Webcomic / Emmy the Robot

Emmy, our eponymous heroine.

Emmy the Robot is a webcomic written and drawn by Dominic Cellini about a Android Nanny, or 'Nandroid', named Emmy. The Sterling Robotics company developed her and the other androids to care for families and children. Emmy, though a bit naive, hopes to make the best of her new life as the caretaker for the Delaire family and their daughter Madeline.

Read it here, or start here.

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This work provides examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Outmoded robots are seen as malicious by society as their behavior often becomes erratic and produces unsatisfactory results for their masters.
• Anachronism Stew: It's never quite clear what decade the story is supposed to be taking place in. Everyone dresses like it's 1962, but Angela Delaire has an Eighties-style computer and telephone in her home office; Ted Delaire owns a Nineties-style camcorder; a robot breakdancer is seen wearing Eighties fashions; Corben Mendenhall owns a Walkman cassette player; one of Emmy's fellow Nandroids is assigned to a gay couple with an adopted child, which suggests the early 21st century; and Emmy herself is a technological achievement we still haven't reached in real life.
• Arm Cannon: Nandroids have what appears to be pepper spray built into their arms intended to be used as a last resort self-defense option. It also seems to be capable of functioning as a fire extinguisher.
• Child Prodigy: Corbin Mendenhall, and he won't let you forget it. Despite being an elementary student, he’s first seen listening to an audiobook on financial strategies.
• Contrived Coincidence: Our Product Sucks and called as lazy storytelling.
• Crapsaccharine World: The main story is cute and innocent, but there are hints of something darker going on around the edges: the careful warnings about obsolete or malfunctioning "outmode" robots, for instance, or the casually dismissive way people treat Nandroids and other service robots, or John Sterling's casual reference to "naysayers, setbacks, and occasional humanitarian disasters" in his speech to a graduating class of Nandroids. More pronounced after Emmy accidentally becomes an outmode and gets lost in another part of the city full of derelict robots, gangs, landfills and street urchins.
• Cute Machines: The Nandroids as a whole, but Emmy is particularly adorable.
• Different States of America: The Delaire family is located in the state of Newburgh, which has the abbreviation NB. We know it's on the East Coast, possibly in New England, but that's all the hints given.
• Dumb Blonde: Amy is described as one of these, which Emmy considers ironic given her assignment is one of the country's leading neurosurgeons and his family.
• Eating Machine:
  • Subverted in the second comic. Robots cannot eat, though Emmy still occasionally enjoys putting things into her mouth to see what it's like.
    Emmy: Mmm... yes! Excellent mouth feel!
  • In a later comic, Guck is introduced, which is sludge made from recycled industrial runoff. Robots enjoy drinking it and it apparently functions like an energy drink for them.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Due to the Nandroids being educated in a classroom setting, rather then directly programmed with information about their jobs, they will often come to wildly incorrect conclusions about things before being told otherwise. The teaching aspect does seem to grant them a considerably higher understanding of nuance then many robots in fiction.
  • Initially, Emmy believes the way to calm a crying baby is to smother it. She's quickly corrected and told why it's a bad idea preventing this as well as any similar mistakes.
• Evil Knockoff:
  • A news report mentions someone producing bootleg Nandroids; most of the Nandroids in the cast are horrified by the implications and figure they must be Evil Knockoffs, but Amy thinks that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that it makes Nandroids trendsetters.
  • Mr. Delaire encounters one of these bootleg Nandroids at an off-brand electronics shop while searching for Emmy. While she very poorly acts like one, she quickly gets angry when he refuses to take her home and even menacingly tells him no one has to know about it.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The properly functioning Nandroids' attitude toward Outmodes has definite hints of this.
    Molly: I'm appalled by the state of this city sometimes, letting outmodes run about in daylight with children around.
    • Hilariously echoed by an Oscar-esque robot hiding in the trash when he sees Emmy sitting on the bench in "his spot" and chases her away:
    Garbage Robot: The riff-raff they let run around these days... This city's going down-hill I tell ya.
  • Plenty of humans have a "Just a Machine" attitude to Nandroids.
  • One owner of a grocery store in the poorer suburbs has banned all robots from his store entirely, tired of them stealing his products, and threatens to fire Emmy with an electric gun when she enters to ask for directions.
• Garbage Hideout: Emmy hides in the garbage from the doctors, however, a maintenance robot sends her to the garbage room, then to the city dumps.
• Get Out!: The owner of a grocery shop who banned robots from his store threatens Emmy to get out unless she wants to end up getting shot by his electric gun.
• Glitch Episode: After getting a minor upgrade, Emmy's arm began glitching at Madeline's birthday, causing it to be ruined and be sent to the hospital, abandoning it upon hearing plans of dismantling her. Later on, Darcy explains to Emmy that is pretty common to robots who have a faulty upgrade but still work perfectly fine to be considered outmodes.
• Gossipy Hens: Nandroids (Including Emmy meeting up with her friends) like to gossip, though they're careful enough not to use any names while in their children's presence.
