Chobits

Chobits
File:Chobits manga.jpg The cover of volume 1 of the Chobits manga (English edition).
Genre	Comedy , Drama , Romance, Science Fiction , Seinen , Ecchi
Manga
Written by	Clamp
Published by	Kodansha
Anime
Directed by	Morio Asaka
Studio	Madhouse
Specials
Episode 9 Episode 18 Episode 27 (OVA)

Chobits (ちょびっツ) is a Japanese manga and anime series created by CLAMP. Unlike most CLAMP stories, Chobits is a seinen series, specifically of the magical girlfriend variety. The manga is set in the same universe as Angelic Layer and takes place a few years after Angelic Layer. The character from Angelic Layer known as Icchan plays an important role in Chobits storyline.

Plot

Template:Spoilers The story centers on the life of Hideki Motosuwa, a repeat student ("ronin") attempting to qualify for university by studying at the Seki cram school in Tokyo. An honest and unassuming teenager raised on a farm, he has little experience with women, though his imagination and libido are both quite active. Besides a girlfriend, the other thing he dreams of having is a Persocom. A Persocom is an android used as a personal computer. Hideki discovers that Persocoms are commonplace in the city, as they can assist their owners in many ways, but Persocoms are extremely expensive and Hideki has no money, so he figures the only way he will ever have one is if he were to find one lying on the curb.

No sooner has he thought this than it happens: on his way home from the grocery store one evening, he stumbles across a Persocom in the form of a nude, beautiful young girl with long blonde hair, wrapped in white cloth, lying against a pile of trash bags. He first thinks this to be a murder but, realizing she was a Persocom, he carries her home. At first, he has trouble turning her on and looks for a switch. He looks all over her body, and finally finds it between her legs. When he presses it, she turns on, and instantly regards Hideki with adoration. When he questions her, the only word she seems capable of saying is "chi", and thus he names her Chi.

Hideki finds a book on Persocoms, and follows its basic instructions only to find that Chi apparently has no data installed. He asks his techno-savvy friend, Hiromu Shinbo, to help him out. When Shinbo learns that Chi read as having no data, he remarks that if she had no operating system, she could not function at all, let alone move or speak. He hooks up his laptop Persocom, Plum, to Chi to do a basic examination, only to have Plum malfunction. From this, Shinbo angrily determines that Chi must be a powerful custom-made Persocom.

Shinbo refers Hideki to a friend of his from a bulletin board system (BBS) about Persocoms, Minoru Kokubunji. Minoru has four custom-made Persocoms as his maids, as well as one custom Persocom, Yuzuki, modeled after his late sister. Even working together, they are unable to determine anything about Chi, which makes Minoru comment about "Chobits", legendary Persocoms that are practically human, capable of thinking independently of their programming, as well as capable of feeling human emotions. When Hideki's hopes are high, Minoru comments that they are just a myth and that they could not really exist. Minoru says that he will post on a custom-Persocom BBS about Chi, and asks Hideki for his contact information. When Hideki recites his phone number for Yuzuki to record, Minoru tells Hideki to ask Chi to repeat the number. She amazes Hideki when she does so perfectly, leading Minoru to comment that she must have some sort of learning software.

Hideki takes it upon himself to teach Chi words, concepts, and appropriate behaviours, in between cram school and work. Eventually, he takes her shopping at a bookstore, where she finds a picture book that she takes an unusual interest in. Before long, it becomes clear that Chi is developing feelings for Hideki, at an emotional depth, which Persocoms are not supposed to possess, and Hideki struggles with his feelings for her, despite his friends' warnings about falling in love with Persocoms.

Eventually, Chi asks Hideki if she can work, because she notices that he always talks about having no money. Hideki agrees, but tells her not to work at a "shady place", leading to some confusion on Chi's part, as she thinks that Shady Place is the name of a business. After a strange incident, in which Chi devastates a building that housed a peep show she was lured into working at, Hideki finds Chi work in a bakery where he had worked previously. This teaches Chi more about the world, as well as enabling her to buy further volumes of the picture book she enjoys so much. Eventually, the series of picture books leads to the awakening of a second personality within Chi, who calls herself Freya. Freya refers to herself as Chi's other self, and is surprised and satisfied to learn that Chi is near a familiar person, Chitose Hibiya, Hideki's landlady, though sad to learn that Chi had forgotten everything of her mysterious previous life.

