Tonkyhonk wrote:I expected this to be popular among hearthlings too
The description of Monster intrigued me for a while and I had often read about how good monster supposedly is but I had made it a rule for myself not to watch animes with more than 26 episodes. Just seemed like a hassle to go through 100 or even more episodes of an anime and I always imagined the content would suffer too with a large amount of episodes. Although lately I broke with that rule and Monster would probably have ended up being one of the next shows to watch. Wasn't in time for this game however.

I gave it a try today and seems fine so far. It's not terribly eventful. For me it lacks that certain itensity that makes me hunger for more after each episode but it's good on a different level. I like moral dilemmas and this anime is all about them with a main character who is firmly trying to do "the right thing" with fate shitting on his path repeatedly. That and the detective story part (as far as I have watched) makes it quite enjoyable. It also gets some sympathy points from me for the West- / East-Germany setting. It's a bunch of small things that make the setting believable: the Truck with the writing Schlecker on it (a now bankrupt supermarket chain), the poisoned candy (I think it was this:
Werther's Echte), the writing Malteser on the hospital truck (the Maltesers being a branch of church "charity"), the embarrassing german police uniforms (though most of the time the shirts have the wrong colour), those old yellow telephone booths, and so on and so forth. Also the way the East-German characters perceive the fall of the wall is rather ambiguous. It's a nice gimmick. Gives you the impression that one of the makers was in Germany at least once or did his research not as sloppily as they usually seem to do. There are mistakes too though: some of the written sentences in German were not correct for example. And in the end of course it's still an idealized Germany, more pretty than the real one.
Ergo Proxy is a wowwow-anime, meaning it is broadcasted only on this satellite network called wowwow here, so i never got a chance to watch it. the plot sounds interesting though.
I thought it's a good show but it also has some severe flaws. It can be very confusing, especially in the beginning and it seems very random at times. The "creative freedom" they took went a little far every now and then. Some episodes really make you want to skip them. And as usual not all plot elements that have been introduced are giving their proper attention. Some feel like the fell off the cart at some point.