Chobits, Volume 1 [Paperback]

CLAMP (Author, Creator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 2002

Hideki is your typical 20-year-old slacker. He didn`t get into college straight out of high school, so he`s working a dead-end job, can`t find a girlfriend, and is perpetually broke. If only he had a persocon - a humanoid robot - to keep him company, perhaps things wouldn`t be so bad. The problem with persocons is they are incredibly expensive, and it would take Hideki a lifetime to afford one. Then, one day Hideki finds a particularly cute female persocon dumped in a pile of trash, so he decides to take her home. As they say, one man`s trash is another man`s treasure...

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

CLAMP is an all-female team and one of the hottest groups of manga creators in Japan today. Credited with bridging the gap between male and female comic fans, CLAMP has many other series to their credit, including X, Clover, as well as Magic Knight Rayearth followed fanatically by readers wherever they're available

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Tokyopop (April 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931514925
• ISBN-13: 978-1931514927
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #354,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Don't fall in love with her... She'll just make you cry.", October 22, 2002

By 

Stormwaltz "Stormwaltz" (Edmonton, AB Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chobits, Volume 1 (Paperback)

The ladies of CLAMP are known for two types of manga. The first is "average schoolgirl becomes magical girl, saves world," such as their most successful work to date, Cardcaptor Sakura. The other is "prettyboys with windswept hair swordfight between bouts of angst," such as X/1999. Chobits, set in real world Tokyo sometime in the near future, is something different. It has - dare I say it? - themes.

Protagonist Hideki Motosuwa is a typical college student. He's forthright and reliable, but struggles with his studies, has a lousy job, and secretly owns an enormous collection of pornography. His greatest shortcoming is a seeming addiction to porn, which is played - perhaps overplayed - for laughs in this first volume of the manga. While he's surrounded by beautiful and personable women, he becomes tongue-tied and paralyzed around them, often unable to do more than blush and silently obsess over the size of their chest. Fortunately, these women are amazingly forgiving. None of them are shocked or offended when they find a dirty magazine on his floor, or a video on his TV. Instead, they perform a philosophical shrug and assume an amused "boys will be boys" attitude.

One night, Hideki finds a small girl lying unconscious in a dumpster. He panics until he notices her unusual ears, which identify her as a "persocom." Persocoms are the home computers of the future, humanoid robots designed to be physically perfect and programmed to fulfill whatever their owners desire. Persocoms, despite their appearance, are not intelligent, and don't have feelings, although a well-programmed one can fake both. In short, they're not people, but sophisticated tools. Charmingly, the world of Chobits also has "laptop" persocoms - five inch miniature versions - and persocom PDAs the size of a key chain charm.

Astonished to find such an expensive piece of hardware, Hideki takes the snow-haired, amber-eyed persocom home. When he activates her, all she can say is "Chii," and that becomes her name. Chii has no memory, and apparently no operating system. She is sweetly childlike, quick to smile and eagerly imitating everything she sees - including the poses in Hideki's ample collection of porn. There are several scenes in this first volume in which Hideki scrambles to eliminate some new cache she's discovered; fortunately, this sort of thing becomes less frequent and obnoxious in later volumes.

This sudden change in Hideki's everyday behavior begins to speak to the themes of Chobits. Here is a young man who surrounds himself with images of imaginary, idealized, willing women, who suddenly finds himself in possession of an idealized, arguably imaginary woman. Left alone with his magazines, Chii could have become a doll. But confronted with the reality of her, Hideki's instinct is to treat Chii like an actual person. Moreover, when he finds she has the capability to learn through observation and imitation, he begins to teach her as if she were a younger sister. Hideki does not mold Chii into what he wants her to be, as most men do with their persocoms. Instead, he fosters her individuality and self-worth.

Persocoms appear to have had a profound impact on society. "A City With No People," an eerily symbolic children's book read by Chii, seems to refer to them when it says, "Being with 'them' is fun. More fun than being with people. Nobody comes outside anymore." Hideki's friends are troubled by Chii. His teacher, upon meeting her, murmurs, "Are all persocoms that cute? No wonder so many people would rather live with persocoms than real people." His coworker tells him, "My sister has (a persocom) shaped like a guy... I had one like that before. It's just... I got really sad." Most tellingly, a young persocom engineer warns, "No matter how cute she is, no matter how human she seems... Don't fall in love with her. She'll just make you cry."

Mere character study is often not enough to interest readers, so CLAMP quickly stirs in the mystery. Who made Chii, and why was she in that dumpster? Why can she run without an OS installed? Why can she, unlike most persocoms, learn rather than rely on reprogramming? Near the conclusion of this volume, a discovery implies that Chii may be better off leaving her past forgotten.

Although Chobits is often laugh-out-loud funny, the parts I appreciate the most are those that resonate with the themes CLAMP is exploring in the work. Hideki is a commentary on men who pursue the company of the imaginary "ideal" women in pornography and Japanese "dating sim" games instead of flesh-and-blood women. That this is explored through a cute robot girl, compelling that very male audience to read Chobits, is deviously ingenious. Meanwhile, Chii - so heartbreakingly earnest in her attempts to comprehend the world and herself, naively fumbling into painful comprehension of human relationships, sexuality, and her own identity - puts those male readers into the shoes of a young girl reaching maturity in a world obsessed with appearance.

