Chobits
Type: Manga
Author: CLAMP
Published: September 25, 2000 to October 28, 2002
Chobits is an early 2000s manga created by CLAMP, the female collective behind Rayearth and a whole bunch of other stuff. A romantic comedy, and an oddly prescient one, the story details the relations between humans and AI-powered personal assistant androids known as "persocoms." These eerily lifelike waifu-styled devices have supplanted computers and provide various forms of companionship to their fleshy partners. The plot is related to an earlier CLAMP tale, Angelic Layer, but you don't need to read that first. At least I didn't.
The story's hero, Hideki, is a bum who failed to get into college so he's stuck in cram school for a year. He can't afford a computer of any kind but happens to find a beautiful female (they're all female) persocom out in some alley garbage. Upon booting it/her up it's discovered that "Chii" is clueless, and while she possesses language capabilities she has no knowledge about her past or the world in general. Hideki and Chii grow closer together, and it's implied that Chii may be a "Chobit" -- an android so advanced that it has human sentience and free will.
This is a funny manga, even with an abundance of cliché gags: Hideki "thinking out loud" and leaving his porno mags in plain sight to be found by anyone and everyone. The story expands beyond Hideki and Chii to involve a bunch of other folks, most who seem to have pathological relations with persocoms. There's a boy genius who's trying to create a persocom to replace his dead sister (he also has a harem of persocoms that dress like hookers for some reason), a biofoid (okay the manga didn't use this term) who feels mogged by the perfect ageless robo-gals, a man who previously fell in love with a persocom but it ended badly... Hideki's male classmate is probably the most functional person (though he starts boning the teacher for some reason); perhaps it's because he has an adorable pocket persocom rather than a human-sized one. The interpersonal conflicts intertwine and come to a head when it's revealed that Chii is being tracked and hunted for numerous significant reasons. All the characters are fairly endearing in any event, though I could do without the Chii clone that eventually shows up.
At eight volumes, this is a bit too long (and my two omnibus books are literally too thick and must be read delicately). There's a lot of fluff including numerous flashback scenes and a story-within-a-story that's written in a stilted babyish cadence. The ending is somehow both anticlimactic and existentially terrifying. Hideki SPOILERS discovers that the "Chobits" story is bullshit and Chii is simply running a script, is not capable of actual love, etc... And he simply accepts it and decides to continue a romantic relationship with her regardless (btw this is all coming soon irl). (Furthermore there's this weird addendum about how Hideki and Chii can never have sex because Chii's "reset button" is located inside her robo-vag are you fucking kidding me)...
The art is straightforward and competent. Character stylings are somewhat realistic, with most everyone looking like they're actually Japanese (this is even true of some of the persocoms). Not a big fan of all the "Gothic Lolita" frilly shit Chii wears in the back half of the story though. Soft recommendation for this one. It's very 2000, and the anime is better, but Chobits is still a worthwhile read.
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewed: 07/27/26