Ergo Proxy

Meh.

Seriously.

It's very beautiful. The artwork is pretty, really pretty.

The story is... sort of interesting, once all the bits reassert themselves in your head, but... you'll have to watch it a few times to get all of the bits.

Thing is, it's deep. Ok, the story is original for the usual anime, but I'm not sure I prefer it quite this deep. I don't like to go "HUH?!" at the end of an anime. I like a bit of mystery and suspense, but complete bafflement? No.

Also, the story was told in a haphazard way, dotted with filler-like episodes that made sense only after you've watched the anime till the end. There were dream sequences that lasted for a full episode each, and time loss, lots of time loss. Sometimes you were dropped into a situation in medias res, and were left with no ending or follow-up when the episode ended and the next one was already happening somewhere else, much, much later. *sigh*

There were some big words. French, mostly. Boring speeches, although those probably because you've got to have boring, long-winded speeches in anime, that are completely unrealistic. I got used to it. At least I had time to drink some tea and offer food for Manó. He likes dried fruit btw.

Over all, it was nice. The plot, when you finally piece it together and understand it (after a few watchings and talking it over with others), is pretty neat. Finally not the "bad guy comes and destroys all just because he had a sad past" or "vague / not so vague, but totally out of character entity gets revenge / gets reborn / wreaks havoc / saves his old gf / kills his best friend / etc" or even the usual "boy gets girl or vice versa" plot.

But I feel that over all it would have been more enjoyable if they didn't go to great lengths to bewilder the watchers with riddles, throw us off-kilter with filler-like riddles and annoy us with that "Q Q Q" guy. Man, my finger twitched on the fast forward button like hell when I watched that episode.

So... great anime it would be, were it not overly complicated to give it a more artistic feel. Simple doesn't always mean bad, you know. And this... even if made a bit simpler... it wouldn't be simple at all.