Take A Pick Tuesday: Chobits

Take A Pick Tuesday: Chobits

 

 I'm dreaming of Summer, it's many months away (we aren't even in spring yet) but perhaps I'll have awoken by then and until then, I would much rather dream than live in a dreamless state. Summer is the right time to recommend Chobits. After all years ago it was when I first watched it and its impact  on me has lasted ever since. Also what made it relevant to our culture and with the tides of change, its beginning to prove even more so with each passing day. I can’t think of a time these days that I don’t see a major magazine not discuss artificial intelligence, robotics or the debate on its ethics. Certain countries who have robots have found this debate slowly move into a center where all other topics are discussed. This heartwarming romantic comedy had been asking it long before then and asking them well.

 

     Hideki was just a country boy when he found himself coming to Tokyo to enter cram school after failing his entrance exams. It can’t be ignored in the city, everywhere you look there are Persocoms, personal computers the size of humans, robots basically that have begun to be one of the essential needs for people. Hideki knows nothing about them except the women ones are cute like humans, uncanny in fact except for their ears that are like cat ears to tell them apart. The only other thing he knows is that they are extremely expensive.

 

      He finds himself in an apartment he’s sure he won’t be able to afford soon or anything, including Persocoms which keep coming back into his mind. His neighbor Shinbo is also going to cram school and calls it right away on Hideki being a virgin and a bit of a pervert. That’s one of his first introductions to Persocoms, by someone he knows, although Shinbo’s whose name is Sumomo is a mobile version, a smaller almost pocket sized one who every time she sees Hideki says: "master he’s scary.” This is all a little much for Hideki new to the city and fascinated with all the women around him,it doesn’t help that his landlady is as beautiful as is his teacher. Soon so is his co-worker who  Hideki develops a major crush on however everything will take on another dimension when he finds what seems like a woman, thrown on bags of trash, hardly wrapped in anything except a few white clothes, almost mummy like. Sorry had to throw a mummy reference in there.

 

 

 

     Of course Hideki panics, is it a dead body, what should he do until he realizes those cat like ears.  She’s a Perscom, one that has been apparently abandoned. After thinking it over he takes the chance given to him carrying it to his house, first thing he realizes is that adult sized Persocoms are heavy like human beings, if not more so at times.  It won't be the last time he needs to carry her too. Even before the two actually meet, you have a feeling that Hideki would probably jump in front of a bullet for her. Not something that would go unnoticed by others and is proven time and again through the series.

 

  When he takes her home Hideki remembers that he’s clueless, about many thing yes but especially about Perscoms, he was forced to touch all over its body in order to find the on switch until he narrows it down to one last place.  When she comes to life, his life at that moment changes forever, soon others will know. Shinbo will first of course, realizing after trying to check the specs on her that she isn’t just a broken Perscom that says Chi over and over again (which is why Hideki names her Chi) after she nearly breaks Sumomo from her sheer power.

     To say Chi is special is an understatement, even the person he’s referred to, a child, that lives in a wealthy mansion surrounded only by Perscoms especially one in particular, can hardly figure Chi out. Yet she’s missing the most basic things, however it becomes clear that she can learn them.  So Chi becomes a quick learner imitating him even at the worse of time and her devotion towards Hideki is both heartwarming and hilarious. This show does everything right and does it in spades. It can have you watch Hideki try and figure out how to go to a woman’s store to buy some panties without having a nervous breakdown or being clubbed to death for being a pervert in one episode and then question the connections to humans that a Perscom has in another.

       Is it justified or are we replacing a part of our life missing with them, if so what are the repercussions and then does it make it wrong to have them by our side, maybe even love them? Can humans continue down that path and possibly no longer interact with each other?

 

        It easily sorts through these episodes and the connections to the characters, their past and secrets that surround Hideki, you'll never feel their depth isn't explored, quite the opposite and when it’s done and they go back to him it makes his connection with Chi that more potent. Also a certain little mystery starts to foreshadow the whole thing. Even though at so many points I could just see the anime conclude it doesn’t and that’s a great thing. Somehow Chobits does this while embracing some of the episodes we've come to expect from the romantic comedy shows.  It has it’s beach episode, it has what I call Halloween episode which is hilarious for one scene which is Hideki not getting any sleep and explaining it to Shinbo in class and then when walking off nearly using the window as a door. As well as frightening and  a connection to one of the underlining stories.  It’s even got a gaming episode where Hideki and Chi try out what it’s like to go into a MMORPG.  Never does it feel like it's simply going by the model of the genre, it takes these things that we love and does it in the way only Chobits can.

      In these episodes important storytelling is still show and character development, maybe even a few hints for some of the unpredictable twists they have. How can you imagine that Ms. Shimizu or M or Shinbo or any of the other characters could change the focus of the episode so drastically but they do. There is no part of the show that’s a throw away and it makes the experience no matter in what capacity that much more rewarding.

 

         What's interesting is that Chi is so recognizable from this show alone but like all of Clamp shows, it's set in a larger universe. In fact reading the manga or even having ever watched the anime Angelic Layer you'd see that is had taken place only a few years before. Also having set the stage of asking certain questions that Chobits asks in the series. Not to mention you can find Chi in various other shows and manga including Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, xxxHolic, and even Kobata.

     Chobits certainly has an infectious charm to it, juggling genre elements like a pro and I like to think of it as a modern classic. It deserves a go by any anime fan really, it’s never an easy task to bring a Clamp title to anime form. Even so Chobits has a rare quality that sets it apart from the other series. If anything the anime shows that we are complicated as humans as well, having Perscoms in our world doesn’t really change that, it just adds to the already present complexity. How perfect is it that we go through it with Hideki, that could be any of us. Could Chobits be science fact soon, who can say? Some would say it already has.  What we do know however is that there are things that come, cause us to open our heart and we feel like we need to examine it when it does, in that way Chobits does a great job of showing us what’s under the hood. Immerse yourself in it and perhaps you'll see the dream, perhaps you'll be in the midst of summer.