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In all the time we have run the Blog, the item with the most hits has been the Chobits Cosplay Graphic in the Blog Entry “Not Black and White” dated January 22, 2008. Since this is apparently a matter of wide interest I have decided to post a small collection of the more beautiful Chobits images available.

It seems the On/Off Switch for these advanced Persocoms [Personal Computers] is tucked away in a surprising and private place.

The Manga/Anime origins of Chobits are: here and: here

Rai

So!  CHOBITS the Movie.  We had Guran get the entire six-pack of DVDs in and we had a look at what all the fuss is about.

It’s an interesting example of Japanese Sci-Fi, very much in the mould of SE lain, Video Girl AI and Rahxephon. In fact, so typical is it, the elements of the artwork could have been drawn from each other – or drawn by the same artist.  We didn’t check that.

Story in brief: (spoilers ahead) – A country yokel who flunks the entrance exam goes to Tokyo for remedial teaching, hoping to improve his marks and get into college next year. Being a farm boy he knows all about SEX and reproduction but being a yokel he is a virgin and fantasizes over sex with every ‘gurl’ he meets.

There is no explicit sex in the entire 24 episodes. (now that is a spoiler! – for some). Despite some erotic imagery floating around the web, the nearest thing to sex is the occasional nose-bleed of the yokel and the odd catatonic freak-out at sight of the swell of breast under chemise or, once, at an implied ‘upskirt’.  Told you – No explicit sex.

Background:  The principal background is an implied Japanese culture of ‘sexuality, perversity and obsession’. Japanese version of “the guy thing”. The yokel has a collection of Girly comics, which are seen frequently but never in sufficient detail to actually portray any kind of explicit content.

Other males in the storyline have personal collections of pron videos which are never actually viewed in the movie.  There is an interesting part where all the main players are involved in an Online RP Game involving the usual wizardry and guys dressed in gurl avatars.  Our yokel discovers that miniature Personal Computers can assume full human size in the RP environment. Gamers will feel right at home, even though the movie was made in 2002.

Technology:  We will deal with the external detail first.  The story is set in some vaguely future Tokyo.  Everybody has a personal computer, the jargon for which is Persocom.  As this is such a dominant market, there is a corporate battle taking place behind the scenes, as a result of which (careful – key players in this story all seem to have already died!!!  heh) a mad but dead scientist/computer designer has created a mythical/legendary class of Persocom, which legend states to be a CHOBIT.  The details of all this gradually come to the fore throughout the entire 24 episodes.

There are the predictable and quite stereotypical hacksaws and geeks involved, plus a laconic duo dressed in Matrixy black!  way cool!  Lof tha lil chick!!  heh Agro too!

The Persocoms can interface both by directly jacking in, hence Chii’s cute pink and white ears, and they can communicate also by WiFi, Bluetooth etc., which is handy for email etc., and assists in the plot development.

There are behind-the-scenes elements of technology which are ‘covert’ and a bit ‘mystical’, including the mandatory “voices” and rooms like caverns with big screens and blinking lights.  Geek territory. Actually it’s a bit bright – the typical Bat-Cave is lots darker. But then, the duty Tech-On (Angel Central jargon) wears a special visor and dun’t need the customary ultra-violet lighting and fluoro switch illuminations.

Boy Meets Girl: The plot is fairly typical and as I said before, virtually identical to many elements of SE lain, VG-AI and Rahxephon.

Yokel realizes everybody else has a Persocom, which he cannot afford but ‘happens upon’ one that has been thrown out. He picks her (almost ALL the Persocoms are female – but some gurls have guy Persocoms. We saw two) out of the trash heap and carries her home. In doing so, he overlooks the OS disk which falls on the footpath. Not that he would know software from a cow’s tittie neway!

When he gets her home he has already been informed that you must turn a Persocom ON and he is supremely unsuccessful in working out HOW, until there is only one place left on her entire body that he has not tried.  More nose-bleeds here. So anyway, he puts his finger inside her vagina and “CLICK – WHRRRRR”

“Chiiiii”

Which is where she gets her name Chii from.  We knew you wondered.

As the story develops it becomes increasingly obvious that Chii has a self-learning CPU and so she can learn without having a dedicated OS run. It becomes quite clear in fact that Chii is a very sophisticated Custom Persocom. A guy thing *sigh*

Yokel ‘teaches’ Chii the basics of how to say his name and hers but, after repeated nose-bleeds etc., manages to get the ‘Manager Lady” (secretly the Witch of Endor) at his apartment block to teach her how to dress, wash, cook and you name it.

Along the way we get many hints at Chii’s beauty and desirability but yes, if you were expecting nipple or up-skirt this is not your movie.

In many respects, this is a quite good Science Fiction movie, in the Japanese mould and incorporating many cultural mores of that Nation, plus the expected geeky stuff associated with PCs and, very obtrusively, the juvenile antics of the yokel.

The Plot:  The plot deals with the customary Boy-Meets-Girl difficulties, made more complicated by the fact the yokel is a hopeless virgin (virginity is good but the way it’s portrayed in Japanese Manga/Anime is bad) and Chii without programming, which was left on the footpath, is a totally innocent and beautiful gurl Persocom.

She makes some amusing mistakes but nothing compared to the yokel.

We are not told, explicitly, that they get married and live happily ever after but I think they did kiss and hold hands.

Along the way we get to see where all the Plot elements fit in: The mad scientist, the wicked witch, the beautiful maiden, (the boy and the girl – yokel and Chii) plus an assortment of boy-meets-girl associations with nearly ALL the female players (I like Userkey – very Rahxephon), the alter-egos behind the Voices and reference to a plethora of Tokyo cultural stuff and the ways Japanese folk interface with the Web. aka SE lain and the “Wieardo” (Wired).

Erotic Content:  Nil if you discount the nosebleeds.

Artwork:  Typically good.  Manga-Anime is a fascinating field that seems to well up rather than stem from the benchmark of Japanese culture.  We have not so far looked at all the ‘extras’ artwork on the six discs. What we have seen though is delicate and beautiful and/or hilarious.

There is a point near the finish where the ‘Laconic Duo’ (my term) dash across the rooftops and you get a momentary glimpse of a foot here or there – very Ninja!

It seems typical that other artists have drawn upon the energy in CHOBITS to furnish their own imaginations and generate private interpretations of Chii for example.  The same thing has happened with the Simpsons, so Chii is not Robinson Crusoe there!

Adult Imagery:  It’s in this area (populated by the artworks of many secondary artists) that adult imagery falls.  Manga/Anime is just that – Cartoons, either in Comic Book format or animated Video. Given CHOBITS has no explicit sex we agree with the 15+ Rating. Given the lengths to which the Video goes to express Chii’s innocence, we chose not to display adult imagery here.

Rai

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