We Have the Technology — Mechanical Marie First Impressions
After reading the first volume of the Mechanical Marie manga, I was pleasantly surprised by the dumb fun, with a dash of heart that was presented. And so, I was eagerly anticipating the anime adaptation; I can happily say I wasn’t disappointed. While it’s nothing groundbreaking, it is a fun time.
Arthur Louis Zetes is the misanthropic heir to a massive corporation, and due to his cynical attitude toward humankind, he tasks his company with creating a robot maid. Surely with all the technology at their disposal they’re capable of achieving such a feat. And they do…kind of.
Enter Marie, a former martial arts prodigy known for her lack of emotion, no matter the situation. With more debt than she’s able to handle, she takes the job of Arthur’s maid, with the promise that the company will shoulder it and take care of her schooling. Will her expressionless visage be enough to keep Arthur from catching on?
The answer is yes. For someone set to inherit such a massive, successful corporation, Arthur can be a bit of an idiot. At least when it comes to Marie. How he can believe that she’s an actual robot is beyond me, as I feel it’d be pretty obvious that she’s human. And to his credit, he does suspect it at times, but not enough to press the issue.
It does add to the barely there suspense of the show during those moments because the one thing he hates above all, are liars. And given how he makes examples out of those who lie to or fail him, I suppose he doesn’t think they’d lie about this technological achievement.
While initially skeptical, his suspicions dissipate almost immediately after Marie doesn’t react to a small bomb going off in his office. This is one of the more unbelievable aspects of the anime, so if you can’t stomach how quickly his suspicions are assuaged, you might not find this anime up your alley. He begins baring his heart to Marie once they’re alone, a clear indicator to how desperately he needed someone (or something, seeing as she’s supposed to be a robot) in his corner.
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Arthur is the target of countless assassination attempts, coups and the like, so he lives every day burdened with merely surviving, while still needing to hone the skills needed to head his company. Well, you can imagine the toll that’d take on a person and how it would morph one’s personality. He can’t be himself lest he risk being taken advantage of, and he can’t truly relax because then he opens himself up to be permanently taken out of the picture. Not that Marie would allow that.
Simply put, his misanthropic mindset is understandable given what he’s gone through, but that doesn’t change the fact that he can be an idiot sometimes. Even if that’s the case though, it does allow for some really heartfelt moments between Marie and Arthur, where we get to see past the cool and calculated mask he has to wear in public. We see how caring Marie actually is, and how much she wants to help Arthur. Yes it’s her job, but there’s also an underlying, not-so-professional warmth in her drive to protect him.
All in all, this seems to be a fun romantic comedy, where our idiotic, yet somehow still capable young scion slowly falls in love with his not-so-robotic robot maid who does her best to protect him while hiding her life-threatening secret. There’s a healthy mix of romance, action and comedy, and there’s the promise of an actual mechanical Marie that looks hilariously similar to A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof’s Roboko (that Artur can’t differentiate from the real Marie). Young love, eh?
Mechanical Marie
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Episodes Watched: 1
Things To Look Out For: Cute Maids, Violence
Rating: 4 Robot Maids out of 5
