72776
Exactly, in Tex you end up with two different kinds of static hell, both from seeking to go beyond humanity and the theonormals being responsible for Lux's existence in the first place by exiling there everyone that didn't comply. I saw someone saying that Lain, Tex, and Haibane all deal with transcendence in one way or another and it's an interesting way of looking at it. Tex is the one where you fucked up massively and irrevocably.
The key differences between the two are that in Tex it's massified and the goal rather than something that was already set up. But I insist, it's such a key component of the world, THE key component really, that you can't have anything in the story without it. Like, take GitS: yeah, it's also about the ghost, being a person, and it's just as much about tech, it's intertwined. Not purely symbolic.

Can't wait to stream Texholynze with Kissu so I can open these surprise boxes!

>>72840
We could, but you better not complain about it....

Ergo Proxy at least had Pino and some nice SoL to balance out the more philosophical and depressing themes.

>>72842
Yes, Pino is the 'Puck' of Ergo Proxy while Tex does not have such a thing. It's bleak all the way through. It's for the type of people who enjoy things like the Silent Hill series. The atmosphere is somewhat similar.

>>72755
>There are people who also get annoyed by those other episodes that don't really advance the narrative like the lake or Disneyland, and of course, those are there for a reason, but at the same time this doesn't mean the viewer is stupid so much as it's Ergo Proxy not doing a good job at integrating these ideas into the plot. It's cool that they made the infodump into a game show...
See, you can just overlook all of this if you pretend that Pino is that main character you're just along for Pino's Journey. The continual self-contained episodes are less jarring when you think about it more like Kino. Not that you're meant to of course, I just thought it was more enjoyable that way.

>>72856
It reminded me of Kino's Journey, especially the abandoned town.

kimo's journey

First off, I don't know why you guys are using spoiler tags for a series everyone in this thread literally just watched. It makes reading your insights annoying and it's hard to tell what stuff is safe to open and what stuff is spoilers for other series.

Anyway, as soon as I saw the REAL reveal I was expecting it to be a dream ending, so at least it avoided going there. Well, aside from the half dozen episodes that did end like that. And, thinking again, an ending where the entire world as we've known it disappears as MC realizes a new reality is pretty much the same structurally as a dream ending, so I guess I'm not giving it points for that after all.

I do think the show is pretentious. There are a lot of things floating around you can grab onto and analyze, but they're about as meaningful as the Christian imagery in Eva. They exist because it's an unfocused experience that spends over half the show doing meaningless things where characters spew 2d4u philosophy that is neither particularly relevant to the characters nor causes them to develop in any significant way. I'm actually having a hard time pinning down what it was about because it contradicts itself so much. For instance, Re-L is told by the statues at the end of a big exposition dump to not rely on the truths others tell her and to create her own, but that's followed by an episode literally called Deus Ex Machina where said Dei explains to everyone the truth in a last ditch attempt to provide context to all the nonsense in the show. And that's how every important piece of information is delivered: random exposition by proxies who have fuck all to do with any of the show's actors.

You might be inclined to say the show is about raisin dates and finding meaning to your existence, but that's thrown out the window with the reveal that every single character was just a puppet acting according to a god's will. There was never a raison they found for themselves or even any great benefit for having one, the people cling so strongly to them because they are artificial humans programmed to fulfill a role and their purpose can be changed to fit god's plan, as we see with Daedalus moving on to Re-2 and the chief's revenge obsession. So maybe the real theme is the struggle against predestination and expressing free will? If so, I guess it's conclusion is that the attempt is futile because, again, everything anyone did in the entire show was all according to keikaku. However, that keikaku was Proxy One trying to loophole out of accepting his own fate, which he had to do anyway, and the main characters do seem to have gotten out of the system at the end, though that itself was part of the plan so I don't fucking know what the message is on that front.

Perhaps the most consistent statement would be that ignorance is bliss but taking the blue pill means you're unable to fight back when the system goes awry. Then again, Hitler was thoroughly bluepilled and his gang did take up arms when he saw society collapsing. It didn't help him though and Re-L considers him pitiably ignorant even at the end. Meanwhile, the proxies and, to a lesser extent, Daedalus and the chief are much more aware of what's going on than the main characters and they're unable to really do anything to improve their situations and the main characters only survive because they played their roles without knowing why. So scratch that, it's not consistent on this front either.

Also, the characters aren't likeable, the events aren't structured well, and you have no way to really grasp the context of the story in any significant way until the final episode. I mean, the most crucial fact to the final revelation is that the world is recovering, but actually get to see the world and it's a complete wasteland outside of the random proxy cities, and even those are ghost towns. The whole second half is framed like a personal journey for Vince, but he doesn't really change and at the end they just go back home having accomplished nothing.

