(Average) Plastic Memories

Series in one sentence:  
A boy treats his dying robot girlfriend like an 8 year old cancer child, opposed to getting serious and romantic with her.

Series in more sentences:
A teenage boy gets hired as a staff member in a robot retrieval facility, but quickly falls head over heels for one of the robotic staff members. Who only has a few months left to live.
They're ironically teamed up to collect the robots that'll soon meet their date of expiration as well, and while their relationship starts off rocky, the artificial girl accepts his love confession and they spend their last days together.
 

I'm sad I didn't love this.

As Plastic Memories begins, you think every episode is going to cover an emotional story about a human and their robot companion being ripped apart from each other, starring our main characters as the collectors, who learn more about the meaning of life and each other as the series progresses, and then hopelessly fall in love. Yes. That would've been great.

But most of the episodes were about this boy looking for help to getting the robot's attention, who didn't grant him any most of the time, and staff members talking about her changed personality and upcoming fate. The sad thing is that despite she being the subject of almost every conversation held inside this company, I still don't know this character.
There was no consistency in her behaviour, you were dealing with a slightly, yet noticeably, different person every episode. Heck, every new scene.
Is she soft-spoken? Is she jealous? Is she uncertain? Is she serious? Is she intelligent? Is she dumb? Is she clumsy? Can't tell you, it all describes her, and at the same time, none of it describes her. To me, she had no personality and only showed off certain traits when it was necessary for the story to have her act this way.
One thing that was consistent about her is that she was the most uninteresting character in the series.

The story made it obvious that she had a 3 year long depression, but what exactly did that boy do to change anything? Was it that cheap carnival keychain he forced into her hand that made her fall for him? The anime also kept arguing they're a good team, but never showed this. It only told us the boy has a positive influence on her mood and working progress, but not once were we shown their supposed friendship grow. We just have to buy it, so that the series can move on and dump these two in a love relationship.

I can't say these two acted like good friends, ever; there's this "tolerated acquaintance"-vibe to their relationship that doesn't quite disappear when they officially start dating. Next to this already disappointing portrayal of two tragic lovers, the robot started adapting this sudden "It's fine I'm dying" mentality. Is that the emotional journey she was supposed to make, to suddenly not show sadness, even though she should care even more now, considering her previous stance on the matter and the changed circumstances? She feared death and heartbreak for the majority of the series, what happened to that? She feared it more than anyone else, moreso than her boyfriend. Is it because she's so happy to have a boyfriend, who she hardly spends personal time with, that she feels fulfilled and stopped caring? That's not very in-character or empathetic towards your partner.

Perhaps she's mirroring the boy's previous behaviour and borrowed that bullshit "smile of sadness"-tactic the anime brought up at one point. But why? This is not the right moment to do this. This doesn't concern a customer you failed to help, but you, and your partner, and the life you'll never have, but you could've pretended to have IF YOU AT LEAST BOTHERED TO SLEEP IN THE SAME BED, WHICH YOU DIDN'T.

In the scene where these two start talking about her approaching death again, the boy is the only one who gets visibly upset, while she takes on the role of the level-headed adult and only gives him an embrace. Even though she was acting like a small child earlier that day. And she was crying in her sleep over fearing to end up being alone. See what I mean with this character and her confusing personality?
And the same pretty much happens when her day of death arrives, he's bawling his eyes out and she doesn't even shed a tear for this poor fuck.

I'll clarify again; this robot was depressed over the idea that having a good time/good memories doesn't matter because she'll be dead eventually (and nobody in the show brings up that human life works the same way, but alright). She was bummed out, though felt like she still had to do her job inside the company, so forced herself through it. It made sense to her not to have fun anymore or bother doing anything else, as it would just make it harder to let go. But now we see the same person just sit there, with a face more dry than the damn Sahara desert in front of her heartbroken lover.

I mean. Maybe she didn't care because the guy and their relationship ended up being pretty lame? Lewl.

As I made clear in the short description at the top of the page, this boy acted like an underpaid Make-A-Wish employee and treated this girl like a child who'll be dying of cancer soon. I found his tone to be really patronizing at times.
The conversations he had with her consisted out of "Oh." and never-ending questions like "Do you like this?", "What do you want to do?", "Did you have a good time?", like Jesus, man. How about a real conversation, not this meaningless dribble?
These two did not act like lovers, which reveals their earlier confession scenes to have been insultingly overglorified. He treated her better when he wasn't yet made aware of her approaching death, it just seemed like he wanted to get with her because she was dying. As if he'd be doing her a favour by dating her.

Nevertheless, some scenes in this anime argued differently. Whenever these two take part in a truly emotional scene, you see and feel the mature love this boy has for this girl. But only then. Any normal day it's like you're watching an older brother having a day out with his baby sister.
These crying scenes make it look like you're watching an entirely different love story with different characters. There must've been a better storyboard artist present that day; these scenes were flawless and heartfelt, though heavily misplaced in this pathetic-ass relationship.

All in all, this anime offers a disappointing romance and a lacking look into the lives of these intelligent robots and their owners. This story could've just as well been about a lethally ill girl spending her days with her last minute boyfriend. There's no reason for this office setting and these robot people to exist if they were of this little importance to the overall story. Perhaps this is where the manga comes in?
Then why even animate a TV-show if you're not going to do it right.

There was one clever thing, though. Normally I skip the intros of anime shows, I hardly ever like them, but I was able to catch the last few seconds every time and I noticed the expression of the robot girl changing. It was basically foreshadowing the episode. I'm surprised I noticed it.