Ergo Proxy

The world has already been pretty much destroyed. For one reason or another the rest of humanity is forced to live within the few dome worlds that are left in order to live. Outside of such a city is an environment similar to that of the "Desert of the Real" as seen in the Matrix. Re-l Mayer is the granddaughter to the regent, and is more or less part of the detective bureau. The city is facilitated by personal robot aides known as Autoraves. The have artificial intelligence, but are not thought of as living. They do not have a soul. As Re-l begins to investigate a murder as well as some sketchy happening with the Medical Bureau. The style is similar to Ghost in the Shell, and also follows, but not as strongly, a cyberpunk theme, and even a little steampunk, but in lesser degrees. Ergo Proxy also was developed first as a anime, by the same company that produced Samurai Champloo, and was worked on by playwright Dai Satō.



"It is set in the future. A group of robots become infected with something called the Kojiro [sic] virus, and become aware of their own existence. So these robots, which had been tools of humans, decide to go on an adventure to search for themselves. They have to decide whether the virus that infected them created their identity, or whether they gained their identity through their travels. This question is meant to represent our own debate over whether we become who we are because of our environment, or because of things that are inherent in us. The robots are all named after philosophers: Derrida and Lacan and Husserl."
– Dai Satō



Ergo Proxy does an amazing job with creating a brilliant cast of characters, and is a closed series of about 23 episodes. I won't go into any more plot because it is short, and amazing to discover. I am particularly fond of how they animated and voice acted Pino in the english dub. The voice fits so well, and how she acts is exactly how a 8-10 year old girl robot might. This anime digs deep, as might be inferred from the quote above, into multiple schools of philosophical perspectives throughout the story line in order draw out the true nature of self from the characters. This is a great, relatively not well known series that is, personally, one of my favorites.