Chobits

CLAMP has outdone themselves yet again and given us a crappy anime. This time, spazes get theirs as loser farm boy Hideki gets to have some robot lovin'. The story follows an utter creepy wanker who gets a human-shaped computer, he does all sorts of adult things with it, but AH HA HA HA, she's not a real person--molestation is all right!! Then it learns to talk to him, so he can tell it all sorts of loser things and perv out on it because real girls won't touch his shorts with a ten-foot pole. The End. What a load of crock this was. Thecharacters were DUMB. SERIOUSLY! Hideki has to be the most unexceptional guy ever to be animated. His one talent is being disgusting and bland but so stupid that everyone goes, 'Aw, he's so sweet.' He reminds me of a dog that keeps running into the door--aw, it's so cute. And Chii had NO PERSONALITY. I am sure moe fans loved her because all she did was stay half-naked and go 'Chii~' Right. I can't understand why any girl would like this. What lesson is this teaching? Girls, the only way a guy would like you is you stay in your underwear and say only one word to him! Preferably that one word will be 'Panty'. The only fabulous thing about this was the music. The OP rocks. Other than that, this was an unfabulous trash pile of an anime.

Ok, I’ll admit it, I like romance anime, especially with drama and comedy. So I should love Chobits, right? Let me step back for a moment and say above all else I like anime with good stories and interesting characters. Chobits fails for me due to weak characters, in particular Hideki and Chii. Hideki is way too flat and lack sufficient depth. In addition, he is a joke character, we don’t laugh with him, we laugh at him. Because of this it makes it hard to empathize/engage with a character like Hideki. This is why we have token male sidecharacters who take the joke character role. Shinbo, Hideki’s male friend clearly doesn’t take this role, in fact they should have made him the main character as his story is far more interesting than Hideki and Chii’s. In addition, to Hideki, Chii’s character is no better. There is nothing to her, memory erased and the mentality of a child. She is the default love interest for Hideki and its beyond me as to how Hideki falls in love with Chii. Maybe because she cute? maybe for most, but I dislike the character design for Chii. The blank eyes are what killed it for me. Male designs were fine as well as the rest of the cast. Much of the praise for Chobits is in the comedy, well at least that’s what I hear. For me the jokes were way too repetitive, in particular the jokes at the expense at Hideki. For example, Hideki is a pervert with too much porn/gravure that Chii finds. Hideki thinks perverted thoughts again and is an idiot that over reacts to everything. This extreme lightheartedness and extremely repetitive comedy was made it hard for me to finish the first half of the series. As for the story itself, I didn’t think there was sufficient foreshadowing. So when the story starts going in the second half it feels a bit tacked on. In addition, they failed to keep up the momentum by jumping from thread to thread. Simply put the plot structure was a bit messy and Hideki and Chii aren’t strong enough characters. I guess if Chobits were to be considered a slice-of-life anime the structures would had worked, however that would require more complex characters. There were parts I did like, in particular, Shinbo/Shimizu’s and Ueda’s stories. Both showed the sadder side of the theme of the show “love for a robot.” The relationship between Yuzuki and Minoru was touching, albeit not as interesting as the above characters. However, there is something seriously wrong when the side character are far more interesting that the main characters. Chobits had quite a bit of potential, dealing with interesting and complex themes. Sadly they didn’t use these ideas enough and the Hideki and Chii characters were too weak to carry the show. Its quite hard to get engaged in an anime when you can’t empathize with the characters.

