Animation companies in Japan usually spend more time and money on an OVA series.  This means that direct to video stories usually look better than anime that was broadcast on TV.  My Dear Marie is such an OVA.  It looks really good, and has a fun premise.  All three of the episodes are now available in region one on a single DVD from ADV.

Hiroshi is very lonely.  He's a young nerdy genius, who doesn't have anybody to love him.  So he decides to make an android for company and models her after the neighbor girl he has a crush on, Marie.  He gives her an artificial intelligence and free will.  That might have been a mistake, since Marie (the robot was named after the model,) has opinions and ideas of her own.  Hiroshi wants to keep her a secret, locked up in his house, but when he goes off to his tennis club and forgets his racket, his creation runs after him with it, only to bump into the real Marie and all of Hiroshi's friends.  The embarrassed inventor introduces his creation as his sister, and she soon becomes friends with all of Hiroshi's pals, much to his regret.  Over these three episodes, Hiroshi tries to protect Marie's secret, while Marie tries to set her creator up with the real Marie.

This was a short but fun series. Each of the shows was a stand alone episode, and the first two were really good.  They had a lot of humor that worked very well, and just a touch of sentiment.  The fact that no one knows Marie is an android is the source of much of the humor, and I found myself laughing at all of the shows.

The third show was a little bit different than the first two, and didn't work as well.  In this show Marie wants to know what a dream is, so Hiroshi installs some software that will allow her to have dreams.  Most of the show was taken up with her dreams, as she wonders if she's human, and what her real feelings for Hiroshi are.  There were still some funny lines, like when Marie goes to sleep for the first time with the new software and ponders "I wonder if I'll dream of electric sheep?" But the overall story wasn't that engrossing.  Luckily the first two shows more than make up for the weaknesses of the third.
 
Over all a very enjoyable and light series that is a lot of fun.

Audio:

This disc offers the viewer the choice of two soundtracks either the original Japanese or an English dub, both in stereo.  Both of the tracks sounded very good.  There was only a little use made of the soundstage, but since this was a dialog based show, that wasn't a big deal.

Video:

The full frame video looked pretty good.  The colors were solid and the lines were sharp throughout.  As far as digital defects go, there was only a little bit of aliasing, mainly in the background.  Overall a nice looking disc.

Extras:

The only extras were trailers for other ADV discs.

Final Thoughts:

A light comedy series that doesn't take itself too seriously, My Dear Marie is fun and enjoyable.  Although I thought the third episode was only mediocre, the first two were great and makes the DVD worth getting. Recommended.