• Hollywood Hacking: In Hacking Darcy tries to run a diagnostic on Emmy to find the glitch and tells her it probably will take some time, not like in the movies where the hacker just taps a few keys and says "I'm in", then she clarifies that she actually managed to get in at that moment because Emmy's firewall is just that bad.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Emmy and the Nandroids all have blue eyes and sclera.
• Job-Stealing Robot: Dupont was once the the location of the three biggest robot manufacturers in America. At some point, the companies realized that robots could do the jobs of people at a faster, more efficient, and cheaper rate and began replacing their human workers with machines. This caused a public outcry and a few riots before a law was passed that required all companies in Dupont to employ human workers. Rather than fix the problem, the companies instead either left the area or went bankrupt, causing a recession, and leaving a lot of resentment for robots in the city.
• Kick the Dog: After Emmy locks herself in the bathroom, Molly implies to Angela that it’s likely that Emmy will hurt somebody if she malfunctions again.
• Mr. Alt Disney:
  • John Sterling, CEO and founder of Sterling Robotics, looks very much like an aged Walt.
  • In "Expo-Excellence", Darcy and Dennis bring up rumors of Sterling's head being cryogenically preserved or him being a Nazi sympathizer, referencing similar urban legends about Walt.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Emmy suffers from this after her hand malfunction accidentally ruins Madeline's birthday.
• Omniglot: Emmy is equipped with fluency in 15 languages, including ASL and Morse Code.
• Precocious Crush: In a subplot from the bonus comics, Corbin's friend Ajay has a crush on Corbin's nandroid Molly, to the point where his ambition is to get into politics so he can pass a law that will allow marriages between humans and robots. When Corbin tells Molly about this, she laughs and explains that nandroids are taught about such things in training, implying that she's just going to ignore it. This disappoints Corbin, who had been hoping that she would openly rebuke Ajay for "disrespecting" her.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Sterling's board of directors prove to be fairly open to input from company employees, approving of Dr. Webb's decision to look into any potential glitches with Emmy's update rather just dispose of her. One of the directors even openly praises his dedication and compassion. Unfortunately, Webb's direct superior opts to ignore the greenlight.
• Robot Hair: The only way to tell the Nandroids apart is by their hair, which varies in style and color.
• Robot Maid: The general look and purpose of the Nandroids.
• "Second Law" My Ass!: 'Outmodes' are robots that are either obsolete or malfunctioning, and will often refuse to follow orders. Sterling Robotics prides itself on the claim that their robots are 'malfunction-free'.
• Shout-Out:
  • The teacher for the Nandroids is named Ms. Bradbury.
  • In Gossip, Amy confuses the events of My Fair Lady for gossip.
  • When Emmy organises a tea party with some of Madeline's dolls, she calls one of them Mr Pratchett.
  • One of the stuffed toys on Madeline's bed bears a distinct resemblance to Totoro, and another one close by looks just like a real-world Playskool Gloworm toy.
  • The kids Darcy sells fireworks to look like Spinelli, Mikey and Vince from Recess.
• Smoke Out: Darcy uses one to distract the Iron Spikes and rescue Emmy from them.
• Stranger Safety: While watching an outmode robot dance, Emmy witnesses that stranger outmode robot about to give a lollipop to Madeline. Fearing it may have an odd flavor and be unsafe, she grabs it before Madeline, stomps away from the park and properly throws it out on a garbage can before Madeline consumes it.
• Stop Hitting Yourself: In Hacking while doing a diagnostic on Emmy Darcy makes her slap herself when Emmy makes a snarky comment.
• Time Skip: Four years pass between Emmy's adoption into the Delarie family on page 15 and page 16.
• Tone Shift: The tone of the webcomic turns darker after Emmy accidentally ruins Madeline's birthday party and begans facing the hardships that outmode robots face on a poorer city upon abandoning the hospital out of fear of being dismantled by the doctors who were treating her.
• Tracking Device: In order to not lose Emmy, Darcy puts one of these on her by convincing the robot that is a friendship bracelet. This later saves Emmy from being kidnapped by the Iron Spikes
• Wham Shot: There's an alarming one in piece of cake, as Emmy's hand began to malfunction, accidentally throwing away the cake she was preparing.
• Wham Episode:
  • Madeline's Birthday arc seems like this, as Emmy's hand starts failing and her attack mode is triggered when Madeline was about to make her birthday wish, accidentally attacking Madeline's dad with her foam in the process and ruining the girl's cake and birthday, ending with Emmy locking herself in the bathroom and the parents worrying that Emmy will hurt their upcoming child after hearing rumors from Molly.
  • "We have a Problem" and "A Hasty Exit", as Emmy accidentally abandons the hospital upon hearing that she will be shut down indefinitely by Dr. Ron Bennet or sent to the Swiss plant to be dismantled.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: In contrast to the urbanization where Emmy resided, the town where Darcy lives is much poorer, with graffiti covering the walls of the streets, as well as having many buildings being outright abandoned or about to be demolished and where crime is more commonplace.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: In Bedtime Story, Emmy thinks a story about the daily life of a robot nanny would be too boring for modern audiences. Madeline retorts that people make books about boring people all the time, and her school makes her read them.

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