Romance is my favorite genre of anime, so naturally when my friends told me Chobits was a good classic anime of that genre, I watched it. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed, which isn't saying that Chobits was terrible. It just didn't live up to my expectations. Who knows, maybe I had too high of expectations. The anime was overall kind of sort of cute and funny but it didn't have a "good" plot, and the drama in it was very dull. I thought the plot was original in it's unique way because of the introduction of a Persocom, a machine that resembles a femalehuman. But the romance between a robotic human and a real flesh and blood human was a bit disturbing to me, because I just don't see how they can fall in love. The story revolves around the penniless, perverted, cram school student Hideki Motosuwa who desperately wants a computer, but not just any computer; he wants the new Persocom. Fortunately for him, he found an abandoned one in a trashcan and decides to keep it and replenish it. When Hideki first activates the Persocom, the only thing it is able to say is “Chi”. Our of nowhere, Hideki immediately falls in love with his robotic girl and devotes much of his time to teaching his Persocom all sorts of human behaviors/knowledge, to the point where she even develops a personality of her own. There were some good moments here and there in the story but overall although it was heart-warming to see a man be so kind to a "lost" knowledgeable robot, it wasn't so pleasing to see a perverted boy hit on a robotic girl. Don’t ask me how the series ended. I just don’t know. I mean, it wasn't confusing but it was plain dumb, and there was no climax. The ending seemed forced and nothing made sense to me. As for the characters, The women in the series were just plain depressing. Persocoms show up, men become aroused, women start questioning their sexuality and self-worth, well endowed high school girls go emo, it’s all just... bad. The men are just as bad too. They all seem to fall in love with robotic girls, over real flesh and blood girls. I just don't understand. The only thing that Chobits did with characteristic development was how Chi, Hideki's Persocom went from the start at the story from a piece of trash, to a loved robot that actually metaphorically had a heart and feelings. The opening of Chobits was kind of disturbing personally for me to listen to because it sounded like a little baby was trying to seduce an older man. The endings were decent, but I wasn't particularly fond of any soundtrack in Chobits, which is saying something because I love most soundtracks in anime. The voicing of Chi fit in with her personality, but nonetheless it was kind of annoying to listen to all the time. Especially when she just squeaks out "chi" repetitively. Well that's all I really have to say for Chobits, I didn't enjoy it that much even though I'm a huge fan of romantic stories. But I just want to say this again because I really was confused, would guys really fall in love with robotic girls over real life girls?... *sigh* I wouldn't recommend this anime to most people, unless you're obsessed with romance with a hint of comedy here and there. Thanks for reading!

I first saw Chobits very soon after I got into anime and something about it really grabbed me. In retrospect I can kind of see why. That was back when I was a horny teenager who deliberately searched out anime with the tags 'harem' and 'ecchi'. Most of them were utterly terrible dribble, but then came Chobits which managed to blow me away because it actually had depth. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man etc. But it's 2013 now, and I've changed. The story, for those uninitiated, is set in a world where everyone owns humanoid computers called persecoms. That is, apartfrom our shmuck lead Hideki because he's a poor farmboy who failed to get into college and now has to live on peanuts while taking cram school to retry the entrance exams. On his first day in Tokyo he finds a persecom in the trash who he names Chi. Chi turns out to be a ~magical persecom~ called Chobits. It's a ~magical persecom~ because it's capable of ~love~ and shit. It's rather important here to note that the story isn't really about Chi falling in love, or debating whether persecoms can fall in love. She's just programmed that way. It's a fairly handwavy explanation. The main focus of the story is whether people can fall in love with persecoms. Or to break it down a bit further, is our romantic love for non-humans worth as much as romantic love for actual humans. Or to break it down further again, do you really love your 2D waifu, like really? Chi is a perfect moeblob, programmed to be as such. Her cuteness and innocence are really played up, and those are the parts of her personality that draw Hideki towards her. She has no purpose beyond to fall in love and serve that one person. She spends most of the anime waiting at Hideki's apartment so she can greet him when he comes home, and spends her time when he's away thinking of what to do when he gets home. Even when Chi gets a job, the only thing she can think to spend the money on is things to buy for Hideki to make him happy. She is