ighteen-year-old Hideki Motosuwa doesn't seem particularly bright; he's astoundingly naïve about everything from personal computers to girls, and he seems to have absolutely no focus or self-control
whatsoever. So viewers likely won't find it too surprising when his college of choice rejects him. But Hideki is shocked and horrified, and determined to turn his life around anyway. Leaving his parents' country farm and heading to Tokyo, he signs on at a college-prep cram school and starts looking for a job, planning to support himself while he studies.
His plans are complicated by a strange find. When Hideki arrives in the city, he gets his first sight of persocoms—personal computers designed to look and act like people. (Most of them are lovely, buxom young women.) Hideki falls over himself admiring a persocom display, but realizes he can't possibly afford such an expensive toy. But then he finds a discarded persocom on a trash heap. Though stricken with a mixture of lust and embarrassment—the device looks like a beautiful,
mostly naked elfin girl with a sweeping mane of blond hair—he takes her home and boots her up. There's obviously something wrong with her; she acts like a lost child and can't say anything but "Chi," which Hideki decides to use as her name. Hideki's affable new neighbor, Shinbo, hooks his own persocom (a tiny, bubbly little-girl-like "mobile" called Sumomo) to Chi, trying to analyze her operating system, but Sumomo promptly crashes. Shinbo, stricken, sends Hideki to see Minoru Kokubunti, a rich young PC expert.
Minoru is also unable to analyze Chi, though he determines that she has an OS and a "learning program," and all of her data is tightly protected. He also declares that Chi is a custom-made, non-standard model. He implies that she might even be one of the "legendary" persocoms called chobits, which are supposedly self-motivating devices rather than personable but program-dependent machines. Oddly, he also warns Hideki not to fall in love with Chi. Hideki, who's dumbstruck every time he sees a beautiful girl or persocom, doesn't know what to make of the warning, but he sets about making Chi into a well-trained and functional personal assistant. Sort of.
A sex farce—but kind of a sweet one
Veering somewhere between the mystery of Key: The Metal Idol, the sweetness of Oh My Goddess! and the off-color content of a sex-romp comedy, the CLAMP collective's Chobits series can be read as a telling metaphor, but it's just as likely to be interpreted as farce. Hideki is a familiar anime type: the ultimate obvious adolescent geek, a guy who obliviously narrates his own inner monologue (which is particularly embarrassing when he's commenting on a girl's breasts out loud, instead of just mentally) and can't contain his blushing shame over his robot girl's lack of panties. He acts as transparent as every teenage boy who's suddenly found himself obsessed with girls' bodies. He's a comic figure, but also sort of a helplessly sympathetic one, an emotional klutz so over the top that anyone can feel superior to him.
But while it's tempting to see Hideki as an Everyboy audience avatar, it's also easy to see him as a drip who could use a kick in the head—especially during episode 4, which he spends agonizing over the issue of underpants for Chi and how to acquire them. Still, the fact that everyone takes his dysfunctionality in stride is significant and a bit comforting. Apart from the horrified pedestrians who avoid him as he babbles out his every thought on street corners and in front of window displays, everyone in Chobits accepts Hideki's quirks, from his coworker, who mildly answers his comments about her breasts, to Minoru, who casually maintains a house full of fetish-gear-clad persocoms, but tells Hideki not to get "hot and bothered" over them, because they're just machines—then adds "Oh, whatever. Just don't soil them."
Constant innuendo and panty fetishes aside, Chobits showcases a fascinating future technology, and Chi's nature and progress are immediately absorbing. She's as cute as Hideki is hapless, and the pleasant chemistry between them is very reminiscent of Oh My Goddess!. The series' style, particularly the geometrical-pattern-based fantasy sequences, is unique enough to be intriguing, and Chi and Sumomo's character design is adorable. It'll be a relief when the series moves out from under Chi's dress, but for now this initial disc is a fun start to a popular program.
Chobit plays on a lot of romantic-anime cliches—shy, confused boy, strange but special girl, semi-romantic awkwardness between them—so it's nice to see the series alter the mix a bit by limiting Hideki's discomfort to his own behavior, rather than putting a cast of superior or malicious bullies around him. So far, there's no ongoing humiliation, cruel humor or ill will here: Hideki's friends don't ever seem to judge him. That makes his world oddly rosy in spite of his problems.
— Tasha
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