Ergo Proxy (Anime)

This one's pretty retro now - very 90/00s. I watched it back then and remembered liking it despite not really understanding it. So I decided to give it a rewatch and yeah... I can't say my opinion's changed much lol.

The plot, what of it there is, follows a bureaucrat, Re-L, after she has repeated run-ins with an immigrant, Vincent Law, and a monster called a Proxy, and decides to investigate. She discovers a massive cover-up and ends up fleeing the city with Vincent to discover the truth.

The aesthetic is deliciously ironic for a post-apolyptic world of domed cities and the animation makes very clever use of methods to reduce cost - lots very dark and even mostly-black scenes where you're relying on the audio to understand what's going on do an amazing job of setting the mood while being crazy-inexpensive to animate.

This anime is a heavy thinker though, relying very heavily on philosophy. If you like to analyze literature, this one's for you. The main thing I took away from it was a lamentation on the burden of being a creator (creative) and the struggle to maintain your sense of self while developing societies and fostering the livelihoods of others. But I'm sure lots of folks will take away lessons more pertinent to them.