EPISODE 23 (PROXY / DEUS EX MACHINA)
---SPOILER AHEAD---
Proxy One opens
with his catch phrase, I am you and you
are me, which means he and Vincent are one and same. Vincent remembers when
they met in bookstore episode. One sarcastically
welcomes Vincent home after he ran away and erased his memory with the help of
his love, Monad. Vincent is ashamed.
With a finger
flick, One shows Daedalus is destroying the dome. One manipulated him to do it.
Re-l urges to check it. It is actually useless,
but Re-l insists to do what she has to do. One knows that Re-l and Vincent will
survive the apocalypse. He planned it. Re-l asks Vincent to come back to her
later. Re-l leaves Vincent and One alone.
Vincent puts on
his mask. The mask he uses when he avoids his fate as a proxy and revenge tool. Vincent asks the question that has murmured
since the first episode, ‘what is proxy?’ One explains proxy is the Creator’s (space human) agent to restore human race
and the nature. He points the evil trap his Creator arranged
for proxies. The trap is the pulse of
awakening (is explained in The Context). After thousands of years serving the
human’s goal, proxies are wiped out.
Proxies cannot defy it.
Proxy One and
Vincent have been worshiped, betrayed and driven to despair by their failed
creations.
They still loved
their creation. One expresses his solitude and wants to be loved as well. One
mocks Vincent that he is a puppet and an imposter. They
fight.
One manipulates
Daedalus to be destructive. Re-l finds the Romdeau collapsed is unstoppable. She
meets Daedalus in the control room. Re-l is surprised that Daedalus feels sick
of her. He never said this kind of thing to her before. Re-l does not care if
Donov uses her as bait for Ergo/Vincent. She just wants the family love. Donov
does not care about Re-l, he only cares about Ergo/Vincent. Daedalus cares
about Re-l,
but she does not see Daedalus the same way. It is a vicious circle.
Daedalus knows
about the pulse of awakening. Proxies will be burnt in sunlight. Real roars.
She is a grown up and becomes fully Monad. She grows a pair of wings and has
yellow eyes. Probably this is the true form of Monad. Daedalus successfully
revives a God. Real flies straight to Vincent’s
location. Daedalus runs to chase Real but he is crushed by
the rubble.
Monad finds Vincent
stabbing One’s heart and One stabbing Vincent’s throat. Vincent’s wound is not
fatal. One is annoyed seeing Monad. Monad tries to break their fight. They all realize that One is dying. One frankly says that he did his part by destroying pseudo
human and domes. He gives the world for Vincent to shape. Vincent realizes that One’s plan: letting him to live to pass on the proxy/agent
of death duties.
Real/Monad comforts Vincent that he does not need to save
the world. She does not want Vincent to suffer any longer. The only way to
overcome the suffering is by being dead (in
sunlight).
Vincent is tempted. He follows Real/Monad to fly. He
gives One’s pendant back. It symbolizes Vincent rejects One’s task.
Romdeau falls
apart. The dome is totally wrecked. Kristeva finds Pino’s harmonica with her
letter for Raul. Pino reaches the vent plug she used to get inside to Romdeau.
Kristeva finds Pino. She tells Pino to follow her free will. Pino sees her
harmonica and sad because she remembers Raul. Kristeva gives the harmonica back
and says that it is from Raul. They run out together.
Daedalus
explains to Re-l that Cogito is built into the Proxy
Plan. He calls it as mankind’s safety valve. He is truly a nosy
genius. He concludes about the Cogito by
himself. Infected
autoreivs helps to destroy the original human
main plan. They are not supposed to be infected when space human returns.
Restoring human through Proxy Project is not the first option. The destroyed
dome including pseudo human like Daedalus and Re-l is an
obstacle to Boomerang Project (is explained in the Context). Daedalus shows the
way out to Re-l. Even though Re-l brings many troubles for Daedalus, but she is
his favorite version. She reluctantly leaves
Daedalus.