>>72755
It's got nothing to do with divinity. You're just looking too deeply into the Icarus metaphor at the end. The "gods" are ultimately just cogs in a bigger machine, middle managers who know that layoffs are coming and have to decide between going gracefully or spitefully sabotaging their own work now that it's been rendered obsolete anyway.

>>72927
>First off, I don't know why you guys are using spoiler tags for a series everyone in this thread literally just watched
I only used it in regards to Texhnolyze stuff.

>There are a lot of things floating around you can grab onto and analyze, but they're about as meaningful as the Christian imagery in Eva
While it's true that there is no 'Christian meaning' in Eva (they likely said that to avoid controversy and offending anyone), it still does a pretty damn good job of representing biblical/religious concepts. Eva's religious themes are rather more similar to Gnosticism with the "fuck the Demiurge" stuff. I recommend reading this: https://soar.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.12648/1589/Carpentieri_Thesis.pdf it's a very interesting take on it.

>2d4u philosophy
It's just basic existentialism stuff. It's done in a similar way as to how Rei reflects about herself and her many selves in NGE. Ergo Proxy is also supposed to be the Jungian shadow of Proxy One. I thought it was interesting that it culminated with the shadow defeating the original.

>You might be inclined to say the show is about raisin dates and finding meaning to your existence, but that's thrown out the window with the reveal that every single character was just a puppet acting according to a god's will
How so? They still had a reason for living even though they were being manipulated. And I would argue that it's about "finding your own truth" instead, as stated by the statues to Riru near the end as you said. The Proxy explaining his keikaku of revenge against humans for abandoning him does not negate the "finding your own truth" concept.

>Perhaps the most consistent statement would be that ignorance is bliss but taking the blue pill means you're unable to fight back when the system goes awry
The exchange between Vincent and Real in the last ep makes it clear that you should face reality instead of escaping.

>Also, the characters aren't likeable, the events aren't structured well, and you have no way to really grasp the context of the story in any significant way until the final episode
I agree with this. The show is too convoluted and hard to follow with its events most of the time and I wasn't particularly fond of Vincent as a character. He is too much of a wimp/downer and keeps trying to run away from what everyone is telling him despite him being on a journey to find himself. I liked Riru though, but she keeps getting sidelined in her own show, so her character development wasn't as good as how it should've been.

>The whole second half is framed like a personal journey for Vince, but he doesn't really change and at the end they just go back home having accomplished nothing.
He does become more confident and accepting of himself in the end though. He was a massive pussy before. And they defeated a god that was planning to wipe out humanity as revenge. How is that "accomplishing nothing"? Vincent says "For the first time in thousands of years, the real mankind returns". That sounds like a big accomplishment to me.

is there ANYONE who likes the demiurge?

>>72947
>"For the first time in thousands of years, the real mankind returns"
The real mankind are the ones coming back down from the shuttles. The people we've seen are artificial, machine-grown people made as a backup in case the ark project failed. Since the plan A worked, the plan B is discarded. Their entire existence was meaningless because they were a fallback that didn't end up being needed. Proxy One's revenge was wiping out the successful results of the proxy project with the missile before the real humans came back and also to leave Vince behind after all the other proxies were purged. He never intended to fight back against the real humans because he couldn't survive the environmental changes that heralded their return (angel Real shows us how they melt in sunlight). This stuff is actually foreshadowed by the creatures who live in a poison cave yet cannot leave for clean air (which also shows how Real lacks the concept of pregnancy because they're all fake, but this can be sort of inferred from earlier stuff) and how Disney is patiently awaiting doomsday, though it's impossible to understand the real point of these until the final exposition dump.

I don't like that Demiurge fella, he created the material world which we suffer in.

ｷﾀ━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━!!

>>72955
>The real mankind are the ones coming back down from the shuttles
The show doesn't really make it clear whether these 'real humans' actually exist or not though. Or if it does it flew over my head.

>He never intended to fight back against the real humans because he couldn't survive the environmental changes that heralded their return
I think I'll have to bring up wiki info in regards to this, because it does state otherwise:
>By manipulating Raul Creed's emotions, Proxy One caused at least one missile launch, decimating at least one Mosk and possibly other Domed Cities. In his view, humanity had destroyed the planet and then fled, leaving Proxies to resurrect the world and subsequently die off when the clouds parted. Enraged by this planned genocide, Proxy One sought to ruin the Creator's chances of returning to a new world by instigating warfare between Domes. He was mostly unsuccessful, but the effects of the despair felt by other Proxies because of the Pulse of the Awakening would cause the damage he wanted. Though Proxy One was defeated by Vincent Law (Ergo Proxy) and his plans to wipe out humanity failed, Proxy One found some solace in the fact that Vincent would survive, therefore ruining the Creators' attempt to wipe out the Proxies

>>72959
>The show doesn't really make it clear whether these 'real humans' actually exist or not though. Or if it does it flew over my head.
Nevermind, it is mentioned in the infodump episode I suppose. So EVERYONE living in the domes is an artificial human? There is the Wombsys thing implying that, but I assumed there were also some 'real' ones living there as well.

