Blue Gender: I've put this one off for a while but I'm glad I finally watched it. The basic idea is your typical wake up from statis in a post-apocalyptic future and thrust into the middle of a vicious war, although it definitely sets itself apart from most stories like that. It's nice to see a 26 episode series where they almost have too much story to tell, rather than struggling to stretch the series out longer. This works towards a fairly similar conclusion as Arjuna, but actually has good story and character development. It never forces the message it wants to convey (there's a general anti-war and environmentalist theme going on), instead driving home the point through what the characters witness and their interactions with each other. This series is also the epitome of the "Anyone Can Die" trope, everybody besides the two main characters can become casualties without warning.
Ergo Proxy: This one didn't quite win me over as much as I was expecting. It's a pretty well polished series, with good video and sound, but relies too heavily on mystery and suspense that never really gets led to a satisfactory conclusion. It also has a few fairly weak and unthemely filler episodes later on, which is a bit disappointing considering it's already truncated to 23 episodes instead of the normal 26. I did marathon most of the series out of interest to find out what was going to happen, which I rarely do, but it promised more than it could deliver. Reminds me a lot of my experience with the Old Boy manga, very interesting as the story works its way along, but when you find out the answers behind the mystery you just want to bang your head against the wall.
