Mina, effectively making the show look like Chobits with down syndrome, has a sharp uncanny valley vibe: Metallic plates cover her whole body other than her face (making for peak try-not-to-cringe comedy when characters blush from seeing her full-metal body), her eyes bulge like zoom lenses, and she possesses a face with only one beep-boop expression, making her resemble a moeblob blow up doll from hell. The clear idea is that she will develop her emotions and the like, but these shows operate on an illusion: The girl must be cute and visibly completely human except for exotic moebits that might accentuate her appearance compared to real women, like those distinct robot ears they sometimes have. Typically, the android is supposed to be more moe than the human girls, but it's the other way around here. It's so strange to see them try and pull this off with Mina looking barely a step up from a kitchen appliance attached to a doll carcass someone fished out of the scrapyard...
Anime gets a bad rap for pandering to otakus with incel or loser mains who get the wamans without even trying, but this dude is the lowest of the low. The MC is downright creepy. Look at his eyes! Vertical slits, just like a snake! The pupils and irises are so thin, stretched, and reptillian within the sclera of his moeblob-sized eye sockets, slapped down upon his long, oval-shaped face, and it appears as if the character designer is intentionally or inadvertently presenting this guy to be as unpleasant as possible. Yet I've never seen anyone else mention this, so it seems to be working on a primarily subconscious level. While this is an unwise decision from a marketing standpoint and will reduce the appeal of self-insertion fantasies (a problem considering that's the entire anime), it's the perfect design for this creep, who has a face not even his own mother could trust. His appearance, behavior, mannerisms, and stammering dialogue are so slimy that I'm waiting for him to slip out of his skin as a molting snake would. Always slithering around on his underbelly, he grovels and is so uncomfortable with women that he's too embarrassed to even maintain eye contact with his waifu appliance that he bought, until he downs an entire fridge of beer, that is.
Ruddy-faced and chugging his beer to summon every ounce of courage he can muster to flirt with his appliance, he tilts his head in this creepy way, saying, "*Hiccup* You're what I like best Mina-chan. Think you'd be okay with being my wife?" This is nearly the first "meaningful" interaction with her, and—poof!—he's married to his appliance—a glorified rice cooker—before episode 1 is even half over. Mina's quizzical probing about his actions humiliates him, so he blushes, closes his eyes, and does the cliched hand-behind-his-head-school-boy routine. Upon showing this miserable (sub)human being the slightest affection, which is presumably part of her programming, he's infatuated with her, thinking to himself, "I wonder if she likes me? I hope she does." In a roundabout way, he more or less asks her what kind of men she likes. Is this guy, who "went on a date once, but it didn't work out," really so delusional and love-starved? The answer is, unfortunately, yes. I'm convinced the "date" the MC went on was with an instant messenger chatbot that he immediately asked to marry him, which turned him down, obviously.
The situations in the first few episodes can be roughly paraphrased as... "Dishwasher-chan (literal appliance), you're so moe that I want to ease your burden, and I don't feel like a man unless I help you wash half the dishes. M-m-maybe someday you'd, uh, like me to get out the dolley and, ermmm, roll you to the park, and, ah, we'll go on a date and eat ice cream. You t-twist my heart into knots every time I, uh, go into the kitchen! M-maybe you'd like to sleep with me tonight on the futon, dishwasher-chan? You make me, um, sooooo horny. NOOO... Dishwasher-chan don't ask me what horny means. NOOOOOOO, DON'T SEARCH IT ON THE INTERNET, DISHWASHER-CHAN! I'm so ashamed!" That's exactly how this show feels, just that the appliance is a bit more human looking, can talk like a seasoned ventriloquist, and spit out Wikipedia phrases and dictionary definitions.
In one of the most cringe scenes I've ever seen, the MC's co-worker says his bento lunch looks full of love and inquires as to whether he has a girlfriend. The MC admits the cook is an appliance. Later, he corners his senpai in the breakroom because of his nagging guilt at having besmirched his waifu in the previous scene by calling her an appliance. "Ummm... S-Senpai, earlier I said she was just appliance, but she is so much more than appliance. She's, um, the best, and she is family!" The senpai plays it cool, takes a swig (probably wishing it were alcohol), and delivers a polite, encouraging response, giving off a "I'll say whatever you want me to say, buddy" path-of-least-resistance vibe. Other great lines of dialogue include "There's a girl who will 'vibrate' for me."
