Chobits Genre: Romantic Comedy Shouryu's Overall Score:  8.0

Reviewer: Shouryu
Type of Review: General

One of the latest manga tales by CLAMP (X/1999, Cardcaptor Sakura, Angelic Layer) to be animated, Chobits dazzles the viewer with cuteness that is almost obnoxious in its presentation, yet it never quite gets to the level that it feels childish. Personally, I tend to be adverse to over-cuteness, and it takes a fair amount of charm to keep me from turning my DVD player off. Luckily for Chobits, it not only has solid charisma, but it has an excellent story to boot.

A variation on the familiar ordinary-boy-meets-magical-girl strain, Chobits alters the factor by making its protagonist something of an ignorant hick, and it female lead is far from capable, as she is mentally little more than a child. Raised on a farm with nothing but cows for company, Hideki Motosuwa travels to big-town Tokyo to enroll in cram school, hoping for another shot at college. Upon arriving, he is amazed at the dependence that people have upon Persocoms, personal computers that are made in the form of humans. These devices (which input-output primarily through speech) function as cell phones and PDAs as well, all while following their owners around town merrily. Being too poor to buy one, Hideki is envious of the populace at first, until he happens upon a persocom in a trash heap. Modeled as an adorable teenage girl, he boots the machine up to find that it is a tabula rasa, with only a learning program installed. The charm and propulsion of the story begins as a country boy with absolutely no knowledge of computers (save for his desire to explore internet porn) must now learn to use a walking, talking computer that knows nothing of the world around it.

Chobits is not only strong entertainment, but serves as a Japanese primer, for those watching subtitled versions. Since Chi, Hideki’s persocom, does not know how to communicate verbally at first, Hideki must first teach her, day by day, the Japanese language. This, paired with a light touch of comedic perverseness, gives the characters a strong base of development, while an underlying plot of the nature of Chi’s origins keeps the story from growing too sweet.

The animation is rock solid in its consistency, and manages to stay fairly high in quality, at just below typical OAV levels. (The use of two flashback episodes may have also aided in the consistency.) The English dialogue doesn’t quite live up to the Japanese original, however, those who prefer dubs will not be disappointed, and the translation appears to be fairly accurate. The music is a strange creature that is hard to quantify. The opening theme is painfully poppy in nature, but not purely J-pop, while not quite American pop either. Despite its pop presence, it is disturbingly catchy and fun to listen to – this reviewer would actually listen to it while strumming out jazz licks on his Fender Rhodes in his living room. The first ending theme is pure J-pop, and cloying the point of diving across the room for the DVD remote. The second ending theme, however, is a haunting ballad of self-discovery that is just as infectious and twice as deep as the opening theme. The backgrounds throughout the series also have a slightly cloying feel to them, yet manage to retain a charm and warmth that make you laugh and smile, rather than cringe. It’s not something you could crank your stereo on while cruising down Main Street, but not bad stuff, for fluff.

Chobits turns out to be an infectious series that is delightful in many aspects, and has an abundance of charm that would even capture the interest of action or violence fans. A light dash of panty-and-porn humor keeps it from being too wholesome, while never really being perverse enough to be more than a PG rating (younger kids will be ignorant of most of the pervy jokes, so it should be safe for kids who are supervised), while a romance, lovable loser-ness, learning, relationships, and the humanity of computers all blends together to create an enjoyable story. Chobits is not to be missed. Only the most sour of individuals will manage to walk away without thoroughly liking it, and most likely, as hard as they try, they probably won’t be able to hate it, either.