Continuing my review of the Chobits series from last week, struggling student and tech-incompetent Hideki has had his life turned upside down by the discovery of a “persocom,” a.k.a. a humanoid computer. At the halfway point of this series, the protagonist has a lot more on his hands to deal with than he bargained for. While he celebrates his incredible luck at finding one just lying around, with the help of boy genius Minoru, Hideki is beginning to realize that this persocom who he calls Chi may not be just any computer; could she be a legendary Chobits, a special persocom unlike all the rest? With this possibility comes danger as avid tech whizzes try to get Chi for themselves and two mysterious persocoms seem to be watching Chi’s movements. Chi also begins to display strange abilities that threaten to disrupt this society reliant on persocoms.
If that weren’t enough trouble for Hideki, he has to puzzle out the morality of persocoms that have caused both happiness and heartbreak for his friends. When persocoms seem so real and alive, it’s easy to forget that they are only programmed to act human. But does that matter? Some don’t thing so. They’re real enough for people to fall in love with. Yet this makes others feel as if real people are replaceable with persocoms. If people can fall in love with persocoms, how can real people compete with them for a person’s heart? Persocoms are perfect while humans are flawed. On the other hand, Hideki’s friend Minoru created a persocom specifically to replace the beloved older sister he lost to illness, but finds it can’t replace her no matter how much he tries to recreate his sister’s personality in this persocom. But can a persocom be replaced or are they just as unique as humans?
With questions like that hanging in the air, Chobits continues to be an odd mix of deep ethical questions with no easy answer and fanservice. The second half has gotten somewhat better in terms of representing women as sex objects with minimal personality, but not too much. While Chi may not be wandering into peep shows or trying to copy Hideki’s porn magazines, she still retains a child-like level of intelligence and displays nothings but goodness and pureness. The chapter title pages are still abundant with sexy pictures of Chi and, somehow, that “on” switch I mentioned in my last post has become a plot point.
Her personality has not improved much either in that she still seems to lack one. In part one of this review, I said that persocoms reminded me of Stepford Wives, and while I still feel that to an extent, I almost find Chi worse because she’s so child-like. Not only does she lack emotions like anger that might be considered “unpleasant,” thus making her “perfect” yet inhuman, but it disturbs me that someone so child-like is the focus of a love story. Someone even says she “like a new-born kitten” because Chi knows so little about everything. Intelligence is obviously not on the list of things loveable about Chi. That leaves her cuteness, personality-wise and physically, her pureness, her devotion, and…yep, that’s about it. In that way, she’s like Disney’s earliest princesses, although sadly, I have to say even Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty have a little more intelligence than Chi. I also felt the other female characters in the series weren’t nearly impressive enough to balance out the blandness of Chi.
As for the depth of the story that I liked, it was as if the ethical questions CLAMP posed were too complicated for even the creators themselves to answer. That, or they wanted to simplify things. As a result, questions about whether it’s ethical to fall in love with something that isn’t living and acts on programs rather than real emotion are returned with answers like, “Well, love doesn’t come in one shape.” That’s a sweet and honest message and such messages about love appear throughout that I appreciated, but it remains that the moral dilemmas raised about persocoms aren’t really answered in a satisfactory fashion, at least for me. In addition, while the two mysterious persocoms added some intrigue at first, I felt they ended up feeling rather side-lined and somewhat forced.
In the end, Chobits was a bit disappointing for me both from a feminist perspective and simply as a story lover. There are certainly some interesting ideas raised in this series, which I enjoyed, but unfortunately, it seemed many of those questions never received good answers. If you’re okay with a simpler, more straightforward ending to this kind of story, you may find that doesn’t matter. But as someone who likes realistic and interesting characters that are more than cuteness, pleasantness, and panties, the element of persocoms and Chi leave this story wanting.
I don’t think Chii as a “female character”. She’s just a robot and eyecandy for moe fanservice.
That’s the honest truth of it, isn’t it?
Seems we had the same reaction to the ending then. I also felt like Clamp abandoned the more interesting philosophical questions to give us a skin deep conclusion. Maybe it’s arrogant of me to say this, but I feel like their conclusion of “humans love because they are human”, is just a self evident truth that I wonder why they even bothered to write this story (not to mention it’s circular logic and that’s not something you should do since it’s sloppy and lazy and doesn’t really prove anything). The themes were shallow and like you, I felt the love story was boring and didn’t add anything to the mix either. In short, my least favourite work from them.
It’s too bad since they had some intriguing concepts swirling around in that series. I’m not really sure what happened, but it could be that they started with an idea and just didn’t know how to wrap it all up nicely so, they just dropped the philosophical stuff. I’ve read about that kind of thing happening with writers.
