Review: Chobits

At home, after sustained efforts, when Hideki finally manages to activate her, he finds she is only capable of saying the word ‘Chi’. All queries and requests are met with this one response leading Hideki to name her ‘Chi’. She is at first extremely naive and Hideki is forced to teach her the basics of surviving in the world, the irony of which is not lost on him.

Aside from the comical sections of the story when ‘Chi’ unknowingly and innocently behaves in ways that has Hideki blushing beetroot red, Chobits manages to provide different and often interesting perspectives on the interaction between humans and machines. A user heavily reliant on his/her persocom is likely, sooner or later, to believe that no human can provide the service offered by the machine. The persocom can be programmed to accept them for who they are and will not pass judgement on them for their physical appearance or emotional stability. On the other hand, people unable to purchase a persocom or those replaced by persocoms in their personal or professional lives question the need for their existence.

Surely no machine can replace the need for human contact and empathy? The series creates an intriguing dilemma when we read about a boy genius who programmes a persocom to mimic the personality of his dead sister. While at first it appears to be a coping mechanism for him where he is able to interact with his sister even though she is no longer alive, over time he, like Hideki and Chi, starts to question the validity of such an interaction.