Chobits

Title: Chobits Genre: Romance, Comedy, Sci-Fi Rating: 8.5/10

Review: This is one of the more popular animes out there, so I’m sure most of you have already heard of it (if not watched it), but this the first time I have watched it. With all the hype and talk about Chobits I had some expectations coming in, and thankfully this anime met them. Although I wouldn’t find it to be the greatest romance/comedy for a couple reasons I was still very much entertained. The story is of a ronin named Hideki Motosuwa who moves to the big city to study for his college entrance exams. He meets quite a few people along the way like Chitose Hibiya, Hiromu Shinbo, and Minoru Kokubunji. Among the various characters he learns quite a bit about persocoms (basically intelligent design made to look/act like humans) and their purpose. He always envied people with them because of the number of things a single persocom can do for its owner. One night when walking home he happens to stumble upon Chi, a persocom he named later after finding her in the trash. At first Chi is very basic and cannot speak or do much of anything except move. She was a special persocom as you learn later in the series, but I will leave you to watch that part. My first impressions of the anime were pretty low, I didn’t really get a sense of connection between any of the characters, but I continued to watch. Each episode got me more and more attached to the main characters of the anime, even persocoms like Chi and Yuzuki (Minoru’s persocom). The anime really does revolve around these “AI” and that is probably what really attracted me to it. Almost any programmer will most likely find this anime fascinating because of the persocom design. I for one found the subject of such intelligent designs to be amazing because I plan to actually get into AI research. This is not saying that non-programmers will not enjoy this anime, but probably for another reason. The story is still very romantic for any anime lover, and pretty unique too. You get strongly attached to the characters, even side characters play a large enough role that it is hard to call them “side” characters. What I enjoyed most about this anime was how everyone was tied together around Chi and persocoms in general. Characters back stories really influenced decisions made by Hideki which I thought was a nice touch. The comedy is a bit on the perverted side so I would probably keep that in mind, probably not something you would watch with your parents. Although the anime made me laugh, the comedy got a bit old having to see the same scene over and over in a sense: Hideki sees women’s underwear or Chi in loose clothing, gets flustered, collapses or runs away. One thing I noticed was the art style and how the eyes were done. Almost every character, persocom and human alike, had very dead looking eyes. The eyes showed almost NO emotion which did bother me a bit, but as I watched the anime I didn’t really think much of it. More importantly the art style of the eyes is explained at the end so don’t worry. One factor was not explained that still bothers me, but in order to not give any of the story away I will leave that part out.

Final statements: The anime was well done, if you don’t mind the old art style and constant pantie/porn magazine joke. The story is nice and character development even better. The anime isn’t really a tear-jerker so don’t worry about having a box of tissues by your side. Preferred watch.