Summer proper kicks off with, as it happens, the very last series in the preview (though truth be told there’s usually not much difference in expectations with the “Modestly Interested” category). I’ve generally heard pretty good things about the Boku no Tsuma wa Kanjou ga Nai manga. And the anime has a pretty good director in Yoshimura Furihiro. But Tezuka Productions has become one of the most reliable producers of bland and cheap-looking anime, and sadly Boku no Tsuma is no no exception in that department. That’s nothing the story can’t overcome if the writing is good enough, but it does trim the margin for error.
If I’m being brutally frank here, my early take is that it probably isn’t. This premiere wasn’t bad but it was kind of clunky. And I mean, the premise – lonely loser guy falls in love with his robot housekeeper – is hardly a groundbreaker. That conceit can be emotionally impactful in the right hands, and we could still get there. But more than anything I found the interactions between Takuma (loser) and Mina (robot) predictable. And just a bit creepy, too. Maybe that’s just me, maybe not. If not, I’m not sure yet whether it was intentional.
In any event, Mina is a “second-hand” housekeeping robot who in theory can only cook from her preset recipes and wash dishes. Takuma is a youngish salaryman who seems not to have any sort of a social life. It soon becomes clear that Mina is taking cues from Takuma – offhand comments about her being his wife and such. She puts of a love love message in ketchup on his omurice, she forces him to stay hydrated (this actually seemed kinda dangerous) when he drinks too much beer. And when he drunkenly tells her to get into bed with him, she does.
This is mostly played for laughs at this early stage. But Mina being so childlike rather unsurprisingly casts an unsavory air over Takuma’s advances on her, even if he hasn’t done anything really improper. I don’t think you can really get a read on this sort of story in one episode, and this show in particular seems like it could go in a couple radically different directions. I’m not much impressed with the opening salvo but I’ll give it another chance to reset my perceptions of it next week.
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