Predictable as ever, this series raises a question about the possibility of androids possessing or developing emotions, where a certain amount of experience and "precious memories" will make them sentient by some abstracted magical sci-fi something something process. This title is an inferior Frankenstein product that seemingly grafts on every tired idea it could find from android-raising simulators, shut-in romcom trash, and slave fetish shows. Most of these series present the female android as hyper-feminine and more desirable than the surrounding moeblobs, yet there is one difference that makes this title potentially semi-unique.
The author presents our doting bag-of-bolts automaton as primitive and outdated. For basic improvements, she applies makeup and upgrades her wardrobe. I've heard she gets a leg extension upgrade (she needs a bolster when cooking or cleaning at the kitchen counter because she's short), and she is looking at upgrades in one episode, so there is the promise of her gradually becoming more woman-like in a physical sense. There's even a hysterical bit of potential foreshadowing: Mina reveals a compartment situated in her lower torso that seems oddly womb-like, in which she places an egg and heats it up. To appear more feminine, Mina lets her long hair down to flow freely in the wind. The MC, of course, blushes in response. Despite there being some admitted irrationality to what she did with the egg, she wanted to do it, anyway, meaning she went against her programming in what would constitute an error. This is clearly an important scene for either foreshadowing or bait. If anything, this drives home the android's attempted transformation into a "woman" far more than usual. Another seemingly throwaway comedy scene, following an escalation in intimacy, involves water pouring out of her "womb," which might have one thinking of a woman "breaking water" during pregnancy. Additionally, Super Mina is a separate character and a more advanced version of Mina, representing an ideal to strive toward and go beyond for our determined little rice cooker that could.
Armitage III already had androids with reproductive capabilities and similar themes were in Blade Runner and a bunch of sci-fi novels, so an idea like that wouldn't be much of a stretch here. These series tend to be anti-natal due to the non-reproductive nature of machines, but this is not about mere attraction or romance like other titles. Skipping any formalities or buildup, the series represents an intense wish-fulfillment scenario of having a subservient wife and the typical family setup. Remember, "she is not just appliance, she is family!"
A recent trend in terrible anime, including this rice-cooker special, is wish-fulfillment so heavy that there's not even any conflict. It's like when one dozes off, thinking about how he saved his romantic interest's life and became king without any effort. Even most isekai usually have easy conflict. While I would hesitate to call the MC a Mary Sue because of his hideousness, the setting and plot are Mary Sueish, for everyone is highly tolerant of what is presumed to be transgressive. However, if no one cares, is it even transgressive at all? Most of the MC's anxiety seems unfounded because everyone in his immediate circle bends over backwards to please him and are like, "that's cool/great/hot that you're married to a rice cooker." Some even praise the anime for eschewing conflict and focusing entirely on the slow-cooked development of the relationship, but what we're left with is a tasteless paste.
The android effectively doesn't have a free will or there are obvious limitations, though she goes against some of her programming and clearly has poorly communicated emotions from the get-go, in spite of the title. The MC foists a more "equal" arrangement upon her, but he could always take it away if he wanted. Hey, it's none of my business what someone does with his rice cooker in private, but it's hard to believe anyone would create this series and think it was a story worth telling in its current state. Either way, this "family" thing won't end well if taken to its logical conclusion; since it looks and reads like a hentai gone "wholesome," imagine what'll happen when the main gets his wish completed and this jittery mess has to take his non-functioning waifu in for repairs after filling it with a gallon of semen. Have fun explaining that one, given that you're almost too flustered to even cross the street side by side with your "wife."
Granted, the guy can only have this idealized arrangement through buying a machine, and the series would be far more interesting as a harem with a less pathetic protagonist, where the android whom he saw only as a rice cooker had to gradually gain his affection, preferably from a combination of emotional development and appealing upgrades. Would anyone want to admit they're in love with an android (a highly primitive one, no less) and make it visible to the world? At least make it seem like something more "meaningful" than a last resort for a snake-eyed, down-on-his-luck loser who seeks companionship with an archaic AOL chatbot on steroids that can cook an omelet. While this is a standard wish-fulfillment series, it's hard to to tell if it's meant to be a super-cringe "so bad it's good" comedy or a "cozy and wholesome" romcom meant to be enjoyed unironically.
