My Dear Marie - Ain't it Cool
- Ain't it Cool
- Scott Green
- 11/03/04
- click here
"It serves as a good antidote to Love Hina and the like."
Anime Spotlight: My Dear Marie Release by ADV Films
My Dear Marie is one of the 90's catalogue titles that has long been awaiting a DVD release. It wasn't remembered as a classic, but as a fold remember, charming 3 episode direct to video OAV about a boy who creates a robot that looks exactly like the girl he's chasing (but with pink hair). The series was the heyday of short anime adaptation of manga series that would just capture the premise and a few highs points.
The premise of My Dear Marie doesn't necessarily sound appealing to those who feel the concept of a loser with a magical girlfriend, or worse yet a harem of interesting girls, has been well over played, but this series, at least in its anime incarnation, finds a nice way of side stepping the expected.
Hiroshi Karigari is a gawky, bespeckled student who has a friendly relationship with the girl of his dreams, tennis ace Marie, but thanks to his awkwardness he hasn't been able to advance the relationship. His solution to re-create Marie as an android, and doppelganger Marie, also named Marie, who likes exactly like her model, except for pink rather than blue hair, and a few measurement inaccuracies.
The creepy stalking/obsession aspects are quickly exhausted. Android Marie's personality, and her relationship with Hiroshi is where the premise starts making some interesting swerves. Android Marie is literally a self starter who kind of just takes her existence in strides. She isn't enamored with being a copy, but she has accepts being a robot and explores the nature of her existence with a happy disposition. In an amazing feat of Freudian compartmentalization, Hiroshi continues to pursue human Marie, but his relationship with android Marie is heavily protective older brother, with aspect of a benevolent creator, and in instances where her working are addressed, a mechanics objective and pragmatic view in fixing the often in the nude Marie.
The OAV follows the Best Of adaptation scheme of similar series, providing three enjoyable stories but not the complete arc generally expected in an. An introductory episode quickly leads to a meeting between the Marie's and Android Marie's Job-ian journey to rendezvous with a first date between Hiroshi and the human Marie. The episode has fun with the level of disbelief that the series casually asks for, and cements android Marie as a sympathetic character. Hiroshi is far from as annoying as others of his archetype, but the series more asks for him to be indulged than welcomed. Human Marie and Hiroshi's male friend are situational place holders. They have some personality, but nothing not enough of the presence to establish them.
In the second episode, a violent entrepreneur falls for Hiroshi, who has gets blackmailed into a date and has some interesting experiences with screwdriver (the drink, called a 'screwdriver' in Japanese). It's a fun exercise in the case of an interesting woman who inexplicably (or in this case, eventually explicably) falls for the loser hero with pleasant decisiveness on the parts of android Marie and Hiroshi.
The collection ends with a rather good dream episode, not overly pleased by its vision of metaphysics or caught up in loud bursts of surrealness. It is an engaging look at the character's personality composition without disappearing too far down the 'what is a human' hole.
Character design is a distinctive feature of My Dear Marie, namely in the character's monkey ears, which service to keep the tone a bit lighter and more comedic. The characters' wealth in the series is an odd, uncommented upon feature in the look of the anime. Even the hard up character has a pretty comfortable apartment.
My Dear Marie is exactly a feminist parable, but more balanced than most harem or magic girlfriend anime. It serves as a good antidote to Love Hina and the like. For those who saw the series in the VHS days is it a fondly remembered series, and now in its re-release, its charming character bear out how fun it remains.
Posted on Wednesday, November 03, 2004 (Archive on Friday, December 03, 2004)