Rôjin to rabudôru: Watashi ga shochô ni natta toki...

This seemed like the director didn't know which movie he was filming - a soft-core sci-fi porn about a robot serial rapist or a really sweet movie about a boy who grows up loving his maid robot. As it stands, either would be okay in it's own genre (soft-core vs sci-fi fantasy), but this movie just comes across as confused. There are several scenes that are hilarious if you're not easily offended by nudity and mimed sexual acts.

The plot which the movie is named after is about a man, Ueno (possibly Hiroshi Fujita?), who gradually falls in love with his prototype maid-bot, Maria (played by the adorable Akiho Yoshizawa). She coaxes him to at least attempt to fall in love with a real woman and get married, but he can't stand how greedy and mean real women are in comparison to his submissive and ever-willing-to-please maid-bot. He spends almost his entire life with her even when her battery dies.

In stark contrast from their love, we get to see an Otaku, a Japanese Fanboy, get berated by two single women on television for playing with dolls instead of cultivating real relationships. He finally has enough of their taunts and mean-spirited jabs and beats them up, claiming that real women want rich, handsome men and have no time for him so why should he bother trying to impress them when he can find comfort with a doll. We see him later in a hilarious scene where he tries out the newer version of maid-bot. Whereas Ueno loves Maria, the Otaku substitutes a real relationship for sex with the doll.

While the Otaku samples Maid-Bot, the female detective tracking the serial rapist robot is in the next room talking to a ghost-in-the-shell puppet man who explains the difference between what men want in a partner versus what women want. The puppet also explains the drive to preserve one's life and how it applies to the rapist. The detective gets her answer and is able to solve the case.

I gave this a four out of ten simply because it didn't seem like a really coherent story when meshed together. Sure, the two messages are opposite sides of the same coin, but the movie suffered from having to show both sides. I might have scored it higher if it had just focused on the old man trying to buy a new battery for his Maria.

Interesting and somewhat noble failure. The problem is the script has two pretty good ideas going, but it isn't able to combine them in any meaningful way. The film only runs about an hour long, too, so it all feels more like the kernel of a film than an actual one. The main plot line is about an old man and the sexy maid droid he has had since he was a teenager. When he first got it, it was state of the art, but unfortunately not sexually functional. When the technology to make these droids sexually functional came about, his model was too old to update. But he loves the thing and won't let it go. As an old man, the droid's battery has gone dead and is pretty much impossible to replace. It's quite a sweet story, maybe even a tad too schmaltzy at times (the ending of this half of the story is especially cheesy), but it's good material. Japan, of course, is big on robots and the future probably will include this sort of thing. It's a good subject to explore, the ways this technological development will change society. And the whole robots and their relationships to humans theme is a common and always interesting one in science fiction.

Now the second plot line running throughout Maid Droid isn't nearly as successful, though I still think it has a kernel of a good idea. It's about a serial rapist robot and the female detective who is trying to capture it. The actual solution to what this rape-bot is is pretty clever, and kind of hilarious (not to mention filthy). The thing is, they just never are able to integrate this subplot into the more emotionally involving maid droid plot line. I don't think that task was impossible, though. This plot also deals with a robot-filled society, and with some connective tissue between the two plot lines, I think the film could have functioned much better. As it is, it feels like a prototype for a much better film.