Yeah, that makes sense and would explain why the teacher suddenly fell off the radar and the boy genius was able to accept his persocom for what it is and not think of her/it as his dead sister out of nowhere. Still, I guess I’m just annoyed at how the conclusion was built up so much to be so underwhelming. I guess the level of pretension that pervades the conclusion just annoys me because it’s not profound and it’s not even that interesting. Chobits is one of few manga that I’m just extra hard on, so don’t mind me. ^__^;;;
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/house-of-1000-manga/2011-11-17
Have you ever read this article? I think it gives an interesting take on why Chii is the way she is, and I have to say I kind of agree with it. Chii is child-like and robotic because she represents what otaku want, and I love how CLAMP subverts Hideki and Chii’s relationship in the end, revealing it for how unhealthy it really is. Even though when you get right down to it, Chobits is creepy and deeply cynical, I think it’s one of my favorite CLAMP series because I do think it gets its point across better than some of their other works.
Sorry to pop in randomly, but I just stumbled upon your blog and am enjoying reading through it immensely; thought I would comment since this is a manga I really love xD
Feel free to comment anytime; I always like to hear reader’s thoughts on the series/issues I talk about. ^_^ As for that article, I had not read it before so, thanks for showing it to me. I enjoyed reading it and it gave me a slightly different perspective on Chobits. I thought it was an interesting take to say that Chi and Hideki’s relationship is the fantastical idea of a relationship without sex in comparison to Hideki’s interactions with other female characters, the human ones, which deal with issues of desire. It’s that theme of ideal/perfection vs. real/imperfection. This series definitely has some complex ideas floating around!
If your interested in SiFi try “th ship who sang” by Anne McCarthy
Thanks for the recommendation! I am definitely interested! 🙂
Did anyone actually read the manga. Chobit’s is satirical in the way it plays up misogynistic stereotypes in manga, particularly the science fiction genre.
As for the Stepford Wives issue, it is consistently reaffirmed that persocoms absolutely cannot replace people. The relationship between Ueda and Omura demonstrates that people should be loved on the basis of who they are. He did not love his first wife /because/ she was a persocom and objectively perfect. Omura was not considered inferior (though it is importantly acknowleged that she believed herself to be) because she was human; regardless of what she was, she was loved for who she was.
Even in the beginning of the manga Hideki describes the stereotypical plot of a girl turning up in his life who will “be so wonderful, cook, clean for him and ‘other things’ just like on TV.” She cannot do all these things, but still he loves her (just as Hibiya could not bear children, one of her major gender roles) The point is Chii is so innocent and unwittingly attractive that there is a huge potential for her to be exploited (as we have seen with the peep show and her abduction) To avoid this, her on switch was placed in such a way that if someone were to use her as a sex doll, all of her memories would be erased; Hideki puts his carnal desire for her on the back burner for her sake, though his natural attraction to her ‘as a woman’ isn’t condemned either, nor is Chii slut shamed. Hideki makes it clear that he wanted to make love to her because he loves her and not the other way around.
I’m a raging feminazi according to most, but I think Chobits utilizes some familiar tropes and CLAMP are very much aware of the problematic, male-dominated sphere in which they work. Superficially, the manga appears to be just more ego-stroking wish-fulfilling fanservice, when at its heart it calls into question the nature of relationships/attitudes towards women and is a deeply moving piece of work.
If people read it and all they can bloody see is the fanservice then that goes to show all that is wrong with the world and responses to representations of the female form. We have a long way to go.
I watched the show when I was in HS, had heard it was good and had seen some other good (well, it had good parts) romantic anime. So I gave this one a try. I slogged through the whole series, but boy was it work. I just wasn’t getting it. It never felt like a real love or relationship. It’s sweet that he was taking care of Chi, and she was cute but it never felt like it should be romantic. The romance part always felt weird. Actually the whole thing felt weird. And it made me uncomfortable. I finished the show and moved on, trying best to just forget it.
Fast forward to a while back when I started thinking about it again. I realized this woman is not a woman, she’s not a real character. This guy is totally exploiting her. At best, she’s an object and he’s just a shallow/ narcissistic guy who just wants a pretty object to do stuff for him- in and out of bed.
At worst, she’s a child. Or has the mind of a child, essentially. A mentally handicapped girl with an older body. And he still wants to get it on.
Either way, the guy’s a creep, and the show is creepy. I also don’t remember much of the philosophy you mentioned popping up as much in the show, though it was present. So even if Taima-Chan is correct, I don’t think it’s true of the show (though it’s been a long time).
And even if what Taima-chan said about the manga is true of the show, then wtf does that say about the fans that love it as a straight up romance w/ fanservice, etc?
Seems like, no matter what the intent of the work is, somebody ends up being a creep.