Sunday, November 8, 2009

Summary
The story centers on the life of Hideki Motosuwa, a repeat student attempting to qualify for university by studying at Seki prep school in Tokyo. Besides a girlfriend, he dreams of having a persocom. On his way home one evening, he stumbles across a persocom in the form of a beautiful girl with long hair lying against a pile of trash bags, and he carries her home. Upon turning her on, she instantly regards Hideki with adoration. The only word the persocom seems capable of saying is "chi" , thus he names her Chi. Hideki assumes that there must be something wrong with her, and so the following morning Hideki's neighbor Hiromu Shimbo tries to analyze her with his mobile persocom Plum, and after Plum crashes he concludes that she must be custom-made.

Shinbo introduces Hideki to Minoru Kokubunji, a twelve year old genius who specializes in the field of custom made persocoms. Minoru's persocoms, including Yuzuki, a fairly exceptional custom made persocom, are not able to analyze Chi either, and thus they conclude that she may be one of the Chobits, a legendary series of persocoms rumoured to have free will and emotions. Although this could be a possibility, Minoru is confident that it is only a rumour. Yuzuki also adds that she does not resemble any persocom model in any available database and so she must be custom made after all.

A major part of the plot involves Hideki attempting to teach Chi words, concepts, and appropriate behaviours, in between his crammed schedule of school and work. At the same time, Chi seems to be developing feelings for Hideki, at an emotional depth, which she is not supposed to possess, and Hideki struggles with his feelings for her. The need to figure out more about Chi and her mysterious functions and past becomes a stressing pull for the characters in the series.

Hideki discovers that his feelings intensify for Chi whether she is a persocom or not, despite other horrible experiences involving persocoms that happened to his friends. Chi becomes aware of her purpose through a picture book series called A City with No People which she finds in a bookstore. The books speak about many different things involving human and persocom relationships: persocoms and their convenience towards people as friends and lovers, how there are things that they cannot do and questioning whether a relationship between a persocom and a human is really one sided. It also speaks about the Chobits series; that they are different from other persocoms, and what they are not capable of doing unlike other persocoms. These picture books awaken Chi's other self, her sibling Freya who is aware of their past and helps Chi realize what she must do when she decides who her "person just for me" is. Together, Chi and Hideki explore the relationship between humans and their new technological advantage, the persocom, as well as their friends' and their own.
*note: perscom is an android used as a personal computer, which is expensive.


Review:
Chobits, overall was an excellent series. The characters actually had relationships that developed, which is rare in anime. The story flowed fairly well, and did not bore the audience to death. The writers knew who would be their target audience would be, and definetly drove to please that audience. The voice acting in the english version was done wonderfully, and the voices fit the characters extrememly well.
This series was created so well, it is difficult to say that it is flawless, but it would be a lie to say it wasn't. The show could have definetly be cut down some; for example, episodes repeat what happened in the last episode too much instead of moving on in the story. The ending was predictable, making it almost dislikable; some things never really were resolve;and even though the characters moved on with relationships, at the very end, it seems like the begining is just repeated.
Despite Chobit's flaws, it is still a wonderful series. Any viewer will have no trouble looking past the bad points, which there are few, and will fall in love with this series charm and interesting view on love.

Review by:Kizxuya

Music Playlist at MixPod.com