AKA: 僕の妻は感情がない (Boku no Tsuma wa Kanjō ga nai)

Genre: Romantic Comedy.

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: PG (Mild fanservice, mature situations.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Chobits, Monster Musume, The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You

Notes: Based on the manga series written and illustrated by Jirō Sugiura. It started out as a webcomic on the author's pixiv account, and then later got serialized in Media Factory's Monthly Comic Flapper magazine.

Rating:

My Wife Has No Emotion

Synopsis

Too overworked for anything else, and with one already failed relationship on his resume, Takuma Kosugi finds himself joking about asking his household robot, Mina, to be his wife. Surprisingly, she seems to respond to that idea, and from there, the two start acting the part while Takuma wonders whether this would actually work.

Review

My Wife Has No Emotion is a.... difficult show to love. I can't really do it myself despite its intent, mostly because of its setup and the way it goes about portraying this relationship. Comparisons to Chobits is inevitable as it is the primary other show about falling in love with someone who's basically a robot that I've seen.

Most of my distaste for this show is squarely centered around how our main lead is acting towards Mina in the first episode. I do acknowledge that his situation isn't entirely unlike the lead in The Helpful Fox, Senko-san, in that Takuma is mostly just grateful that he has someone who can make his life a little easier, but this show only spends the first episode showcasing how much he is working, and then for the rest, he seems to have all the time to expore this odd relationship he made for himself. In Senko-san, the main message -- which the show succeeded to get across quite well -- was that Nakano had spent so much time in the service to someone else that he deserved to be the one to be pampered and feel loved for a change. In opposition to that, My Wife Has No Emotion's Mina is a household bot that Takuma purchased and, by that extent, owns.

This already puts an unhealthy dynamic into any potential relationship. It doesn't help that Mina talks like a service worker at a cafe. Her dialogue is excessively formal, and as a household bot, her abilities are limited to that of a stereotypical Japanese housewife. She has absolutely no personal preferences, which makes her free to adapt to Takuma's in a way that goes a solid bit beyond typical adjustment between two people entering a relationship. She's very much acting like a robot, which is actually to this show's strength -- or it would have been in a world where robots like Mina had their own lives rather than solely existing to fulfill a household role.

The show seems very aware of any problematic questions that the viewers might ask too, because for what it's worth, Takuma wants to help Mina with household chores or treat her properly in general. This leads to one of the more hilarious gags in the show; where the two go on a picnic in the park, only to be surprised by a sudden rainstorm that prevents Mina from being able to go home due to her low battery. So she asks Takuma to just leave her in the open, face down, so that her hair -- which functions as a solar panel of sorts -- will catch the optimal amount of sun, allowing her to get home the next day. And while that is indeed a very pragmatic way to do it, Mina is human-looking enough to make the whole thing come across as just wrong.

And while we're on the subject of "wrong", why does this bed have a pillow with eyes and hands?!

Weird, slightly unsettling bed aside, how "human" is Mina? Well, like in Chobits, she has the ability to connect to the internet, which she does whenever she encounters a question she wants answered. She is clearly able to learn, and she is occasionally acting on her own whenever the need arises, but most of the time when she isn't doing anything that isn't in the service of Takuma, she's sitting in a lotus position recharging her battery. By her own admission, her battery capacity isn't the best. In fact, Takuma bought Mina used from someone else, which probably makes her something along the lines of the first generation Mina series. And yes, there is a Mina series -- they're all named Mina, supposedly, the newer and more advanced series named Super Mina. On top of her deadpan way of talking, Mina is unable to change her facial expression outside of whatever she can express with her eyelids, the only movable part of her face. (Although I could have sworn I saw her crack a smile during the picnic in episode 2.)

In addition to the nonexpressive face, her body is clearly robotic -- which becomes even more clear halfway through the show when she receives an upgrade, but we see it even early on when we are shown Mina's cooking unit in her sternum or how she can put a memory card into her body to store stuff. Her body is more or less a lot of... metallic plating that sort of simulates muscular structure and... other, softer areas of the body. Unlike the Chobits persocons, her body is robotic, but still human enough to make Takuma uncomfortable when she chooses to spontaneously undress in front of him.

