First, let's talk about the best part of this manga: the art. Simply put, it's amazingly beautiful ...and anyone familiar with me knows I do not say that lightly. Even I can hardly find a flaw in it... it's just as it should be, each line in the ideal place... even the men, wonder of wonders, are drawn in an attractive way. What's more, Clamp manages this outstanding quality consistently, page after page, for eight whole volumes.

Okay, now the worst part: All that ecchi trash that was put in to jazz it up for the audiences susceptible to such things. It's just low. The worst part is that they even have the main character acting like a hypocrite, and they treat it like there's nothing wrong with that. Having readers like and empathize with the main character is very important to a story, and shameless hypocrisy just isn't likeable... Clamp really missed the mark there. Also, good taste is essential for a good manga, and all that ecchi nonsense is the opposite of that.

The character of Chii, on the other hand, is quite another story. I think Clamp did a good job balancing a lot of things with her: she had to be ignorant like a child but not stupid, pensive but not a space cadet, tragic but not mopey, innocent but not shallow. I also thought the scenes where Chii read the storybooks were very sweet and just esoteric enough to add some nice flavor to the manga.

Next, about the message... for the real world which we live in, the message doesn't work... a machine, no matter how advanced, is only a machine... it's not a living thing, it doesn't have a soul, it's not a person, so it can't have a real love (sexual love) with a human being. However, the universe the story takes place in is not necessarily this one, so you can easily imagine it being a fantasy world where an inanimate object can be a person, and since a person is capable of love, then the idea works. If you adopt that idea, the series is much more enjoyable, because then you'll be able to appreciate the pathos of the concept the story explores.

Now, the plot. It isn't very dynamic--it's more along the lines of a slice-of-life manga, so those who prefer action or something fast-paced may not like Chobits. But in my opinion, it gets the job done. It probably could have been better, but it's functional.

Okay, so there are some very good and some very bad parts to this one, but all in all, I think I'd still recommend giving it a try. Even it turns out you hate the story, at least you got to see some beautiful drawings, right?

... Last updated on January 22nd, 2014, 10:43pm

I found this manga very "Clamp".
The ending was really beautiful, and it was really a surprise to me when I found out about Chi's "power"; I had thought that if Hideki realized that he loved only her, then all persocoms could truly love. Sure, there are some loose ends, but you can NEVER have a story with everything neat and happy. The ecchi parts were really weird, but Clamp managed to save the series with the beautiful ending. Oh, and I personally think that the reason why we make robots etc in our image (that is, the human image) is because we want to play God. We want to create and control. I honestly expected Clamp to mention this in Chobits, but then again, it's my opinion.

... Last updated on April 27th, 2012, 9:10am

Im sick of seeing the comments about how bad this series is. The art is great, it has an original storyline(no vampires here!), the characters interact well with each other. Of course it also has heart. I recommend this manga to people of all ages. It shows the corruption of a technology dependent society thats forgetting humanity. Even though the MC does fall in love with Chi, he recognizes her on a human level. While other characters feel that persocoms are unfair to other humans.

I've never been a fan of Clamp's work. I watched episodes of Cardcaptors as a kid because I was waiting for Pokemon to come on, and what I had read of Xxxholic made me bored. I had heard favorable things about Chobits, so I wanted to give it a fair chance. While it's good in some places, there are places where it really falters.

One of the better parts, I believe, of the story is Hideki. Since he's from the countryside and hardly ever goes to the inner city, he knows very little about technology. This way he acts as a proxy for the reader, who also may not know the specifics about the technology of this story's universe. He also adds a humanizing aspect to the story and is a very relatable character, even if he has his stupid moments like when he can't recognize what a map is.

One of the problems that I had is that the story doesn't go far enough. Some parts of the plot skim the relationships people have with persocoms, usually of the romantic kind. However, we see very little else of the kinds of people that would have persocoms. The beginning of the story has Hideki find Chi in the trash, so maybe this is how people would treat theirs if they didn't work right or just didn't want them anymore. I don't like when a series gets too negative, but I think this series could have used a little more pessimism to even out how saccharine it feels at times, and not in the "charming kids cartoon" kind of way. We only see the positives but rarely, if never, see the negatives.

It also felt really heavy handed at times. The story is interspersed with this children's book talking about how "one of them" tries to find "the one for them and only them" among the humans; it's pretty obvious what the story's talking about. It was charming at first, but then it happened so often it just became vapid. Yes, we get what the story's talking about, now stop reiterating what you told us five chapters ago, which also reiterated what was said five chapters ago. That's to say nothing of when people start to go into a diatribe of their inner thoughts. What they say in a few pages could have been summarized into a few panels. It just makes the story drag, and I read the manga as an omnibus so it felt like it was taking forever. It becomes especially bad near the end of the story.

I'm kind of glad I got to read this. Now I don't have to worry about when I'm going to read it and can focus on stories I want to read. Though I didn't like it in particular, that doesn't mean someone else won't either. It's not a bad series, I just think it's kind of directionless. It tries to be profound but comes across as shallow. It tries to be a romance when the romance is far less interesting than everything else. As an addendum, the two government persicoms Dita and Zima could have been removed from the story entirely and nothing of value would have been lost.

... Last updated on August 29th, 2017, 6:33pm

It's different, that's for sure. I seemed to breeze through the chapters. The chapters are shorter than most manga in the first place, but it felt like a light read per page. The concept was interesting, though. Although the obvious theme of the story is about man loving machine, I think it's a little deeper than that.

I think it's more about being able to love knowing there would be complications. I saw an earlier review saying it's about man not being able to get with women (or the other way around) so they have sex with machines. However, if that person paid attention, they would see they are completely off base. This next part contains spoilers. Sure the background characters (the ones in the crowd) may have sex with their "persacons", but the story wasn't about them, it was about Hideki and the other characters and how even if the love seems doomed to fail or is shunned upon by society, if one wills it to work, it will work. Throw the whole man loving machine concept out the window, and try to look at it in different terms. Maybe CLAMP did want to focus on man loving machine, but it certainly can be looked at in a different light if one chooses to.

For that reason, I think it is a very good romance. Definitely not the best, but somewhat deep. I would definitely recommend it. It isn't long, it's interesting, and it has cute moments. If one likes the romance genre, one would enjoy this one.

... Last updated on June 13th, 2010, 1:13am

The story start out kind of boring, but later it becomes solid and interesting. The problem in this manga is that they focus in the love people feel for machines and how that is normal (what the heck?!). Also, as expected from CLAMP. whatever you think the ending is, well it's not!

「(°ヘ°)
to be very honest this was a bit of a confusing manga for me. i'm not really sure if i even understand the whole story line.


... Last updated on April 5th, 2014, 1:54am

This one would do better, I think, if it was shorter [which isn't something that I normally would say.] At times, it tries to be very profound and serious but things can also degrade down to superficial nonsense.

it's sweet and sad, but the message about love is there. there's a hopeful feeling from reading this series.

Wow, it was great, a really deep manga by CLAMP who again, somehow managed to pack an *EXTREAMLY* shoujo message into a nice seinen package that moved me to tears.