Chobits is the story of a young boy who discovers a robotic girl (a chobit) in a garbage pile, takes it home, and turns her on. It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary chobit, and a great deal of mystery builds up around the chobit’s true identity and the strange abilities she appears to possess. Along the way, CLAMP kind of flirts with commenting on the objectification of women (but seems to mostly just use that as an excuse to objectify them). The central enigma and the flirtation with deeper commentary on the “fan service” of modern manga kept me reading until the end and then… Well, let me just tell you.
REALLY SERIOUS SPOILERS
This is the truth behind the great engima of Chobits:
We discover that Chi — the chobit discovered by our protagonist — was created by a pair of computer scientists who wanted to create a fully sentient AI, and they think of her as their daughter. One day, however, Chi realizes that she wants to experience true love. So she comes up with a foolproof plan to do that:
“I will give myself amnesia and enter a comatose state. I want you to throw my comatose body on a trash pile and hope that my one true love finds my unconscious body there.”
I… umm… Wow. Okay. That’s really stupid.
Not done yet, though, because then her mother says: “We wanted our daughter to find true love, so after she went into a coma and couldn’t consent, we reprogrammed her so that if her first boyfriend didn’t marry her she would not only commit suicide but murder every other android on the planet.”
Guys, that’s not really a great plan, I think–
“Also, we specifically made our daughter so that she could fall in love with someone. But then we designed her body with an off switch in her vagina so that if she did fall in love with someone and then they had sex, it would delete her entire brain and functionally murder her.”
What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You?
And just as you’re reeling from the big reveal that this entire story is about the secrets kept by some phenomenally fucked up people, they follow it up with: “Why did you call them chobits? Why not just call them robots?”
“Oh, because we didn’t want them to be bound by the Three Laws of Robotics.”
Because, obviously, that’s how the Three Laws of Robotics work: You just name something a robot and the Holy Spirit of Asimov fills their corporeal form and binds them forevermore by the Three Laws.
Fuck off, CLAMP.
GRADE: D
