What better way to kick off my manga reviews than with the first series I ever read? That’s right, at the cusp of my teenagehood, I was introduced to Chobits, a series about basically a boy and his robot. I can still remember how I was introduced to it. It was after watching Cardcaptor Sakura being rebroadcast on TV that I wondered if there were other interesting anime out there that I was unaware of. Through the power of the internet, I figured out about Chobits!

The art was beautiful, the story was pretty interesting AND most importantly, the manga featured coloured pull-outs. I read the first book and was subsequently hooked.


Chobits opens with Chii being found in the trash. Chii is a persocom, something of a robot who looks human and can do all the things a computer does. The one thing special about Chii is that she has been programmed to love. As we find out through the series, it wasn’t because Chii was deemed useless, but because there were other circumstances tearing her away from her original creators despite their deep love for her. The exploration of whether a robot can be sentient and eventually develop feelings for humans and whether it’s creepy or whether a human can reciprocate those feelings is central to the manga.

All these exploration of emotions are done in the backdrop, as Chii learn to integrate into human life under the tutelage of Hideki, the main protagonist student who can’t afford a real persocom and felt super lucky at picking Chii up. Chii eventually makes a lot of friends, gets a job and then falls in love with Hideki just like he has for her.

What CLAMP, the manga creators, excel at, is artwork and side characters, in my opinion. Their artwork is intricate with a Shoujo asthetic, and yet for this comic you can see the action shots and comedic facial expressions bleeding through to cater to the Seinen demographic. For me, this was the first story I had read which had such a science fiction theme, where robots could think and love just like humans. This manga (and another one which I’ll review soon) ignited a love for science fiction in me which caused me to devour other science fiction books, you might read this and think “What a load of crap. What’s all this airy human and robots falling in love stuff? There’s no science at all. There’s no logic.” But to me that was one of the manga’s strengths as well. I’m sure that if the manga had gone into hardcore explanations of neurotransmitters my brain wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

Instead, we have a compelling story with an over arcing plot, with side characters that support the narrative question: Can robots love?

The only weak side of the story is… the fucking ending. That ending that starts in chapter 87 and makes me want to bash my head on a wall, It left me with a really unsatisfied feeling I was when I first read it, even though I couldn’t really explain why until now. Everything else about the story, from the premise, to the plot, to the art, to the detailed side characters was perfect. ALL PERFECT. And then the ending… felt like a rug was pulled out from under mebut that's fine, it doesn't change my love for Chobits whatsoever.