Hideki inadvertently discovers that some of his friends have had bad experiences with Persocoms in the past. As he helps them to resolve their feelings toward Persocoms, he finds himself facing his developing feelings for Chi, and he soon finds that he is growing to love her. Chi, meanwhile, becomes almost obsessed with finding her "person just for me", a euphemism used in the series to refer to one's true love.

Chi and Hideki learn about Chi's past at the same time, though in different situations. Hideki becomes increasingly curious about Chi's past after seeing his landlady, Ms. Hibiya, with Chi in a grainy picture sent to Minoru. Though she disappeared mysteriously for quite some time, Hideki finally got in touch with her and learned about Chi's past. Chi, on the other hand, learns of her past from Freya.

It was discovered that Chi was previously known as Elda, and along with Freya, she was the daughter of Chitose Hibiya and her husband, who had built the two Persocoms as daughters because they could not have children. When he built them, he programmed them to find someone to love, their respective "someone just for me"s. However, Freya chose her father as her true love, and though she hid her feelings for some time, knowing that her father loved her mother and that he would never be able to love her the same way, eventually her hardware could no longer handle the emotional load, and she broke down. Elda, seeing her sister in pain, took Freya's personality and memories into herself just before Freya stopped functioning. However, a single unit was not meant hold two hearts; one must eventually overwrite the other, and because of this, Elda lost her memories. Before she lost consciousness, she asked her parents to leave her outside, so that she would not make Freya's mistake when she awoke again. This was when Hideki found her.

Both Chi and Hideki are shocked by the revelations involved. A hidden part of Chi's programming, installed by her parents before she was left in the trash, activates, and all the Persocoms in the city suddenly stop moving and responding. Hideki and Chitose hear a commotion, and Hideki realizes that it is Chi, and runs to help her. Chitose hopes that her husband, who died not long after they left Chi in the trash, would forgive her for breaking her promise not to tell anyone about what had happened.

Outside, Chi chooses Hideki as her "someone just for me", and the city is in chaos as the Persocoms programmed to maintain basic city functions, such as water lines, have stopped functioning as well. Hideki goes to Chi, and Chi explains her feelings for him. She asks him who his special someone is, and, after wrestling with his emotions, declares that she is. At this point, Freya takes control of Chi, and explains to Hideki that, because of Chi's power switch, he can never have her body. Hideki still declares that Chi is his true love, and Freya smiles sadly at him. She then asks him if he wants to know, what the power is that Chi has, that no other Persocom has. He says that, since it is not necessary to know what the power is, he does not. Freya asks Hideki to take good care of Chi, who then takes back control of the body and embraces Hideki. All the Persocoms who had stopped functioning return to normal, and are perplexed by their owners' sudden concern, since they did not recall the time during which they were not working.

Life returns to normal, and at the very end of the story, Hideki gives Chi a password: Chobits, all in hiragana, with the last letter in katakana, the same password that her father had assigned to Freya and herself.

Themes

Despite the comedic and ecchi moments, Chobits itself deals with several dualities concerning subject matter it shows. The most explored issue throughout the series is relationships shared between humans and persocoms. "Atashi" (Japanese for I or me), a character drawn by the character "Hibiya", is a comic book used in the series to hint at the definition of reciprocated love to Chi, and is used to highlight issues with human-persocom relationships; drawing upon the fact that because persocoms can be programmed to imitate desirable human behavior, humans would opt-out of human relationships, as well as obvious problems, such as the inability to further produce offspring.

The series deals with issues and ideals of virginity, and sexual intercourse in that Chi is effectively incapable of sexual intercourse (in the manga) and must therefore only entrust her body to someone who cares for her well-being. This is shown in the series, particularly when several males attempt to "interfere" with Chi. The idea of "love", as a concept is addressed for the denominator of the series, in several installments of "A City With No People"; this deals with issues particularly relating to searching, and subsequently waiting for someone who is what would be referred to as a "soul mate". This is in parallel to the story of Freya, who fell in love with her father and creator, and ultimately wished death due to heartache, and is used as a means of "aiding" Chi in her quest for "A Person Just For Me", or "My One and Only". Both Chi and her sister, Freya; Atashii being linked to Chi, and the companion, linked to Freya.