the quintessential stay-at-home wife whose job it is to look cute and make the husband feel relaxed when he comes home from a hard days work. Even Hideki responds to Chi's cuteness by promising he'll work hard and buy Chi the software she needs. Chi literally cannot learn anything without input from Hideki. The actual human women in the show have things like aspirations and jobs and real life stuff, which gets in the way of them being the perfect waifu. One of the guys literally forgets his wife even exists because he's too absorbed with his persecom. I don't think it's accidental that all the persecoms are made to look like women. They represent the old view of the ideal wife who stays at home and does anything for their husband, while also maintaining the innocence and cuteness and loyalty that make up the idea of moe. The guy who forgets his wife exists because he's too absorbed with his persecom has many similarities with the stories of break ups happening because the boyfriend was too absorbed with his Love Plus girlfriend. In Chobits, the people spend their time walking around the streets with their persecoms, rarely interacting with other people. The show really likes to drill that point into your head with the whole "this town is empty, everyone is inside with It" meta-story that it had going on. So why would you want to spend time with a real woman with their own lives when you could spend your life with a persecom instead? They are the perfect waifus with all the benefits of real women without any of the drawbacks. The ultimate evolution of this is the Chobits model, who are literally built solely to fall in love with you. The women in the show are rather depressed at their total inability to ever live up to what a persecom can do for the men. Clamp have a running theme of the Powah of Lurve in all their stories, so obviously it comes up in Chobits by saying that yes, your love for this non-human object is just as real as any love. So continue to love your precious 2D moe waifu for your love is as real as anyone's love. Which is kind of a ballsy statement to make, and I kinda dig it for going that far. Which is all fascinating and everything, but it's rather overshadowed by the fact that Chobits is really fucking boring. Because Chobits approach to providing a critical eye to this genre is positive rather than destructive criticism in the vein of Madoka or Evangelion, it means you have to sit through scenes of this stuff actually taking place. Chi tries to buy underwear. Chi learns how to cook. Chi tries on different dresses. It's just as tedious as it sounds. Some of this can be attributed to the anime having a bunch of filler, but the actual manga content isn't much better. Chi is not a character. She has nothing interesting to say and has no personality beyond acting like a shy toddler. That doesn't change whether you're watching her in plot related episodes or not. It's much the same problem I have with Jun Maeda moeblobs in that their dedication to being brainless and cute means they have no actual depth and are too stupid to say anything of worth. While what Chi is supposed to represent may be fascinating on a deeper level, the show still tries to make her carry entire episodes on the force of her personality which, as I said, is non-existent anyway. None of the other characters are engaging either because their dialogue is so stilted and wooden. God bless you Clamp, I love your power of love stories because I am a hopeless romantic at heart. But you guys can't write dialogue for shit. Their vocabulary is so limited it forces the characters into having limited personalities and limited ways their interactions can play out. Because the show takes forever to get anywhere, the characters have to prop up scenes by themselves and they get very repetitive very quickly. That's not just the persecoms either. The humans in the show have such bland samey dialogue that I just zoned out over their chit chat for the most part. Hideki is nothing more than a 'Nice Guy'. His flatmate is nothing more than a 'Nice Guy'. All the women in the show aren't much more than 'Nice Girls' either. And while I wouldn't call the show misogynistic because it's not presenting persecoms as how women should be or anything, watching the persecoms be so blankly subservient and unthinking and lacking in goals of their own make them just as boring to watch as if they were real humans anyway. I can see why it was I used to like this anime so much. I too used to think I was a nice guy who liked cute girls because I was a teenager and could actually watch this inane dialogue and find it charming. To provide on top of that a message about the power of love added on top of the base level enjoyment. Now that I find that sort of writing tedious and irritating, I struggle to even sit through Chobits. There is something genuinely fascinating at the core of Chobits, but to make that point you have to sit through a dull magical girlfriend comedy about how you can be the perfect hard working husband for your cute mentally deficient waifu. Even if it is making a point with that set up, it's still as tedious to watch as a show that's doing that set up un-ironically.