Ergo Proxy – 19 – Smile!

I loved this episode! It was another wacky one, but seriously, I kept smiling over the entire episode. Heck, I’m even smiling as I type this. Pino was SO awesome during this episode. Not to mention the huge wave of symbolism. If you ever need to smile for one reason or another, watch this episode!

The case is like this: we have a Proxy, in yet another dome. This one has created his own world: Smile World. It’s a world in which everyone keeps smiling continuously. But now, Vincent is approaching. In a last desperate attempt, he contacts Pino, in order to find out his weakness. Instead, she opens up his eyes with her smile.

Pino starts out in the local garbage dump. Smile World is full of all sorts of fun attractions, though the unpopular ones get discarded. In the garbage dump, Pino meets up with two discarded cartoons: Hanapeko and Pure. They’re incredibly happy and carefree, even though they’ve been considered trash. An interesting note is that they’re actually auto-raves. They then begin to make a wish, in order to get out of trouble: meet the creator of the world: Will B. Good, aka, the Proxy.

Something very interesting is a poster, advertising a movie about the end of the world, in which Vincent in Ergo-Proxy-mode is destroying a huge number of buildings. What if these prophecies actually have some truth into them? What if Vincent is destined to destroy the world? In any case, every Proxy seems to know Vincent, and his reputation.

Then, a strange cricket appears. He’s very serious and goal-oriented, in contrast with the care-free Hanapeko and Pure. His name is Hopper, and he tries to get Pino to dump her new-found friends and take her to Will B. Good. This doesn’t really work. The foursome escapes from the garbage dump, which gets filled with water afterwards. Hopper gets annoyed by the carefreeness of Hanapeko and Pure, as they seem to have changed their goals yet again: go to Will B. Good and find out the reason they were created. Interesting questions, coming from them. I especially like the way their personality seems to clash with that of Hopper’s. He just can’t accept that there are people who live for the moment.

Hopper then begins to ask Pino about Vince’s weaknesses, which indeed reveals that she’s with some kind of Proxy. What happens afterwards is Pino, Hanapeko and Pure discovering the surface, and they get to see the amusement park of the Smile World. As they’ve got no tickets, they’re in trouble and some dogs with very large heads appear. Pino has great fun evading them in one of the attractions. While she does this, everyone begins to notice that she has an incredibly sincere and real smile. Something everyone in Smile World is lacking. She was SO cute at that moment.

Later, the foursome has been captured after all. Pino also mentions Raul for a moment while Hanapeko and Pure change their goals yet again: become real customers and have real smiles. They then get interrogated by the same guards as before. For some reason, the reason for the dogs to have such big heads is that they were wearing masks. In any case, the interrogators are so impressed by Pino’s smile that they forget their initial reasons.

Hopper then loses his patience and sends them directly to Will B. Good. Will reveals that it’s extremely difficult to give people a constant smile. That’s why he needs total control, in order to protect this perfect smile. It’s ironic that all these smiles are fake. Each citizen of Smile World is ignorant about everything happening outside of the surface. That’s why they can remain to be “happy”.

Will then starts asking Pino about Vincent’s weaknesses, and his treasure. He does this by putting up a fake smile. His creations recognize the fakeness of his smile, after having seen Pino, and they turn against him. Will then resorts to his last option: beg Pino to stop Vincent. If Vincent and him meet, they’ll have to fight. When they fight, Will will lose, and everyone in Smile World will die. Including the friends Pino made. Pino then wakes up, and she manages to convince Vincent to stay away from Will. Especially the way the episode ended was awesome.

It’s a happy end, isn’t it? On the other side, the citizens of Smile World still have all of their freedom taken away. They still know nothing. They still keep smiling forever, with a fake smile. Unless Will has learned something from Pino. It’s interesting to wonder what he’ll be doing afterwards. I don’t think we’ll ever get to see what happens with Smile World after this episode.

Also, the fact remains that Pino is an Autorave. Just what is the Cogito-virus anyway? Why has it been released? If I remember it correctly, it was released to stop the Proxies, but it backfired. Still, Pino showed how the Cogito-virus can work effectively. She got love and care from Vincent. Iggy got ignorance from Real. That’s why they ended up the way they did. But to think that Pino would be so life-like. She’s actually making her own decisions during this episode. She doesn’t copy from anyone, like she did in the earlier episodes.