A really, really good read! (SPOILERS BELOW)
In a vacuum, the sex scenes did not feel arousing to me but I never doubted their sexual appeal to the characters, and it really shows how compelling the writing is. I expected that these specific stories won't make me horny before reading but will highlight some interesting themes, and it was exactly that! I loved that it kind of created a few meta layers of awareness between me and the characters -- as I, reader, am fully aware of these people's mindsets, I can't find these acts directly erotic; the characters are half aware of their feelings and motives, so the various half-shadow aspects of it all turn them on; and then the robots completely lack even an ability to be aware, so everything is sexy to them as long as you slap their pussy on.
However all human aspects of the erotica scenes were very sensual and intimate, in a bold, genuine, critical way. All these stories feel like they are about people desperately masturbating to the intensity, the frustration of their unfulfilled desires. I don't like sci-fi stories that would never happen without their sci-fi elements, and here it's perfect -- you can interpret Mari purely as an amplifying image for situations that have been happening in our world for as long as capitalism, christianised gender and sex existed. I loved the messed up sexual tension between Shima and Touma, how women always served as a cord for their sexual desire for each other's masculinity. I loved how Ratna, despite being deeply rational and aware of all the social constructs surrounding Mari, literally deconstructing her before fucking her, couldn't help but play both into a 'caring butch showing a poor girl what pleasure is' and almost 'this old gross cis man's wife would be better off with someone else, with me' scenarios. I loved how lonely and miserable Samart was, how literally little space he has in his life for his interests and self-realization, how little he cares for himself outside his fixation while being in a simbiotic relationship with Mari as both her mother and her child, her worshipper and her defiler. Also, Angelic Pretty mentioned -- it really added to the realism for me!
I loved the continuity between the stories: you see Mari being created in the first story out of two men's passion and hatred for each other, you see her successor being overused and passed on to be fixed by a marginalised third party, then it's almost like the same Mari Ratna fixed ends up in Bangkok, where a frustrated low-salary worker of Mari's mother company can only hope to get a badly working machine thrown away by the more privileged people from very, very far away, and care for it so much because he doesn't know if he'll ever have money to replace it. Ratna comments on Mari Mouse's frizzy hair and changes it to silver curls, then Samart recollects how when he got Marinette she had frizzy gray hair.. so good!!!
Insightful, easy to read, compact, vibrant, and understands the interconnection between sex, gender, race and class so well. Thank you!!