Basic Trope: A robot with greater capabilities than strictly necessary for its intended functions.
- Straight:
- Mai-chan Mk-II, a maid robot with the capability of a super soldier. (The "MAI" stands for Mechanized Armored Infantry)
- TAMMI or Toughened Automated Mining Machinery, Industrial is an industrial robot designed for mining and has human-level intelligence.
- Exaggerated:
- Cutie Warrior Mai-chan™, a high-tech yet cute rag-doll marketed towards toddlers... With the capability to destroy entire cities (The "MAI" stands for "Mass Assault Initiative")
- TAMMI has Super-Intelligence and is near-omniscient, despite being a simple cleaning robot.
- Downplayed:
- Mai-chan Mk-II, a maid robot with the strength of one very strong man, or two puny ones. (The "MAI" stands for Modestly Armed Instruments)
- Mai-chan Mk-II is equipped with tools intended for her work but could still easily be used for combat in a pinch, such as chef's knives, welding lasers, and pressure hoses.
- TAMMI isn't fully sapient, but the robot is on par with a very smart domesticated animal.
- Justified:
- Mai-chan Mk-II was built by the defense company Trope Co. in an age of peace, the company decide that it's more cost-efficient to build robots with some battle abilities than to restructure their factories.
- Mai-chan Mk-II is designed and marketed as a Do-Anything Robot that can be set to any task (including combat or heavy labor in hazardous environments as well as domestic service) by swapping out programming modules. (The "MAI" stands for Multiple Application Invention)
- Wealthy individuals want both maids and bodyguards, so Trope Co. designed a robot that could do both jobs. The result is the Mai-chan Mk-II line.
- Combat is actually the Mai-chan line's primary function, the maid functionality was just added so that it would be less obvious that the purchasers were seeking to acquire war machines.
- The Mai-chan Mk-II was originally a war machine, but was later bought by a wealthy collector of military memorabilia and repurposed as a maid robot.
- Mai-chan Mk-II's creator is a Mad Scientist who is eccentric enough to design her this way just for the hell of it and/or to see if he can actually do it.
- Mai-chan Mk-II was built for the purpose of performing maid duties on the front lines of war. She's armed to her titanium teeth because she needs to be.
- Mai-chan Mk-II's greater capabilities are a side-effect of her Tonka Toughening, she has to deal with energetic kids after all.
- The now obsolete as military hardware Mk-I flourished in the civilian market to such a degree that it formed the bottom line for any robot maid (not just the Mk-II) to have a chance to compete.note
- TAMMI was designed to work alongside organic miners.
- Inverted:
- Mai-chan is incredibly clumsy as a maid, even though she's strictly built as a robotic one.
- Killotron-3000 is a terminator-like military android that just happens to be very good at domestic chores.
- MAI (Mechanized Automated Industrial) units are designed for heavy industrial work but fear of weaponization results in robots barely able to support their own weight, let alone do any labor.
- ROB-E is an utterly weak Tin-Can Robot deployed on the front lines as a soldier.
- Subverted:
- Mai-chan's spec says that she's capable of fighting like a super soldier, but actually she can't.
- Mai-chan is really a military grade robot, her maid appearance is just use as disguise.
- Double Subverted:
- ...until someone is stupid enough to threaten her beloved master, Bob. Then her Power Limiter goes off, and much arse-kicking ensues.
- … is what Conspiracy Theorists believe instead of the truth that the company simply reused as much of the inner framework of their military hardware as legally possible for their civilian models to save on R&D.
- Parodied:
- Mai-chan was built with so many capabilities unrelated to her duty as maid, you wonder just why the hell the engineers of TropeCo even designed her with that task in mind.
- Mai-chan is a tank with a humanoid body from the waist up instead of a primary turret. Her engineers apparantly forgot what they were building as she has so many weapons mounted onto her heavy chassis that she can't even go down the road or sidewalk without cracking it.
- TAMMI's personality is the rough-edged one of a grizzled prospector.
- Zig Zagged: Some episode we see Mai-chan doing house chores, the other episodes we see her fighting an Alien Invasion. People doesn't seem to be bothered that a Person of Mass Destruction is walking amongst them... or maybe there are two or more Mai-chan, who knows.
- Averted:
- All robots are built according to the duty they are supposed to perform.
- Mai-chan is properly decommissioned when she retired. She now has reasonably strength motors good for an emergency instead of throwing tanks. After replacing everything with relevant tools she ends up having plenty of room for cargo at former weapon bays. Pretty much the only thing military strength remaining is her integral armor.
- Enforced:
- The author want to point out that War Is Hell, by showing the (in)capability of someone existing for the sake of war to live a life of peace.
- The Mai-chan suit was made by adjusting the Killotron suit due to budgetary constraints, which lead to the audience recognizing the similarities and, subsequently, the Ascended Fanon that Mai-chan has the same internals as Killotron.
- Lampshaded: "That's... some awesome abilities you have there, Mai-chan."
- Invoked: Mai-chan Mk-II was built for fighting, but decided to retire and do some peaceful work, like being a maid.
- Exploited: When thugs break into his house, Bob orders Mai-chan to fight them, because Mai-chan's spec says that she's built with the capability of a super soldier.
- Defied: The government mandates that all robots should be built strictly for their purpose.
- Discussed: The company that creates MAI has a business meeting discussing the versatility of a robot that can both take on an army and serve them breakfast.
- Conversed: "Why do they make every bot an arsenal anyway?"
- Deconstructed:
- Mai-chan has serious identity crisis regarding her duty as a maid, what's with being a Person of Mass Destruction.
- Troperia Robotics goes bankrupt after they get sued because several people were accidentally injured or killed by their Mai-chan Mk-II line of maid robots.
- Mai-chan forgets that she is much stronger than a human and has a veritable armory in her. She accidentally kills her master, Bob while hanging up a picture.
- Troperia Robotics is forced to discontinue the TAMMI line as companies did not wish to spend money on mining robots with the brainpower that the company had invested into the TAMMI robots.
- Reconstructed:
- But Bob tells her that she has always been great as a maid robot, and that is exactly the encouragement she needs.
- Troperia Robotics recovers from the lawsuit and properly rebrands the Mai-chan Mk-II line as a combination bodyguard and maid instead of just a maid like previously done.
- She recognizes that what happened was a tragic accident and she takes care to ensure it doesn't happen again.
- Troperia Robotics restarts the TAMMI line and brands it as a mining/industrial supervisor robot instead of a robotic miner.
- Implied: An assassination attempt against Bob was foiled, but no one was in the room but Mai-chan. Bob dismisses the possibility, but the reader is led to believe it was her.
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