Etymology

The name "Chobits" comes from the fact that their father, Ichiro Mihara, used the word "Chobi" to describe anything he thought was "small and hopelessly adorable". Two Chobi become "Chobits". The word "Chobits" is an anagram of "Chitose Hibiya.", and is also the password given to Elda, Freya, Plum, and eventually Chi. The spelling of the title uses a mixture of hiragana ちょびっ Chobi[t] and katakana ツ tsu. The mixed letters were chosen because a persocom's password requires a mixture of hiragana, katakana and/or Latin alphanumeric characters for increased security. Similarly, the password チょびっつ Chobittsu for Plum (also known as "Sumomo"; "Sumomo" is Japanese for "plum"), set by Hideki in episode 19 of the TV series (entitled "Chi Helps Out"), mixes katakana (チ, Ch[i]) and hiragana (ょびっつ, [y]obittsu), although in TOKYOPOP's English translation of the manga, the password is "Chobits" (with a capital "C").

The word persocom (パソコン, pāsocon) is a Japanese contraction of personal computer (パーソナルコンピュータ, pāsonaru conpyūta). In Japan, it is used to refer to personal computers in the same way as the initials PC are in English. In Chobits, it is used with no distinction between modern and humanoid computers. This may be in reference to the fact that "computer" used to mean a person who performed calculations. During World War II most computers were women.

Manga

The original Chobits manga was written by Clamp, a famous group of four Japanese mangaka (manga artists) and was serialized in Young Magazine in Japan from February 2001 until the manga's completion in November 2002. Clamp often reuses (or parallels) various characters among their manga. Chobits is one of their first attempts at the shōnen/seinen genre.

The manga is 88 chapters long and was collected into 8 volumes, which are published in English by TOKYOPOP. TOKYOPOP's translation is imported to Australia by Madman Entertainment. The Traditional Chinese manga is published by COMICSWORLD.COM (天下出版有限公司) under official authorization for Hong Kong only. In Singapore, the Simplified Chinese version is published by Chuangyi.

Anime

Further information: [[:Chobits media information]]

The anime consists of 26 episodes and was broadcast across East Asia and Southeast Asia by the anime television network, Animax. Episodes 9, 18, and an extra 27th OVA episode are used as "recap" episodes, looking back on the events that happened previously. The episodes were re-numbered for the DVD release; the original recap episodes were not included in sequence, instead being published together on the final DVD and re-numbered as 8.5, 16.5 and 24.5 making the series itself only 24 episodes.

There is a 6-minute special episode: "Sumomo and Kotoko on a Quest", or "Chibits", concerning Sumomo and Kotoko.

The series was supervised by Morio Asaka while Hisashi Abe acted as character designer and animation director. The ending to the anime series is different from the manga on many levels; perhaps the most notable being removal of all true allusion to Hideki never having Chi because of her switch location, and of Freya taking over Chi's body and asking her mother Chitose to shut them down, saying the Chobits series is a failure, and the activation of the program after all, although the effect on Persocoms is not the same as described in the manga.

Games

In 2002 Marvellous Entertainment Inc. released a Chobits game for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. This game has not been released outside of Japan. The game was available bundled with a clear blue Game Boy Advance with a decal of Chi above the A+B buttons and a Chobits logo above the D-pad. [1]

The online forum Gaia Online features an item that can be equipped to one's avatar called "Doll Ears" which are replicas of Chi's "ears". The item comes bearing the description: "A master dollmaker of Gaia once designed a small clockwork doll girl. He put all his heart into making her the most beautiful doll ever. He would wind her up and she would walk with him through town. Many say she was prettier than a real girl."

Another game to have a Chobits connection is Ragnarok Online, where there is a headgear that can be acquired through a quest called "Ear muffs" that are exactly the same as Chi/Elda's ears

See also

• Chobits media information
• List of Chobits characters

External links

• Chobits Manga Official TOKYOPOP site
• TV Animation Chobits TSB official site (Japanese)