Real/Monad and Vincent fly
into the cloud. They see the sunlight for the first time
in their thousands year lifetime. Real/Monad calls it
the sacred eyes, a sign of earth recovery. Re-l is threatened by an armed
autoreiv,
but she manages to take it down. Vincent/Ergo feels Re-l is in danger. Real/Monad comforts Ergo/Vincent and persuades him to
forget everything. Ergo/Vincent remembers Re-l. He does not want to forget
anymore. He wants to live side by side with Re-l and face the life.
Ergo/Vincent removes his mask. Using Vincent voice, he tells Real/Monad that Re-l is waiting for him. He gives Monad’s pendant back to symbolize he rejects Monad’s solution to forget everything. Vincent says good bye to Real/Monad and
descents. Monad knows that Vincent will follow One’s plan. She cannot imagine what unpredictable event’s ahead. Real/Monad flies towards the sun to fulfill her raison d’etre. Real/Monad
disintegrates is the last view that Daedalus sees.
Dying proxy One is pleased Vincent returns. He throws his proxy pendant and Vincent accepts it. It symbolizes Vincent accepts the duty being a proxy and the agent of death. One dies in sunlight. The proxy era is over, but Vincent/Ergo lives. Sunlight rains on Vincent.
The dome is totally collapsed. Re-l hangs on a railing above the burning ground. She hears Pino calling. ‘I have faith (in Pino)’, she says. Re-l does not know if Vincent survives at the time. Re-l lets her grip go. Pino catches her. Kristeva drives the Rabbit. She is there to protect Pino following Raul’s wish. Pino hears and sees Vincent. They decide to pick him up. Pino directs them. Some airplanes (from the original human) fly behind Vincent. Vincent knows the world heals .With Re-l, Pino and other survivors; he is ready to face them. Using Ergo voice and glowing proxy eyes, he declares himself as Ergo proxy, the agent of death.
 |
| Re-l and Pino graduate and receive humanity status. They are no longer robotic pseudo human and robot android but they are also not the original human. |
Details and
Easter Eggs:
Proxy One keeps calling Vincent as his shadow because One is the original.
One knows how it feels to be rejected by his creation. He probably has tried to live as a human and got rejected like Vincent or his creation alienates him because they are scared of him.
All proxies in Vincent’s journey are analogous of One’s thinking towards his creation. He created Romdeau to make his creation happy like Will B. Good does. Pseudo human destroys each other again after proxy restored human population (Senex and Kazkis’ human destroy each other like Donov destroys Mosk). One is unloved and alienated by his creation like Ophelia proxy. He finds that his creation fails (sterile and inhuman) like MCQ and Kazkis. One has enough of humanity, then decides to destroy pseudo and original human.
Of all the proxies in the series, only proxy One holds grudge towards his creator. Other proxies accept their fate to die in the pulse of awakening. Most of them even greet their death like Monad and MCQ. After their death, proxies are described to ascend to ‘heaven’, e.g. Monad ascends to bright light above the clouds to meet her creator and Kazkis unites with Senex. This is proxies’ logic. That is why they happily obliged to eliminate themselves. Proxy One believes that he will die in the awakening. But it is not for his creator, but because he feels obsolete and tired.
Ergo proxy is both One and Vincent. Proxy 301 acted exactly like proxy One: fell into despair and left Romdeau. But Vincent Law is a persona that One does not have. Vincent Law is raw clay shaped by the journey on the Rabbit with Re-l and Pino. He sees life from another angle with the people he loves to support him. If proxy 301 did not experience the journey, he would end up just like proxy One.
‘Are you laying the entire burden on me again?’ asks Vincent to One. One gave Romdeau to Vincent because he could not stand the burden. Now proxy One gives Vincent the duty to re-shape the world.
Vincent Law’s raison d’etre is not the same as other proxies after he lost his memory. Vincent’s raison d’etre is to find his role in the world, as a proxy or human. After the journey on the Rabbit his raison d’etre shifts to be living with Re-l.
