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Almost all disc drives have indents at the top, like this (mirror). They look different for each manufacturer.

Is it purely for aesthetics or is there some functional reason for it like there is for hard drives?

On hard drives, the shape is necessary for the correct airflow (explanation). But optical drives do not depend on airflow.

There doesn't seem to be a need for aesthetics on internal computer parts, so there has to be some kind of technical reason for it.

They stabilize and strengthen the cover, for one thing. A perfectly flat metal cover is pretty flexible, and could easily be deformed to touch the internal parts, or worse. Optical disks spin at pretty high rpm, and airflow might have some effect. I'm no expert on this, but I do know that thin flat metal plates are to be avoided if possible, purely for strength reasons.

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Note that food cans have ridges at the sides, and a shape to the top and bottom for the same reason. Soda cans have that "dome indent" on the bottom for more strength using less metal. VERY SMART engineers get to research shapes and strength problems on containers and companies pay BIG money to save $0.002 per container because they are using MILLIONS of them per day!

With drives, VERY SMART engineers are paid to figure out optimal patterns for the shell on these devices to serve multiple needs with minimum metal. That does not mean they always get it right, but better than you or I would. And almost NEVER flat!

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Plus, since the devices will be hidden inside a machine, the engineers who design them don't have to worry about making the visually pleasing to the observer.

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A second effect of chosen non-flat designs is noise reduction.

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and they arrive 200 times more expensive than the costs to the final user