Mechanical Marie

Episode 8

From last week's school sports to this week's beach vacation trip, Mechanical Marie is determined to put its own loopy twist on the usual school romance episode tropes. Although she's unmatched in hand-to-hand combat, Marie isn't at all academically inclined. We learn this as she scores an “F” in her end-of-spring-term exams, leading to Arthur's consternation that his beloved maid won't be able to attend school with him anymore. Marie's more concerned about whatever punishment Roy might dream up for her. Believing that the robotics club's interference with Marie a couple of episodes back must have wiped her memory, Arthur can't possibly comprehend that she doesn't have a high-end processor for a brain after all, and is, in fact, a completely normal adolescent girl without a gift for academics.

Arthur promises to help her study, but reluctantly admits that classmate Noah, who studies the same curriculum for “non-elite students,” unlike Arthur, might be the best person to help. Noah seems to have more or less given up on attempting to murder Arthur, and his main motivation is to keep Marie around so he can be a rival for Marie's romantic interests. Not that Marie has the intention of giving the smarmy Noah the time of day. Noah's proximity, of course, causes Arthur to see him with jealousy, even (quietly) kabedon-ing Marie in the library. It turns out that only Roy and Marie 2's violence-threatening bootcamp can boost Marie's makeup exam scores just enough to avoid expulsion. Phew! It's not the most interesting setup for an episode, and it isn't all that funny, but thankfully, it's over soon enough for us to get to the most important part of the episode – swimsuits!

Marie and Arthur's intimate beachside retreat is gatecrashed not only by Arthur's eccentric aunt and uncle (and their daughter, who seems to have a crush on Arthur), but also by the strangely masochistic Arthur fanclub from school, and the incompetently murderous Maynard (with a hilariously disengaged Noah in tow). Marie is adorable in her tasteful white summer dress, while both Arthur and Noah show off their chiselled physiques.

The beach segment is the highlight of the past few episodes for several reasons. First, Marie 2's battle against Maynard's enormous prototype droid is delightfully incongruous, as the robot maid ignites her afterburner and jets into the skies to engage. Let's not kid ourselves that the animation is anything more than perfunctory here, but it does the job, and the fight is silly fun. It also gives Marie and Arthur alone time to be besotted goofballs together. Arthur convinces himself that Marie's stomach rumbling is an audio alarm that triggers when her batteries are running low, so of course, he feeds her AA batteries again. I love this idiotic running joke.

We even get a little backstory about Marie – her father died when she was young, and her mother neglected her when she got a new man. Child Marie survived by eating random plants she found in the forest. When she tells Arthur she knows what wild plants are edible because of her experiences “back then,” she quickly covers up the fact she's not supposed to have a past by confiding that before becoming a maid, she used to be a lawnmower, complete with a fake flashback image. It's this kind of nuttiness that makes me adore this flawed, but cute show.

When Arthur declares his love for Marie, tragically, she feels she can't clearly reciprocate, as this would blow her cover. “I'm only a machine, I don't understand love,” she says as he leans in for a long-awaited kiss… only for a helicopter-propellered Marie 2 to swoop in to “rescue” them. “I wish we'd had a bit longer,” sighs Marie. Surely she could just double down on the pretense that Roy built her to mimic a human girl in “every” way, as she earlier suggests, and this would solve the problem of romantic progression with Arthur? I mean, he's already intimated he'd not be averse to marrying a robot, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind learning of her… very convincing… biological functions?

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Mechanical Marie is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.