Chobits presents a very nice take on the "can robots fall in love" subject that I think does the topic justice. For a light sci-fi that focuses on the increasing role of human-like assistants in a 20-minutes-from-now society, it avoids being too opinionated or trite.

In fact, Chobits succeeds in exploring the subject matter in both breadth and depth. The characters of the story are a vehicle it uses to explore the topics, and not the central focus of the story. That's an increasingly rare approach in manga.

To achieve this, it uses a pretty light touch. It presents the situations while letting you (for the most part) draw your own opinions and conclusions. That really lets you identify with the characters, rather than trying spoon-feeding you annoying cues.

That's not to say that the characters are flat or unappealing. They grow with the story, and their motivations and backstory are drawn upon as a canvas, rather than a blunt instrument. Of course the characters in the most "normal" relationship are pretty flat, but they are meant to be used as a foil and as support.

The story develops at a good pace, keeping a decent amount of momentum. If you are the type that likes to marathon, beware! 88 chapters only sounds like a lot, but Chobits can fly by pretty quickly if you expect it to be drawn out. There is almost no time for filler, which is always a bonus (although I did find the "storybook" sequences a little drawn out at times).

As a consequence of the tight pacing, even mundane details can actually play a role. It doesn't generally use "Big Flashing Lights" to point out important details, because almost everything can be important in such a well-paced story. The end result is that it pays to get into Chobits.

The art isn't anything overly memorable to me, but it does the job well enough to not be confusing. There are some nice spots as well where the art is quite lovely. Of course they could not help but pander a little with fanservice, but at least it wasn't groan-inducing.

Ultimately Chobits succeeded for me because it didn't go overboard. Things were explored in a fairly realistic manner. Nothing was really sugarcoated. There are some interesting twists and turns, and some contrivances, but overall there was a successful suspension of disbelief that I rarely get from sci-fi stories about robots.