Chobits is a romantic comedy / science fiction story that came out over twenty years ago. It is a story by the famous Clamp team of manga writers and artists (responsible for the Magic Knight Rayearth and Cardcaptor Sakura IPs, amongst others), although this time directed at the shonen (boy) market. I recently purchased the Pioneer / Geneon DVDs on eBay and gave them a watch. It isn’t available for streaming anywhere except YouTube and I’m not sure how much I like watching things on YouTube. It almost feels like piracy. I prefer physical media anyway, as already expressed elsewhere on this blog.

I was expecting to be impressed, considering who created it. I have watched most of Magic Knight Rayearth and recently started watching Cardcaptor Sakura, and both of those series are excellent, if a little girly. But Chobits is not nearly as famous as either of those two series, and really not particularly famous at all, although it is recommended in the book Anime Classics Zettai! 100 Must-See Japanese Animation Masterpieces, which I own, and which Rayearth and Sakura are not (curiously).

I was not disappointed. Chobits might be the best of the Clamp creations that I have seen.

It concerns the story of a young man named Hideki who comes to Tokyo from off his family farm in order to attend college prep or cram school. While in Tokyo, he is exposed to a new form of technology (remember, this was written at the end of the last century) that allows people to have portable personal computers, PCs, travel alongside them and do things like search the internet and receive phone calls. Except these objects are humanoid, some pint sized and some human size, and all are called persocoms. They’re androids basically but are used as electronic assistants and helpers.

And sometimes more.

Hideki really wants one but has nowhere near enough money to buy one.

As luck would have it, walking home at night after school one day, he comes across an abandoned persocom in a trash pile. It’s a beautiful young female with long blond hair wrapped only in bandages.

Hideki decides to take her home with him, but being a total newbie to technology, he fails to pick up her operating system hardware disc that was lying on the ground beside her. So when he boots her up, she has no programming, and is only able to say the word “chi” in response to any sort of stimulus. Chi becomes her name.

With the help of Shinbo, his tech savvy neighbor and fellow student, and a young persocom genius named Minoru, they are able to determine that Chi is a custom built persocom and not a commercial one, and actually has a built in learning software program, and so will eventually learn how to function and do all the useful things other persocoms can do, so long as Hideki teaches her.

Minoru, however, is surprised that she is even able to do anything, such as walk or stand or even say “chi”, without an operating system, and tells Hideki and Shinbo about an urban legend of sorts, called chobits, which posits that there are actually persocoms out there who do not need operating software and can feel human emotions. Minoru tells Hideki that he will look into the legend further and see if there is any connection to Chi.

And so the story of the legend of the chobits begins.

Anyway, like I said, it’s a romantic comedy / sci-fi. The chobits, persocom part is the science fiction, but the comedy and the romance are basically what you would be hoping for. Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, romantic comedies aren’t really my thing, but this one is done well. It’s actually funny throughout and Chi is such a sweetheart and innocent that you can’t help but root for her to find “the one just for me”. Which, of course, is Hideki, if he can figure it out in time.

A common theme that they mine for comedy purposes is the fact that Hideki “teaches” Chi things. Chi isn’t aware of how this might sound to people who think she is just a store bought persocom, and a very attractive one at that, who belongs to a young man. And so she has no problem bringing this up in all kinds of situations, much to Hideki’s chagrin. Although what he’s teaching her, of course, is just how to be a human and autonomous adult. Another is that Hideki, like probably most young men at the time, has a collection of nudey magazines that he keeps stashed away in his apartment, and which Chi is constantly curious about. Because it’s a romantic comedy, most of the comedy has to do with some kind of romance, or sexual innuendo, of course. Although not all.

Though it is an anime, and probably aimed at the teen audience, Chobits is not without its deep questions on the nature of true love, and it asks these questions in rather abstract but effective ways, ways that I haven’t really seen before. It’s worth watching just for that frankly. Maybe the only one that comes to mind is Oblivion, another science fiction story, although not about love, where Jack picks up a book in a library that seems put there just for him. But even that isn’t as sophisticated as the storytelling techniques at play here.

I think what makes it so successful though, is that the characters never break your heart. Matt Bird, in his book The Secrets of Story, mentions this somewhere. That the reader or audience want to like your characters, but are cautious because they’ve had their hearts broken so many times before. It’s hard to explain exactly what this means but I think it is right. Chobits does deal with broken hearts, that’s part of the theme, and it has to at least create the real possibility that the story ends in heartbreak, or else it’s not much of a story. But it doesn’t do so.

And all of the characters, but especially Chi, are endearing. Even someone like the ultra-cool Ziva, a persocom character we don’t meet until the final act, and who is sent by the mysterious persocom syndicate to stop Chi from executing her final program, can’t help but say in the end that he “wants to see this girl happy”.

Another sort of refreshing aspect of the story I think is simply that there aren’t really any villains. There are people and realities that perhaps make it difficult or at least uncertain if Hideki and Chi will be able to fall in love, but none of it is done out of malice. Just as a concrete example, there are other potential love interests for Hideki. But none of them are mean, and all of them know about Chi and are kind to her, it’s just that they pose an alternative choice for Hideki. That’s what keeps the ending in jeopardy.

I like this better than having unpleasant villain characters. That can work of course, The Princess Bride does it with Prince Humperdink, but I feel like this is more true to life and feels more satisfying in the end because of it.

I recommend Chobits. It gets five pellegrinos.