>>72962
It must be said that this doesn't really make Proxy One's plans of "wiping out humanity" invalid though. He wanted to undo all their efforts of trying to rebuild earth and make it inhospitable for the ones living in the spaceship to return to it. There's also the possibility of him wanting to destroy the spaceship from orbit.

>>72962
The humans on earth are a contingency plan in case humanity couldn't survive in space. I'm not sure where it's mentioned, maybe a fanbook, but that's what is agreed upon

Actually, it's probably an implied thing with how the proxies were designed to be able to shepard life.

>>72963
The thing with Proxy One, he didn't want to destroy humanity, I think. He wanted to end the artificial humans along with the cogito virus. As the creators didn't want to deal with them and put in place situations that caused the 'natives' to die while they reclaim the earth

>>72968
2deep4me

>>72962
>EVERYONE living in the domes is an artificial human
Yes, they are genuinely all production line cogs made to keep the domes functional, no different than the robots. Daedalus states when they first see the artificial wombs that it's where they all come from, the war settlement guy says there's no way to refresh their numbers once their womb is gone, we never meet anyone who didn't come from a settlement and any area where the womb goes offline is completely bereft of humans even if the infrastructure is all fine, and when Real sees the cave paintings of the Ayys with babies in their bellies she has a total wtf reaction to it. And since that system relies on the proxies to work, the proxies are the creators of all the people there. They are the gods who imbue them with purpose through the deliberate act of their creation. There's maybe an implication that Mosk was able to produce proper humans before Proxy One attacked them, but it's not actually shown.

>>72963
Maybe he had a desire to, but it was not his plan. He didn't have the means to attack the ship or create a new nuclear winter to delay them. His goal was to destroy what the proxies had built up so humans had to start from zero, which is why he lead Daedalus and the chief to go bonkers and smash everything instead of trying to stop cogito or prepare them to fight the returning humans.

>>72947
>It's just basic existentialism stuff
Yes, but it's presented as some deeply meaningful insight to guide and awaken the confused Vince, devoting whole episodes to going through this stuff that he just kind of brushes off and moves on.

>The Proxy explaining his keikaku of revenge against humans for abandoning him does not negate the "finding your own truth" concept
It's contradictory because they never find their own truth, just discover the one presented to them and take it as fact. They don't discover raisons, they are assigned them.

>The exchange between Vincent and Real in the last ep makes it clear that you should face reality instead of escaping
She also repeatedly laments that the truth isn't making things better for her and she's simply unable to go back once she's opened Pandora's Box, even though she was specifically designed to seek the truth and push Vince towards the conclusion Proxy One wanted.

Part of the twist is that it's not Real's show, it's Vince's. She was always just a sidekick. The role we thought was Pino's was actually hers.

>>72964
Proxy One explicitly says they are plan B.

>>72972
>It's contradictory because they never find their own truth, just discover the one presented to them and take it as fact.
For Vincent I guess it would be disagreeing with the Proxy's actions and seeking to do things his way. And also accepting him for who he is instead of being in denial and trying to forget about it. Riru kinda just goes with the flow and follows what Vincent is doing while accepting the reality of the situation and promising to come back to him. Vincent is her raison d'être and vice-versa since they love each other.

>Part of the twist is that it's not Real's show, it's Vince's.
I was talking about Real (the angel-like Proxy) though, not Re-l. She tries to sway Vincent into 'escaping' from the dark reality instead of facing it heads-on and Vincent disagrees since "Even in a world like that someone is waiting for me" (Re-l). But the statement is true anyway, Re-l feels like a side character, which is why the 'truth' that she finds is weaker than Vincent's own truth. Maybe this could be different if we got a season 2 and she got some more character development in it because it was unsatisfactory.

>>72974
Also, "Re-l" and "Real" names being similar is likely not coincidence. I did some wiki scavenging and found out both of them could be clones of Monad, which is why both Real and Re-l love Vincent. Monad was Proxy One's original lover so they share their love for Vincent which is a part of his personality.

What would Pino's proxy be like? I bet it would lead to humanity's salvation

>>73247
Pino's proxy would be a book.
Which she'd then proceed to read.