Arcane Reviews: Chobits

Chobits

Hello ladies, peoples, and animals it is I, the Arcane Reviewer! Here to welcome you to Romance Month! Just as the title suggests I will be reviewing romantic anime all throughout the month of February because I am a lonely person who needs to feel special about myself. But anyway I figured I'd start off this month by reviewing a little anime which many consider a classic in the anime world. I am of course talking about the 2002 anime, Chobits. Just how romantic is this anime? Well lets find out shall we?

Story:

The story takes place in the not too distant future where we follow our protagonist Hideki Motosuwa a young man who has figured out that he was not accepted into college. So in order to get into college he enrolls into a prep school in Tokyo where he sees persocoms. Persocoms are these computers that look and sound just like humans and can do just about anything so Hideki wants one really badly but can't afford one because he's piss broke. But on the night of his arrival he sees a persocom laying in the trash and seemingly unharmed. So like any person he decides that he'll take it for himself. Afterwards he awakebs the small persocom and she doesn't know anything and she can't speak at all except for the one word chi which ends up becoming her name. So now that Hideki has Chi as well as his prep school all sort out we get ready for one big slice-of-life anime because that's pretty much what Chobits is. Now I have nothing against slice-of-life personally, in fact I love the anime Steins;Gate and that a of bit slice-of-life right there. But with that being said the main story of Chobits is as you would expect Chi and Hideki falling in love with each other and it kinda of takes forever to tell that story. Chobits is only 27 episodes long but really this story could've been told in about 15 to 20 episodes max. Hell three of those episodes you can just scrape off because they're clip shows! Yes, Chobits had not one not two but three clip shows. Like what the hell? Also there are a lot of episodes that go nowhere. The episode where Chi has to buy underwear, the beach episode, and an episode were Hideki and Chi help clean the whole apartment that they live in. It all just feel like filler. The show however does have a pretty good sense of humor and got me to crack up quite a few times. Most of the jokes revolve around poking fun at Hideki because he's a perv or Chi misunderstanding something, which somehow leads back to making Hideki look like a perv amazingly. The show can also be pretty damn good when it comes to drama as well. Now these moments aren't too heavy mind you seeing as how the show has a very light tone. But damn when the drama need some emotional weight they bring in the anvil. So the show can be very good at times but can also drag on quite a bit.

Animation:

Well I guess the next question is; just how pretty does the show look? Well put your hearts at ease because Chobits looks very pretty. Madhouse is behind the animation for this one and that makes me laugh a bit seeing as how Madhouse also did Trigun and Death Note but I digress. The show has some very nice looking character designs for all of them even if they fall in the simple or bland category. Hideki also has a little cool design that I noticed and I like a lot. Seeing as how he's not from Tokyo he doesn't have the same eyes as everyone. All the other characters have these big eyes with big pupil. Hideki on the other hand has relatively smaller eyes with much smaller pupils. I just that that was cool. Also the animation for movement is quite good when it needs to be. Characters won't move a lot but when they do they look very fluent and it looked nice, though I would have like to see more. Also when ever you had Hideki's wild day dreams or fantasy is another moment the animation can be look very good. So not much else to say aside from the fact that the show looks good and moves well but then again it's Madhouse and I wouldn't expect anything less from them.

Music:

Now here is were Chobits freaking shines. Not gonna lie Chobits has a pretty damn good soundtrack. The music fits every well with the mood that's going on from scene to scene and it was just awesome to listen too. All the tracks were nice and up beat when they needed to be but when things got dark that's when the music just kicked it into over-gear and gave you some great tracks. All the more melancholy and darker tone songs are just amazing and puts the right feeling and mood into any given scene. I honestly feel that if the music wasn't as good as it is this show would not be that great. So as you can see I loved the music in this show and it really boosted up my enjoyment overall.

Characters:

This is another department that Chobits did pretty well in. All the characters in Chobits are actually given a lot of time to develop and become very likable over the series. None of them were too out there or over exaggerating and I came off like just about the whole cast. Hideki is a giant perv but a really good guy who doesn't want to see people upset so he'll try helping them but he's not an idiot. He knows that sometimes things can get really bad and you'll have to take the pain in stride which is something that you don't see a lot of anime protagonist really accept. You also have Chi who doesn't know much of anything but doesn't really mind and wants to go out and learn everything. She's very cute and also considerate of other peoples emotions even if she doesn't fully understand them. The characters are actually really fleshed out and I found myself really enjoying all of them. So yeah this show may not have a strong cast of characters but it is a good cast.

Nitpicks:

Now this is what really hurts Chobits in my opinion. As I stated before the show gets side tracked a lot and it just feels longer then it really needs to be. You have episode where nothing happens to advance the plot and I was bashing myself over the head saying " Get on with it!". But the biggest thing about Chobits that bothered me was the whole "can people love persocoms" thing. Now we all know that Chi and Hideki are going to fall in love with each other, that's the whole point of the show. But then out of left field you have people telling Hideki that it's wrong to love persocoms. They say that people are losing interest in other people and that it doesn't matter what a persocom goes through it's just a computer. They have this setting established throughout the entire show and even have two fucking subplots that revolve around this damn idea. But then all of a sudden all of the characters, including the ones who told Hideki that it was wrong. That is't okay to love Chi and it shouldn't matter what she is, as long as he loves it's okay. Wait! Didn't you motherfuckers just say that that was wrong?! Now you're saying "JK dude, bang that robot." where the fuck did this change of heart come from!? Yeah this 180 switch on ideas was really weird to me and dragged down the show a bit.

Overall:

In conclusion I guess all I have to say is that Chobits is a very nice romantic anime that I feel was able to entertain me. Even though the got side tracked I still found myself enjoying it and the romance between Hideki and Chi was cute and came off as genuine and natural. They seemed to fall in love with each other in a semi realistic way and I really enjoyed it. So I believe that Chobits a very good anime to watch with a special someone and enjoy the romantic goodness. Meanwhile I'll be drinking myself into a coma because I'm single.

Arcane Reviews gives Chobits a 7 out of 10.

You can watch "Chobits" on:

Funimation (Dub and Sub)

Netflix (Dub and Sub)