released 01 feb 08 / last mod 01 feb 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* CHOBITS is a Japanese animation video series in 27 episodes on seven DVDs, based on a manga series by the femme quartet CLAMP and produced by Geneon Entertainment. The series takes place in a near-future Japan; at the outset, we meet Hideki Motusawa, a rustic "hick from Hokkaido", the rural northern island, who has flunked his university entrance examination and become a "ronin" -- a term once meaning a "masterless samurai" but now also meaning "a flunkout desperately trying to get through exams again."
Hideki moves to Tokyo to attend a prep school and is fascinated by the big city life, particularly the swarms of "persocoms" accompanying the citizens. Persocoms are androids that function somewhat as personal computers: they can provide internet connectivity, wireless phone service, navigation services, and can perform simple menial tasks. They come in a variety of forms, from full-sized units to doll-sized units -- handy because they can go on trains without the need to pay a fare -- to keychain units with limited functionality.
Coming from the countryside, where Hideki spent most of his time talking to cows, it's a bit overwhelming -- all the more so because he is almost completely penniless and can barely keep a roof over his head. He is then delighted to find a persocom, in the form of a girl with long blonde hair, simply thrown out in the trash. He takes the android home and, after puzzling things out, turns her on -- but all she knows how to say is: "Chi!"
So he names her "Chi". With a little help from his friends, Hideki soon begins to realize that Chi is no ordinary persocom. There's an internet legend about highly humanlike persocoms known as "chobits"; given Chi's emotive behavior, it begins to appear that chobits aren't as mythological as generally assumed.
* That sums up the basic premise of CHOBITS. The story develops as a bit of a romantic comedy -- Chi, having just been booted up, knows nothing about how the real world works, which leads to a series of misadventures -- plus a bit of a sex farce, and more than a bit of a soap opera, rotating around the complicated relationships between humans and their persocoms. If a viewer can put up with a bit of sleaze here and there -- mostly early on in the series (they put Chi's ON switch WHERE?) -- and has a reasonable tolerance for soap operatics, CHOBITS works fairly well. It might be hard to call it brilliant, the production values are okay but not great; however, it is certainly watchable, it comes across as downright imaginative at times, and it is always basically good-natured.
There have been complaints about CHOBITS in that the series rotates around what amounts to a full-sized, happy-to-please, childlike Barbie doll, but Chi is too likeable to get very upset about. Yes, it takes her a bit of time to start developing a personality, but considering that she's effectively a newborn this isn't too surprising. Although I'm not sure everyone would like CHOBITS, I can certainly say I found it worth my time myself, and it's definitely a change of pace from typical action anime.
