Chobits | The Best Forgotten Romance Anime

Ask a couple anime fans about Chobits, and one out of the three will most likely remember it. The other two will probably tell you that they've never heard of it. Welcome to Broken Obsessed, and today we'll be talking about Chobits, and why it's considered a good classic, and why, for the love of god, why don't people remember it, and why did everybody forget it? Let's find out. Ah, Chobits. If the name rings a bell, then you must be a real anime fan. Or at least you listened to a veteran anime fan's suggestions, even though not everybody enjoyed it. Everyone who knows about Chobits remembers it fondly, due to its creative premise, engaging, deep characters and storylines, and its great art style for the time that left fans of the anime hooked from beginning to end. Chobits was an older romance anime with dark undertones, originally written by the all-female team of Clamp. Chobits was originally published by Kodansha in the Weekly Young Magazine. It even spawned two video games, various types of merchandise such as collectible cards, figurines, calendars, art books, and a lot of content, until it was seemingly forgotten about by the rest of the world. Let's begin by talking a little bit about its plot, and then talk about why it was so important to anime and the genre it created. Chobits tells us the story of Hideki Motosuwa, who finds an abandoned personal computer that he names Chi, which is the only word it can speak. Together, they'll explore the mysteries of Chi's origin, and questions about the relationship between human beings and computers too. Chobits explores the relationship between humans and electronic devices shaped like human beings. Hideki is a held-back student who wants to qualify for university by studying at a prep school in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Chi, as you can see in this image, isn't just your ordinary girl. She's beautiful, with floor-length hair and an adorable, moe-ish demeanor. Hideki assumes that there's something wrong with her, though, so he has his neighbor, Hiromu Shinbo, analyze her with his mobile persicom, Sumomo. But Sumomo crashes, so both of them arrive to the conclusion that Chi is somehow custom-built. Eventually, Shinbo introduces Hideki to Minoru, a child prodigy that understands the field of custom-built persicoms. Minoru's own persicoms include Yuzuki, another personal built persicom that's unable to analyze Chi either. They find out that Chi is actually one of the Chobits, a series of mysterious, legendary persicoms, rumored to have both free will and emotions, something androids to this present day don't even have. That's one of the main important points of this anime, but we'll explain how this ties into the plot later. Yuzuki further mentions that Chi doesn't look like any persicom model in any available database, so she must definitely be custom-made. A huge part of the anime's plot involves Hideki teaching Chi words, behaviors, concepts, all while balancing school and work schedules in between. Things become more complicated, though, as Chi starts developing feelings for Hideki. And while the Chobits have both free will and emotions as we mentioned, this isn't the kind of emotional depth Chi is accustomed to. Hideki struggles as he is also developing feelings for Chi. Discovering Chi's mysterious functions, her past, and her backstory are a really important part of the characters in the series. Hideki's feelings eventually intensify for Chi, regardless of her being a persicom, and despite his friend's painful experiences involving other persicoms. As the plot moves forward, Chi stumbles upon a picture book called A City With No People, which she finds in a bookstore. The book speaks about many different things involving human and persicom relationships, persicoms and their purpose as friends, lovers, and the limits to their behavior. It also dabbles into the possibility of persicoms being part of a one-sided relationship between humans. The book explains a bit of the backstory of the Chobits, what they can do and what they can't do when compared to other persicoms. These picture books also awoken Chi's other self, her sibling Freya, who's aware of their past, and also helps Chi realize what she must do once she decides who her significant other is. Is it Hideki? Is it someone else who will later appear in the series? Perhaps it will end up being no one. As persicoms have a hard time being in real relationships with humans, the only real way of finding out is by watching the series. Hideki, despite his constant reminders to himself that she may only be a machine, seems to have a degree of affection towards her. I mean, look at her, she's beautiful. He also learns that persicoms can have unexpected effects on humans. Hearing stories from his cram school teacher Takako and the baker Hiroyasu, this happens despite having been warned by Minero not to fall in love with her. Chobits is also famous for having sort of started a genre of similar series, the magical girlfriend archetype that takes a little bit from the manic pixie dream girl from western animation. The anime isn't just good, it's historically important similar to how classic music from musical geniuses like Mozart redefined the way music was created. In its own way, Chobits takes a love story in a completely different direction than other romantic anime. For example, Hideki isn't just a college student, he also works instead of taking place in a high school. It also covers adult topics like a part time job and the responsibilities it adds to his life. Clamp is great at drawing their characters, and their works, as we mentioned earlier, even have artworks of their own. On top of that, Chobits isn't just a slapstick romantic comedy filled with bad puns and potty humor. Chobits has some really serious topics, such as infidelity and the real relationship a human can have with a persicom. It also treats the topic of AI with enough maturity and detail even for its time. Right now, AI is a mainstream common topic, and is part of our daily lives even if we don't notice it. Chobits takes things a bit further by explaining the social dilemmas that can come with the AI, exploring themes such as emotional capacity and servitude of the AI. On top of personal developing feelings for their persicoms Let's talk a little bit about Chi though. Chi is the Chobits persicom who has lost her memory. This is important because Chi has to learn everything from the beginning, and adapt to the world. There is no easy resolution to their memory loss, and she has to understand human topics from scratch. However, not everything is perfect about Chobits. One of the main criticisms of persicoms is how they are essentially subservient. Perfect women without any kind of humanity really. This can lead to some of the characters being wrongly objectified, which is also a general criticism of anime as a whole if you think about it. The fact that there are only female chobits, persicoms, and a lot of female fanservice is something that could be attributed to the time of writing and production of Chobits. But I mean hey, who doesn't love some cute anime girls amirite? Perhaps if they also included male persicoms and other types of androids, it could have been a more realistic experience. Exploring both female and male relationships on both ends, or even same sex relationships in a more diverse setting. However, that's not to say the anime wasn't good. There's a reason why Chobits is considered a cult classic and we haven't even begun talking about the musical score and it's animation. For a 2002 anime, it was top notch and very memorable. At least, like again, in my heart. So we'd say that Chobits is a must watch if you call yourself an anime fan. It's sort of like reading a literary classic if you enjoy reading books, or in my case manga and light novels. Some might get tired of Chi's robotic demeanor, while others are wholly entertained by this. She's discovering the world around her and finding out more about her own past. So what do you guys think of Chobits? Will you watch it yourself, or were you part of the OG anime crowd that watched it when it was trending? Let us know in the comments below. Also, make sure to leave us a like, share this video with your friends, and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one. I've been broken obsessed in my otaku ways, and I will see all of you lovely people next time.