Takuma also has a younger sister who is... well, let's just say she's quite invested in the relationship between Mina and her brother in that stereotypical "excitable little sister" way. We also get to meet an example of the Super Mina series, who is tasked with looking after a young boy. Her personality is that of a massive airhead who can barely think about anything for ten seconds without being distracted. She also seems to have a more natural skin type and a fully expressionate face, and when the two Mina's meet, they... I dunno, add each other on their personal friends lists, I suppose?

In a sense, there's two parts to this that would have been fine as individual stories. On one hand, it's about a man that owns a robot that does household chores for him, which there isn't anything outwardly wrong with. (Aside from them being all female in shape, that is, enforcing the idea that taking care of the home is somehow "a woman's job".) In that respect, however, My Wife Has No Emotion doesn't really lean on the excuse that Takuma is supposedly too overworked to do this for himself like the lead in Senko-san. And then on the other hand we have the story of a man who is in a relationship with a woman, and in that respect, the show says a lot of the right things in having him wanting to help his wife with the chores or take her on outings so the two can spend some time together. He also likes Mina the way she is, unexpressive face and all, and wants her to experience more than just being at home all the time. Which she refuses, of course, because traditions and all that. Or something, because the show just can't completely put away the expectations on how a household works. And more importantly, he always asks for permission first before doing stuff like touching her, which is a good lesson to impart. The two later get a "child" as well in a little robot Mina purchased to use as a remote-controlled voice box to look after Takuma while she was off getting her upgrade. Once the little robot had served its purpose -- serving as a remote-controlled drone for Mina to look after Takuma -- it had somehow latched on to a self-learning program and made that its core personality, and Takuma is more than happy to take that opportunity to expand his newfound family.

The thing is, My Wife Has No Emotion can't fully shake the theme of "bought wife". Mina is, at heart, a service bot, so she is of course going to go ahead with Takuma's request for her to become his wife. A lot of the show is centered around showing the audience that she can make decisions for herself, but all of those decisions are in service of his wants. The end of the show is literally Takuma's parents arguing that he shouldn't own Mina, because a man owning his wife (in the legal sense) is all kinds of wrong, but Mina argues for why Takuma owning her makes the most sense. You don't really get a good sense of Mina's character either, because all she ever talks about is her functions, all of which Takuma should be familiar with by now. Comparing this to Chobits, which had its own problems, sure, but Chii was far more of her own character than Mina is, even in the anime version. It doesn't help the show at all that I'm also currently watching The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, a harem show that demonstrated how to relationship. A harem show! That demonstrated! How to relationship! I wish I could put to words how much of a wet blanket My Wife Has No Emotion is by comparison.

Another thing it shares with Chobits is... nice visuals. Sure, My Wife Has No Emotion might be a robotic tradwife fantasy, but it sure is animated well. It's kind of weird to say that when it comes to a show that's so low-energy as this, but there is a weird level of detail to the quiet moments as well. Mina is, initially, a bit short, which makes her fairly young-looking. Once she gets her upgrade, it came with the ability to make herself taller, and that scene alone was an eye opener to be sure. But really, the show's got some nice animation to its name, which is kind of hilarious when it's about a robot wife who can't make any expressions with her face.

I do want to commend the show for bringing up and giving favorable answers to a lot of legitimate questions about what makes up a healthy relationship, but My Wife Has No Emotion is doing the exact opposite of "show, don't tell". It tells you a lot of useful information, only to sorta negate them for the sake of people who want a traditional wife and can't really understand why everyone wouldn't be on board with that. It brings the illusion of a choice, a "but thou must" of the world of relationships, and that's simply not how you do it.

This is basically Chobits for people who have very specific tastes in women and don't want anyone else to want different. — Stig Høgset

Recommended Audience: There are some mild fanservice in this show. Nothing particularly outrageous. The "worst" is Mina asking Takuma very matter-of-factly if he was aroused, so... sexual implications, I guess? There is also the occasional moment when Mina has a "doesn't know her own strength" thing with Takuma when she does things like grab his wrist, which.... well, it's not a malicious thing, so it doesn't really fall into the typical female-on-male "slapstick" violence I generally tend to despise. Should be fine for teenagers.