Re-l’s raison d’etre shifts to be to face the truth after she found out the truth of Romdeau and herself.
Ergo/Vincent’s mask symbolizes he runs away and forget about the reality. He removes the mask when he does not want to forget anymore.
‘The moment the agent completed his task and the human race was restored, our body is readjusted.’, proxy One explains that the pulse of awakening readjusts Amrita cells to be vulnerable to sunlight.
Proxy One comes back to Romdeau not to kill Vincent but so that Vincent kills him. He planned it all because he cannot defy the pulse of awakening. He must fulfill his raison d’etre (to die in the pulse of awakening). But he needs to let Vincent live as a revenge for his creator.
One provokes Vincent to fight in order to get his proxy instinct out. He is the only one who can kill One because they are the strongest. He needs Vincent to get him killed before the sunlight reaches the earth.
Vincent and One share only a pulse since they are a whole. Vincent survives because he breaks the pulse by killing One. Vincent Law’s Amrita cells are back to normal, immune to sunlight, after his pulse is broken. Notice that he stays in the shadow before One truly disintegrates. One planned his dead as a way to let Vincent live.
‘Is that you again Monad?’ proxy One asks. One can smell that Monad is there to destroy his plan like when she stole Ergo/Vincent’s memory. This is why One is annoyed of her. Monad is probably annoyed by him too for letting Donov destroying Mosk and pushing Vincent’s suffering. Despite they are lovers, their wishes are contradicting. She does not greet him. One is dying anyway, his burden will be over soon. But Monad needs to lead Vincent to die to end his lover’s suffering once for all and to fulfill their raison d’etre.
‘She plagued you and yet she still loves you. She offered her love to flawed, broken souls and in that we found freedom.’ Vincent talks about how Monad loves One, the despaired soul. Monad (means the beginning of everything) is gentle, devoted and soft. Ergo (agent of death, death means the end) is brutal, vengeful and rebellious. They are like magnetic poles that attract each other even though they are contradict.
‘A woman who sees the future’, One refers to Re-l who is responsible for Vincent’s choice. Thanks to Re-l, Vincent has a reality to choose.
Real is not the original Monad we see in the early episodes. But she can be called Monad, because she has all features and characteristics that Monad has. Real vs the original Monad (both are Monad proxy) is the same case as Vincent vs proxy One (both are Ergo proxy). The clones have the memory and ‘soul’ of the originals. As for Re-l being a partial clone, she has Monad’s ‘soul’ (for loving Vincent) and Monad’s human physical appearance, but she is not a proxy and lack of Monad’s memory.
It is poetic how they craft the twin, Re-l and Real. Re-l has demonic looking with sharp eyes, black clothing, black hair and even horn hair. Real has angelic looking with white clothing, white hair and angel wings. One of them leads to death. The other one invites to live the life, no matter what horrors lie ahead. Vincent chooses the demonic one.
Ergo/Vincent is also depicted to have contrast split personality. Ergo is brutal, vengeful and rebellious. Vincent is soft, gentle and respectful.
The survivors refer to autoreivs and pseudo human survivors (people escaping Romdeau at episode 21 and Will B. Good did not destroy his pseudo human).
In the end, Vincent embraces both his human and proxy sides. He uses Vincent and Ergo voices, keeping Vincent face, keeping Ergo complexion, uses Ergo clothes and uses proxy eyes.
Proxy One makes Vincent not only as a revenge tool for the original human. He also wants Vincent to re-shape and re-arrange the world. These are proxy and agent of death duties. Vincent accepts these duties.
Remember that proxy One never orders Vincent to crash the space ships down. It is Vincent that declares himself as the agent of death. To let Vincent live is enough as a revenge.
The opening song by Monoral is for Vincent. Re-l completes his reality and makes him see the truth. Re-l’s existence frees him from his burden. He is waiting for Re-l to save him and completes his reality. The closing song by Radiohead is for Re-l. Her mind is restless with all the popping questions. She cannot always follow orders because she is not a robot. She is an oddball in the society.
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