Summary:
The series centers on the life of Hideki Motosuwa, a held-back student attempting to qualify for university by studying at Seki prep school in Tokyo. Besides a girlfriend, he dreams of having a
persocom (パソコン): an android used as a personal computer, which is too expensive for Hideki to afford. 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, not noticing that a disk had fall on the ground. Upon turning her on, she instantly regards Hideki with adoration. The only word the persocom seems capable of saying is "chi"
(ちぃ, Chii), thus he names her that. Hideki assumes that there must be something wrong with her, and so the following morning he has his neighbor Hiromu Shinbo analyze her with his mobile persocom Sumomo. After Sumomo crashes during the attempt they conclude that she must be custom-built. Shinbo introduces Hideki to Minoru Kokubunji, a twelve-year-old prodigy who specializes in the field of custom-built
persocoms. Minoru's persocoms, including Yuzuki, a fairly exceptional custom-built
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 is a possibility, Minoru is confident that it is only 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 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 pull for the characters in the series. Hideki's feelings intensify for Chi regardless of her being a persocom and despite his friends' painful experiences involving other persocoms. Chi becomes aware of her purpose through a picture book series called
A City with No People, which she finds in a bookstore. 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 human beings and persocoms, as well as their friends' and their own.-Wikipedia
Review:
I found this series a little too ecchi for me, but still really cute. It was a nice little Clamp work, and I've heard that it's one of the more popular ones. It has a nice meaning, and, if you didn't know, Anglic Layer is the sort of prequel. I found Chii to be really very cute, and the "City With No People" series helped a lot in leading the story to its climax. Chobits wasn't very long, and it was a very simple series to read. It wasn't too much or too little, and without the ecchi, it would've been even more popular than it is today. Towards the end, though, the ecchi was sort of "lost" (in a good way) and you could ignore any little traces that were left behind. All in all, I give it a three out of five. Chobits lost one star for the ecchi, and another one for most of the characters' design (not as in drawing, but as in attitude and such).