Chii makes me smile. She also makes me cry. I can count on one hand the number of manga characters that regularly have that effect on me. Chobits is a strong character piece written as a metaphorical comment on society. As a series, I give Chobits four stars. It's not a timeless work of art, but it *IS* very good. This volume gets only three because the art and storytelling are still settling in, which results in some rougher drawings and an irritating superabundance of "fan service." By volume two, both are up to snuff.

Be aware that Chobits contains mature content. This volume includes language and partial nudity.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something new from CLAMP, July 14, 2002

By 

R. Dauthi "Raph" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chobits, Volume 1 (Paperback)

Just when you think that CLAMP has dished out all their best manga, when you think that all creativity must have been squeezed out of them due to their other titles hogging it all, they throw Chobits at you.

At first, I was skeptical. I mean, an unlucky teen who has no real life staggers across a Chi, the coolest thing in robot-girl techonology and suddenly his life turns around? Haven't I seen this before? But once I delved more into the story, I was surprised to find there was more to it than meets the eye. There are many hilarious scenes in where Chi tries to learn how to act more "real" or human. It's a constant struggle between the two main characters to stay incognito because Chi is no normal robot. Yes, inside all the (mature) comical scenes, there are more serious ones. So far, it's been foreshadowing and nothing more, but it's quite enough to leave you hanging and wanting to know more about Chi's origin.

Overall, I think any manga fan would enjoy this one, but I recommend you pay attention to the "16+" rating on the back. Some people may find it offensive, but I personally don't think it's that big of a deal. Some of the more...immature jokes that made me laugh are a sign of the great translation job done on the series. Definitely something you would want to look out for.

Read Chobits and CLAMP will surprise you once again with their remarkable story-telling. This is manga that everyone should at least look into.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A boy and his persocom, August 14, 2005

By 

Daniel J. Hamlow (Narita, Japan) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chobits, Volume 1 (Paperback)

"Persocoms-beautiful, obedient...fully functional. They're perfection."

"You hear about it all the time. A guy finds a nice girl, takes her home. Then it turns out she has some sort of special powers, and she'll fall madly in love with the guy."

So in Chobits, presumably set in a future where persocoms are computers created like beautiful women, seems to be a next stage in evolution, kind of like the Stepford Wives. And persocom designers have to be men, given the location of the on-switch. Yes, it is down there! Yet there is the mention of a man persocom, so who knows, maybe women design those!

Struggling cram school student Hideki Motosuwa wants one; they are darned expensive, but as everybody has one, he feels out of touch. He says, "I want someone to read me my e-mail. I want to play games. I want to download the latest porn!" Ok, calm down, Hideki! But it's frustrating, and besides, as he says, "It's not like you find persocoms lying around."

Well, that's exactly what happens! He finds a cute-looking persocom with amber eyes and long wavy platinum blonde hair thrown amongst the garbage. He finally activates her, but all she can say is "Chi." He names her that, but despite being unable to speak much, seems to understand him, and even hugs him after a flying leap when he compliments her on how she looks in her clothes or .

In consulting with his cram school classmate Shimbo, the beginnings of a mystery emerge. Persocoms are unable to move without an OS, yet Chi does. And when Hideki tried to plug her in, he got "No data" as a response. Shimbo tries to connect his own laptop, Plum, a cute pint-sized persocom with Arabic style pantaloons, for some first-hand diagnostics, but Plum gets fried. The same happens to the persocoms of Shimbo's computer-literate prodigy colleague, twelve year old Minoru Kokubunji. It's Kokubunji who thinks Chi might be a Chobit. Chobits are supposed to be artificial intelligences who can operate without an OS, meaning that they are as autonomous as people, not reliant on outside programming, but that's more an urban legend. Whatever she is, she's still an unregistered persocom, so is she a homemade unit? Yet, there is some self-installed teaching software in her, as she accurately recites Hideki's phone number.

Chi's blank slate innocence and sheer cuteness is one the appealing things about her that makes her yet another of my favourite manga/anime characters. Her tendency to imitate Hideki's gestures of frustrations is funny. Hideki's attempts to teach Chi lend to the comedy. When Hideki tries to tell her his name, by pointing to himself, she equates pointing at objects to "Hideki" and pointing at everything in his room, says "Hideki" much to his exasperation. But Hideki gets help from his landlady Ms. Hibiya, who gives Chi some hand-me-down clothes. One scene is followed by Chi imitating a scene from a porn DVD, pointing to the actress and saying, "This is a tasty side dish (okazu in Japanese)." She then points to the landlady, "Is she a tasty side dish?" Hoo-boy!

Minoru warns him, "No matter how cute she is, no matter how human she seems, don't fall in love with her. She'll only make you cry." Yet Ms. Shimizu, Hideki's cram school teacher sadly says, "No wonder so many people would rather live with persocoms than with real people." Heck, it wouldn't take me a minute to choose between a persocom and a real person.

This classic manga spawned an equally classic anime series. One variation is that Hideki is already working at the "With Pleasure" in the manga, whereas he gets hired in the anime. But they parallel each other closely. The beginning of a cute sci-fi/technology comedy which presumably influenced A.I. Love You.